This poster was
inspired by an overwhelming sense of despair at Ausrtalia’s treatment of asylum
seekers and refugees.
Like most
refugee supporters, I was crestfallen when an appointed panel advised our
Labour government to return to offshore processing in April 2012, ostensibly
under the pretext of ‘stopping the boats’ that arrive at our shores from
Indonesia and thus reducing the chances that asylum seekers will die at sea
when those boats fail to make a successful journey. The recommendation was put
through parliament almost immediately, making the small tropical islands of
Nauru and Manus Island our new detention outposts.
Those who arrive
under the new legislation are subjected to a ‘no advantage’ principle, which is
as punitive and small-minded as it sounds. It is a law which effectively means
their application process will be no quicker than that of an offshore
applicant’s (the designated time is about 5 years), and which also makes the
process of gaining family reunion—should they eventually gain refugee
visas—longer and more difficult than would normally be the case.
The true
intention of offshore processing (despite pious rhetoric about ‘saving lives
at sea’) is to prevent asylum seekers from gaining access to our courts. It is
to make the capacity for judicial review on decisions made against them, and
last minute appeals on things like deportation, less possible. It means the government
can confront these people with the bleak option of spending years on a tropical
island in cramped, uncomfortable, insalubrious tents, in 40 degree hear, or be peremptorily
sent back to where they came from.
Then in October
our government successfully excised the mainland of Australia from the
migration zone, meaning that even those asylum seekers who make it onshore will
be denied the fair processing of their claims. Instead they will be treated as
if they were still in a foreign country and had never made it to a place that recognizes
the protections granted by the UN Refugee Convention.
It is clear that
the desire of both major political parties to be tough to the point of
inhumanity on refugees is politically motivated, and panders to the worst
feelings in Australian society. To my thinking, the national temper on this
issue is no less detached from reality than reality television itself. Because
this is an election issue in our country, and has been ever since the Liberal
party exploited race politics to a tea in the 2001 ‘Tampa affair’, the policy
of detention plays out like a macabre survivor show, in which craven
politicians test just how hard they can be on some of the world’s most
vulnerable and defenseless people. Instead of bringing out the best in us, it
plays upon our meanest instincts. The island setting and punitive conditions
forced upon refugees will no doubt satisfy the ignorance of those who rail
against ‘queue jumpers’ and ‘illegals’. Alas, they are likely to never be
confronted with the immense psychological damage that mandatory detention
inflicts on people.
