Dr June Factor writes:
In the few weeks of the election campaign, how many times will we hear about troublesome asylum seekers and wicked people smugglers?
These labels are very familiar to the Jewish community. The sad truth of centuries of oppression and discrimination in Europe, culminating in the horrors of Nazi persecution and mass murder in World War II, mean that most Jewish families in Australia have relatives whose lives were saved by desperate flight from imminent danger. Then as now, people escaping for their lives did not have the luxury of acquiring official exit documents. It was and is often safer to disguise identity when officialdom is your enemy.
Some Jews were helped by loyal friends. Others paid guides to smuggle them to safety. Whether altruistic or avaricious, these ‘people smugglers’ saved lives. Without their knowledge of hiding places, terrain, police and guards who could be bribed, far fewer fugitives would have found asylum.
After 1933 there were thousands of applications from desperate people seeking refuge in Australia. It was a very different Australia then. The population in 1939 was 7 million, the vast majority of Anglo-Celtic origin. Few people had travelled overseas, and when they did, they mostly visited ‘Home’ – the British Isles or Ireland. Information about the world was available chiefly from local newspapers and radio stations. This was a relatively isolated community, not highly educated, generally unaccustomed to foreigners with their unfamiliar languages and traditions. It is not surprising that the government believed an influx of ‘aliens’ would cause anxiety.
Yet despite its unease and reluctance to accept many non-British subjects, the government in the 1930s and early 1940s permitted entry as refugees to some thousands of Jews, non-Jewish anti-fascists, and Chinese and Indonesians escaping the Japanese. And after the war this country welcomed more than 170,000 ‘Displaced Persons’ of many nationalities from the refugee camps in Europe – part of the Curtin and Chifley Labor Government’s great post-war immigration program which led to the consolidation of Australia as an advanced multicultural society.
The Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, is right when she calls Australia a sanctuary. That is what it has been for asylum seekers, including those who’ve sought a safe haven here from a variety of post-war disasters in the Middle East, Asia and Africa. The older generations of refugees have enriched and enhanced Australian life in every field of endeavour; as they find their feet and their place in the new society, the same pattern of achievement can be expected of the more recent arrivals.
It was therefore a disturbing reversal of long-standing Australian policy when the Howard government introduced its increasingly punitive treatment of those seeking refuge here. It was a considerable rejection of that disgraceful policy that helped defeat the Howard government in 2007. The Rudd government initiated some welcome reforms, particularly abolition of the humiliating and destructive Temporary Protection Visas and the notorious so-called Pacific Solution.
But whereas earlier reforming governments set out to explain, over and over again, the reasons for their actions, the Rudd government chose a kind of do-good-by-stealth policy when it came to asylum seekers. It is admirable when individuals undertake good deeds without publicity; governments, however, are required to clarify and justify their reforms to the people they serve.
It is the Labor government’s grave failure to validate and defend its more humane policy towards people arriving in leaking boats seeking refuge that has enabled the Opposition to retrofit its disreputable ‘turn the boats back’ mantra to serve its own political ends.
Desperate for an ingenious ‘tough’ alternative, the new Prime Minister offers a new version of the Pacific Solution, a solution she called, when in Opposition, ‘a costly and unsustainable farce’. A ‘regional processing centre’, whether in East Timor or some other country in our region, will certainly be very expensive, and its chance of existence doubtful. Why should poorer, less developed countries shoulder Australia’s responsibility for asylum seekers who apply for our protection? Julia Gillard says this anywhere-but-Australia scheme will put the people-smugglers out of business. That sounds like the triumph of hope over experience.
Meanwhile, against our international obligations, recent Afghani refugees remain in detention, their claims for asylum untested for another 3 months. Word leaks out that those longer-detained Afghans who have been assessed are being sent back in large numbers because they’ll be ‘safe’ in Afghanistan, a decision so contrary to the evidence that the usually discreet UN refugee agency expresses public concern.
All in all, this is a government policy cobbled together in political panic – neither humane nor practical. The new Prime Minister and her fellow MPs would be wise to seek counsel from the shades of John Curtin and Ben Chifley, or from the living experience of Bob Hawke and Malcolm Fraser.
*June Factor is a writer and an Honorary Senior Fellow at the Australian Centre, University of Melbourne.
16 Comments
I agree. I’ve largely kept out of topics about the election, because it is all such a much of a muchness-or maybe I’m just jaded and cynical. A bit of both I suspect.
The worst traders of human traffic are the two major’s. Both tap into the xenophobic nature of the self centred human being. This political human trafficking is a vote winner. They know it.
It is also ugly and insidious. It sanitizes hatred and intolerance to achieve power and control.
We learn nothing,-absolutely nothing. Politics is the ruination of the decent human being-and the fuel for those who never were decent human beings.
And we are forced to vote for these creatures. (Yes, I DO know we just need to get ticked of).
I already am. Very.
visit http://www.pipingshrike.com/ it also observes how labor has legistimised the most base approaches to dehumanisation of people in need, dragged the youngest and most fragile nation into a political problem of the making of our weak kneed labor/union alliance, failed to solve the mining tax “problem” and totally stuffed action on the environment (Penola, Russia, Pakistan and China are just imagining their climate problems )
Gillard always wanted this sort of policy though. Her idea is to “stop people at source”, nothing to do with non-existent people smuggling.
She just wants to elide the refugee convention and the Murdoch rags have been doing their bit to help out with the unprincipled cowards shamaham and sheridan continually whining about shutting down the refugee convention as if the convention is the problem and not the Taliban.
Really?
Not rejected at the 2001 election.
Not rejected at the 2004 election.
Supported by current opinion polls.
Methinks you are putting your own beliefs before fact, much like most of modern academia.
Wot, no Gough? Where is that avatar of progressive Laborism in this pantheon of heroes?
The absence wouldn’t have anything to do with his comments to Clyde Cameron about Vietnamese refugees, would it?
Just because imbeciles support genocidal law breaking does not make it acceptable you frigging moron Phelps, so piss off.
(HAH!! I was just about to address Mr Phelps, and noticed an addition to the post count as I logged in).
…I think you are right Petey sweety. NO politician has every given a monkeys testicles about asylum seekers.
Howard was dumped because of Workchoices (dontyer jus’ love that…’choices’!!).
WC (that’s appropriate), affected US. Asylum seekers affects THEM.
We don’t kick folk out of office for what affects others-now do we?
And we never really vote a Party in-we vote the others out. Because of US. Because of what WE get from it.
Gillard will get back in because when push comes to shove-we can’t risk Abbott bringing WC back. And besides Gillard will deal stringently with asylum seekers.
The only difference will be the plate juggling act of harsh dealing dressed up as a more humanitarian approach.
All we need now is an obedient little island somewhere where the natives will cooperate, and make it easy for Gillard and co.
Neat eh? No Workchoices for us……(yet),-and getting those undesirables of our hands.
(Look on the bright side. Howard only gave them a number, he decided that to tattoo it on their arm would be a waste of ink).
And 4 Corners tonight was totally confusing..The hero of the piece paid “smugglers” to get him to Indonesia where we pay for him to be jailed, he pays bribes to Indonesian immigration to get other refugees out of detention (which is a good thing), we did not see a single evil people smuggler doing anything other than ask questions of someone who went to set them up.
Can’t work out why they bothered with the guy.
@ shepherdmarilyn
Ordinary Australians are “imbeciles”, are they? You have become a self-parody of the arrogant, out-of-touch, over-educated, latte-swilling Left, Marilyn. Why don’t you just more to those enlightened workers’ paradises of Cuba or Venezuela or North Korea?
@ Elan.
Tattoos? I’m calling Godwin’s Law on you, knucklehead.
The 4 Corners story didn’t state how the Iraqi refugee got to Indonesia. He wasn’t jailed he lived in a series of private accommodations. He resented the fact that he had been recognised by the UNHCR as a refugee and had been waiting for three years to be resettled in a signatory country, while at the same time others, who could afford it, were greasing the palms of corrupt officials, people smugglers etc. and sailing to Australia. He didn’t pay anyone anything, he just found out what the process was. He’s a refugee just like the others and I would have thought that he deserved the same understanding that you extend to other refugees Marilyn. Hopefully he will get to Australia soon.
Petey,Petey………pullease!
Try to come up with an original opinion, not Micky Godwin’s.
(And besides;-the matter of defining race/culture by tattoo, has this definitive example like no other in our modern history. What dear old Mickey omits to say is that this reference is made largely to counter the trend to repeat it).
So Petey, make an effort son. Try to think for yourself.
I KNOW it’s hard for you, but TRY.
You’re an idiot, Phelps.
“Ordinary Australians are “imbeciles”, are they? You have become a self-parody of the arrogant, out-of-touch, over-educated, latte-swilling Left, Marilyn. Why don’t you just more to those enlightened workers’ paradises of Cuba or Venezuela or North Korea?”
These words right there? ^^ The words of an idiot, folks.
Yes, the tragedy of boat people …
June’s remarks about how Jewish refugees used people smugglers to escape from Nazi persecution reminded me of the S.S. St. Louis saga, the tragic case of Jewish boat people. If you recall, in May of 1939 about 1000 Jews left Hamburg on the St. Louis bound for Cuba. The passengers had all applied for visas to enter the United States from Cuba, but at the time of sailing, these had not yet been issued. Thus the passengers were, in effect, undocumented. It is therefore not a stretch to accuse the Hamburg-Amerika Line, owners of the St Louis, of “people smuggling.” That aside, when the ship arrived off Havana, Cuban officials refused permission for them to land. After several days of negotiation without success, the ship departed and cruised around the southeast coast of the U.S. while the Captain requested permission to land his refugees. U.S. immigration policy at that time placed strict limits on immigration from various countries, and by mid-1939 there was a waiting list several years long for Germans and Austrians. Do the words “queue jumpers” spring to your mind (tsk, tsk)? Well, negotiations with the U.S. broke down, and so the S.S. St. Louis reluctantly set sail back to Hamburg in June. Before arrival in Germany, however, Great Britain, France, Belgium and Holland agreed to divide up the refugees and give them shelter. Three months later, war broke out. Of the 288 passengers admitted by Great Britain, all survived WW II except one, who was killed during an air raid. Of the 620 passengers who returned to continental Europe, 87 managed to emigrate before the German invasion. Of those 532 St. Louis passengers trapped in Nazi occupied western Europe, just over half, 278 survived the Holocaust, but 254 were killed. The principle of “non-refoulement,” so important in the later UN Convention on Refugees and its Protocol, had not yet come into play.
Remember the S.S. St. Louis story, its cast includes “refugees”, “people smugglers”, and “queue jumpers.” What is it they say about the lessons of history?
The remarkable irony of Daniel accusing others of idiocy is side-achingly hilarious and the rest of the crikeycommunistacommentariat element are out in droves as well I see.
Well done Peter Phelps!
The remarkable irony of Jimmylad accusing others of idiocy is side-achingly hilarious and the rest of the crikeyconservativecretiniat element are out in dribbles as well I see.
Well done MS/1gmd/cbmc/D/and that pearl of wisdom Elan!
(Such silly nonsense is so pliant,isn’t it?)
When are we going to get the real story on illegal immigration. THe majority of illegal immigrants in Australia are not boat people, they are those who have overstayed their visa, most from Britain and the US: acceptable people from acceptable places.
If you consider the current debate around illegal immigrants, and boat people in Australia, it does not appear to be vastly different from the rationale and arguments used in support of the White Australia policy and the on-going need of the non-Indigenous population to control immigration to those who can easily assimilate into ‘Australian’ society: English speaking, Christian, educated or rich, a sports person and preferably white.
Given that 25% of Australians have one parent born overseas and that by 2050 the majority of immigrants to Australia will be from Asia, I wonder what the motivation underpinning the immigration debate really is.
And let’s get real here: the number of people arriving in Australia seeking asylum is nothing compared to the numbers arriving in other countries. The majority of applications for asylum are successful. Australia needs to get better at managing the process.