Well now. I am at a loss to understand how it is considered OK in Australia to imprison people for eight years for arriving in the country without the right paperwork, when serious sex offenders can get two and a half years for abusing children.
A few months ago I wrote a letter to the (then) new Immigration Minister, Alex Hawke, asking him to give his attention to freeing the detainees who are being imprisoned in immigration detention in the Mantra Hotel at Kangaroo Point, at the inappropriately named Brisbane Immigration Transit Centre and elsewhere. Strictly speaking I should have written to the Home Affairs Minister but since that was Peter Dutton I thought I would try Hawke.
A couple of weeks ago I got a much-delayed reply from an official of the Home Affairs Department. It was predictably appalling. I was angry, and wrote a detailed response. As fate would have it, we now have a new Home Affairs Minister, Karen Andrews, so I sent it to her asking her to do better than her predecessors. Here it is for your reading displeasure/disgust/outrage.
Dear Minister
Congratulations on your elevation to this very important and challenging portfolio.
Over a number of years I have been very distressed by the plight of the asylum seekers who came to our country in 2013-14 and were caught up in Operation Sovereign Borders. As time has passed I have become more and more dismayed by our government’s failure to resolve this situation and the ongoing indefinite detention of the people involved. As a person who has spent my professional life working with and on behalf of people who suffer significant disadvantage, I am all too aware of the lifelong effects of the kind of trauma we are causing.
Recently I wrote to Immigration Minister Alex Hawke about this question, asking him to use his new position in the ministry to work towards their release. In response I received a letter from the Director of the Immigration and Settlement Services Group in the Department of Home Affairs. To say this response was disappointing is an understatement. I thought I would highlight some parts of it to let you know how this comes across to me. The quotes from the letter are in italics.
Australia takes its international obligations seriously and provides protection to individuals consistent with all international human rights conventions to which it is a party. Australia is one of the world’s most generous contributors to international refugee resettlement efforts, successfully settling more than 900,000 refugees and others in humanitarian need since the end of the Second World War.
As an immigrant myself, although not a refugee, I am very grateful for Australia’s history of openness and its willingness to settle people. However, our current policies on asylum seekers are clearly not consistent with the refugee convention, and amount to arbitrary detention. We have certainly provided high quality settlement to many refugees but this doesn’t lessen the cruelty of our current asylum seeker regime.
Under the Migration Act 1958, detention is not limited by a set timeframe; rather, it ends when the person either is granted a visa or is removed from Australia. This is dependent upon a number of factors, including identity determination, developments in country information and the complexity of processing due to individual circumstances relating to health, character or security matters. Notwithstanding this, these assessments are completed as expeditiously as possible to facilitate the shortest possible timeframe for detaining people in immigration detention facilities. The lengths and conditions of immigration detention, including the appropriateness of both the accommodation and services provided, are subject to regular review by senior officers of the Department of Home Affairs, the Commonwealth Ombudsman and the Australian Human Rights Commission. These reviews consider the lawfulness and appropriateness of a person’s detention, their detention arrangements and placement, health and welfare and other matters relevant to their ongoing detention and case resolution.
I am well aware that under current law there is no limit to the length of time people can be detained. We elect governments to make our laws and change them where necessary, and this is one law which it is clearly necessary to change. As you know, there are several hundred asylum seekers who have now been detained for eight years and longer. We have two little children who have now been detained on Christmas Island for three years. I recently read that the man who raped and abused Grace Tame was sentenced to two years and six months in prison. If eight years is “the shortest possible timeframe” then your department has a serious problem. In the context of eight years in indefinite detention, the claim that reviews consider the “appropriateness” of detention and the “health and welfare” of detainees is extremely hollow. Eight years of detention is enough to destroy anyone’s mental health. A statutory limit on detention (I would suggest six months) would prevent this trauma and allow people to live safely in the community while their situation is being resolved.
Regional processing arrangements provide illegal maritime arrivals an opportunity to have their protection claims assessed and for those found to be refugees, resettlement in a third country, without compromising Australia’s strong border protection policies. Regional processing is a key pillar of Operation Sovereign Borders and supports the Australian Government’s strong border protection policies. These policies have successfully stemmed the flow of illegal maritime ventures to Australia, disrupted people smuggling activities in the region and prevented loss of life at sea. The success of Australia’s border protection policies has also enabled the Australian Government to make a generous contribution to addressing the global humanitarian crisis.
This comment glosses over certain facts. First of all, your government decreased refugee intake on election in 2013 and has not subsequently increased it. Secondly, offshore detention is vastly expensive as is onshore detention. Over the past eight years we have poured billions into this system which would have been much better used on humanitarian programs. Thirdly, the discussion of people smugglers and boat arrivals is no longer relevant. The boats stopped coming seven years ago and people smuggling networks have long since adapted their operations to bring people here by plane. We need to move on from the battles of 2013-14 and resolve the situation for the people who are collateral damage in this policy.
Transitory persons can seek to resettle in the United States or another third country, settle in Papua New Guinea, or voluntarily return home or to another country in which they have a right of entry. Transitory persons are encouraged to engage in third country resettlement options and take steps to start the next phase of their lives. The Australian and United States Governments remain committed to maximising resettlement opportunities under the United States resettlement arrangement…. as at 31 January 2021, 913 refugees have been resettled under the Australian Government’s resettlement arrangement with the United States.
Yet here we are, eight years on, and several hundred people have not been resettled because none of these options are available or suitable for them. Your government has repeatedly refused New Zealand’s offer to help with resettlement. The US resettlement deal was agreed by Prime Minister Turnbull and President Obama in 2016 and allowed for resettlement of ‘up to 1,250 people’. The fact that we have not yet completed this program, and have only resettled three quarters of the agreed number more than four years on speaks either of poor performance or of deliberate cruelty. I would prefer to believe it was the former.
Today, there are no refugees in detention under offshore processing.
This is disingenuous. There are still people on Nauru and in PNG. On Nauru they have freedom of movement around the island, but they are unable to leave. Nauru is 21 km2 and most of it is uninhabitable, there is limited or no housing choice and very few jobs, and much of the Nauruan population resents their presence. They are confined to an island prison. Those in PNG have it slightly better but still live in a desperately poor community with few employment options, high levels of violence and unrest and low levels of personal safety. And then there are people who were medivaced to Australia, many of whom remain in close confinement in hotels and detention centres here while others have been released on short-term bridging visas with no access to income support or housing. We can do better than this – much better.
The letter from your officials has reinforced my view that this system is fundamentally dysfunctional. As the new minister, you have a chance to fix it. All the remaining asylum seekers from Operation Sovereign Borders should be brought to Australia and granted protection status, with full refugee support. To prevent such a debacle in future the Immigration Act should be amended to place a statutory limit on immigration detention. The performance of settlement staff should be clearly linked to resettlement outcomes and targets to ensure these situations are not allowed to drag on interminably. We need to walk back from the position we have adopted of treating asylum seekers as a problem, and return to the strong humanitarian focus which the start of this letter rightly extols. This is what we have been as a nation, and what we could become again.
I wish you well as you face this important challenge.
Yours sincerely.
Jon
Comments