It took 438 desperate human beings upon the overladen wooden fishing boat, the KM Palapa, to present Australia’s Howard government in August 2001 with an electoral opportunity. At first, there was feigned ignorance from Canberra about any signs of desperation. The vessel, lacking power, lay some 100km off Christmas Island. Despite a coast guard plane noting men jumping up and down on the roof in a frenzy, nothing was initially done. Excuses were made.
On its return four hours later, things had not improved. Canberra’s approach: to persuade Indonesia to take matters in hand. A storm was also approaching. Those on the Palapa, mostly asylum seekers and refugees fleeing from the Middle East, survived. The transport was, however, doomed. Making another run, the plane noted ‘HELP’ greased upon the vessel’s roof using engine oil. Finally, some action. The call to save the distressed vessel was put out by the Australian Coast Guard. Captain Arne Rinnan of the Norwegian container ship, the MV Tampa, made a decision to rescue the sinking boat.
He made for the closest port: Christmas Island. The Australian authorities preferred Rinnan continue course to the Indonesian port of Merak. Those on the boat protested. At Christmas Island, the refugees were refused to avail themselves of the right to land. Rinnan was threatened with fines while the rescued individuals were depicted by Philip Ruddock, then immigration minister, as hostage takers menacing the crew. Howard deployed the SAS, thereby militarising what would have otherwise been a standard civilian operation.
For days, the Tampa was held at sea. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees explained that those on the vessel be brought on land to be processed. New Zealand and Norway offered to accept the human cargo. The Howard government initially refused all requests but announced on September 1 that all the rescues would be processed in third countries. The UN Refugee Convention, to which Australia is a signatory, was being shredded in real time.
The Tampa inaugurated an incremental scale of brutal responses against unwanted refugees and asylum seekers, a policy justified to this day with a shoddy humanitarianism laced with security considerations. It led to the excision of land for the purposes of the Migration Act — those arriving by boat and reaching Australian waters were not, technically, deemed to be arriving in Australia. It led to the Pacific Solution and the creation of processing centres to deal with those accused of ‘queue-jumping’.
Despite a temporary reversal of some of these policies during the first Rudd government in 2007, a rise in the number of naval arrivals saw a return to the harsh regime under a panicked Gillard government in 2012. ‘If you arrive in Australia by boat,’ then immigration minister Chris Bowen promised, ‘you can be taken from Australia by aeroplane and processed in another country.’
'What took place twenty years ago at sea on a Norwegian tanker might have produced a different result: a quiet processing of claims; a generous acceptance of those who had made a precarious journey across the ocean fleeing oppression and hardship.'
In 2013, then opposition leader Tony Abbott adopted the highly successful ‘Stop the Boats’ campaign, accusing the Labor government of being soft on border security. Taking a leaf out of Howard’s playbook, he sought to further militarise a normally civilian activity. Operation Sovereign Borders would come to be an Australian fixture, imposing military-grade secrecy on naval operations. Long-term processing centres would be maintained and funded on Nauru and Manus Island.
A central figure to the policy, then immigration minister Scott Morrison, gave a flavour of such secrecy at a press conference which was not designed to inform so much as dictate: ‘This briefing is not about providing shipping news to the people smuggler — it’s about what the government is going to do in this operation to stop those people coming to Australia and on those boats and deliver on our mandate achieved at the recent elections to implement policies that will stop the boats.’
The Australian Border Force created in its wake was kitted out with paramilitary regalia and position titles to match. The symbolism of force was seamlessly incorporated into managing refugees and asylum seekers not lacking a flavour of sanctioned thuggery.
Central to the platform was the demonization of people smugglers and the market model, which became a convenient way of blackening the actual people who would benefit from sanctuary. If you treat the smugglers as criminals, they are, by virtue of that, dealing in contraband unworthy of settlement on the Australian mainland.
Australian officials could thereby forget history: that people smugglers have rescued the desperate through the centuries in the face of tyrannical regimes and oppressive rulers. John Passant reminded readers of the Sydney Morning Herald in 2010 that the German industrialist Oskar Schindler was paid for smuggling people while governments of his day who proclaimed to be humanitarian — the US, Great Britain and Australia — were keen to ‘turn back the boats’.
The Refugee Convention makes no distinctions on these points: as a refugee, you are not to be penalised; you are not to be discriminated against; you are not to be returned (non-refouled) to a place where your life will be endangered on account of religion, belief, opinion and so forth. But Australia has, singularly, been a pioneer in violating each of these provisions even as it claims membership of the convention. On this subject, it has become a saboteur.
Internationally, Australia’s vigilante refugee model came to be praised. In June 2016, Austrian foreign minister Sebastian Kurz opined that, ‘The Australian model of course cannot be completely replicated but its principles can be applied in Europe.’ Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, at the third demography summit held in Budapest in 2019, welcomed Abbott warmly as a pioneer. ‘I extend a special welcome to Australia’s former prime minister. It is in part due to his tough policy that we regard Australia as a model country. We especially respect it for the brave, direct and Anglo-Saxon consistency which it has shown on migration and defence of the Australian nation.’
In the UK, Home Secretary Priti Patel recently entertained establishing offshore detention centres on such overseas British territories as Ascension Island and St. Helena. According to the Financial Times, ‘The proposal [for offshore processing] is further evidence of the influence of Tony Abbott’s ideas on the Johnson government.’
What took place twenty years ago at sea on a Norwegian tanker might have produced a different result: a quiet processing of claims; a generous acceptance of those who had made a precarious journey across the ocean fleeing oppression and hardship. Australia, instead, offered a dark alternative, one hostile to refugees and the right to asylum, a model to be used by wealthy states to frustrate international law. It is one that shows little signs of losing its cruel appeal.
Dr Binoy Kampmark is a former Commonwealth Scholar who lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
Main image: Illustration by Chris Johnston