Category: Immigration

  • Josef Szwarc. Resettling an additional 12,000 refugees.

    The Government has announced that “Australia will resettle an additional 12,000 refugees who are fleeing the conflict in Syria and Iraq.”

    http://www.pm.gov.au/media/2015-09-09/syrian-and-iraqi-humanitarian-crisis

    This note publishes the statement with some comments about various aspects.

    “Our focus will be on those most in need – the women, children and families of persecuted minorities who have sought refuge from the conflict in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey.”

    Comment: There were reports of political and other commentators suggesting that people of Muslim faith should not be selected. At a press conference about the decision to take in the additional refugees, the Prime Minister stated that there would not be discrimination against Muslims and said: “if you look at the persecuted minorities of the region there are Muslim minorities, Druze, Turkmen, Kurds, there are non-Muslim minorities, Christians…Jews, Yazidis, Armenians, so there are persecuted minorities that are Muslim, there are persecuted minorities that are non-Muslim….” The explicit rejection of faith-based discrimination is welcome: to act otherwise would be unconscionable.

    “A team of Government officials will depart for the region as soon as possible to begin identifying and processing potential candidates for resettlement.”

    Comment: The commitment to implementation expeditiously is very welcome – the level of immediate need is great.

    “In addition, Australia will provide humanitarian support to more than 240,000 Syrian and Iraqi people who have been forced to flee their homes or seek refuge in neighbouring countries. This is expected to cost $44 million. “

    Comment: The boost in assistance for people in the region is important – international financial support for UNHCR is well short of what the agency urgently requires.

    “This funding will deliver much needed food, water, healthcare, education, emergency supplies and protection, including support for women and girls.”

    “With this additional commitment, Australia’s contribution to help address the humanitarian crisis in Syria and Iraq will be around $230 million since 2011.”

    “Today’s announcement represents a significant contribution to the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East.  It is a generous, prudent and proportionate response by a decent and compassionate nation.

    It follows consultations with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and other humanitarian agencies in Geneva.

    Our officials will work with the UNHCR to resettle the refugees as soon as possible.

    They will undergo normal security, health and character checks before coming to Australia and receiving permanent protection.”

    Comment: It is to be hoped that the aim of resettlement ‘as soon as possible’ is not hampered by the pace of conducting ‘normal security, health and character checks’ which can be very prolonged and in the order of 12 months and longer. However, there are media reports of the first arrivals by Christmas. Significant additional resources will be required for both the Department of Immigration and ASIO which may mean reallocation of current staff from other tasks or recruitment, but new staff will take some time to be able to do the complex work involved. Other sources will have to be tapped – The Australian reports that “the load on the Australian immigration system could see retired officials and contractors brought into departments to help handle the load….” 

    The commitment to permanent protection is welcome: the refugees have endured traumatic events, so this is a critical measure of security to allow them to rebuild their lives.

    “The 12,000 places will be in addition to the existing humanitarian programme of 13,750, which rises to 18,750 in 2018-19.

    This decision represents a significant increase in Australia’s humanitarian intake.

    We are able to make this contribution because the Coalition Government has stopped the flow of illegal boats to Australia, easing the pressure on our humanitarian programme.

    It will require the support of all Australian governments and community organisations.

    We will engage State and Territory leaders and community organisations in coming days to discuss how the nation can contribute to this effort.”

    Comment: A number of State governments and community organisations have indicated their willingness to support the settlement of an increased intake of refugees, building on the important roles already played by State, territory and local governments and civil society over many years. New models of collaboration and engagement are needed and we can draw on a history of effective responses to the intake of large numbers of immigrants and refugees.

    Josef Szwarc is Manager, Research and Policy, Victorian Foundation for survivors of Torture.

     

  • John Menadue. Refugees, the community and civil society

    It has been thrilling to see the warm response of many people, and particularly the Germans, to refugees fleeing from war-torn Syria and other countries. Over ten million people have been forced to flee their homes in Syria.

    Pope Francis has appealed to every Catholic parish, religious community or sanctuary in Europe to take in a family of refugees, saying that he would set the example by hosting two families in parishes inside the Vatican. With 20,000 or more Catholic ‘places’ in Europe, that could provide sanctuary for 200,000 refugees on the basis of 10 Syrians per parish.

    To undertake a little more arithmetic, the Australian Catholic church has 1,200 parishes. If each parish took 10 people for say up to six months, that would provide a home and sanctuary for 12,000 Syrians.

    The Catholic bishop of Port Pirie, Greg O’Kelly, has taken up the offer of the Mayor of Port Pirie to take 20 or 30 families and house them in Catholic premises in his diocese.

    In addition of course there are many more Christian churches that could provide places. I am sure that Muslim communities and the community generally would also respond very generously. Maybe Hillsong will respond.

    Not only would community action provide help for people in great need, it would work as an antidote to the poison that has been spread about ‘illegals’ over many years.

    But for the community to respond effectively there must be government leadership in shaping the framework for community participation. Why should we leave most of the implementation to governments in housing new arrivals in old army barracks?

    We could draw on past experience with the Community Refugee Resettlement Scheme which grew out of the Indochina resettlement program. Churches, community-based groups and others supported the resettlement of refugees and their integration and participation in the mainstream community. As with all programs, there were teething problems but the scheme was reviewed and could be adapted to meet present needs. At its height, it proved to be a very practical program that ensured a nimble response to a mass outflow. Many people came together and opened their homes and hearts to support people in a new life. Our rich and vibrant modern day society grew out of such a citizen-led initiative.

    Unfortunately, a lot of the experience in settlement and nation building in the immigration department has been lost. Further, the Abbott government has moved settlement services to the Department of Human Services (Scott Morrison) whilst visa issue remains with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. This will make for messy implementation and turf warfare.

    We need a task force drawn from key departments and former Immigration Department officials who have left. With them has gone a great deal of experience, expertise and institutional memory.

    The present minister, Peter Dutton, will need to show more skill than he has shown to date.

    A regular contributor to this blog, Arja Keski-Nummi, a former First Assistant Secretary in charge of refugee policy and operations, in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship will write later about the framework that I have briefly outlined in this blog.

    There is a challenge before us all to be better.

  • Ross Burns. Syria and Persecuted Minorities.

    The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, the international legal instrument to which Australia was an original signatory, contains a clause making clear that ‘The Contracting States shall apply the provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin’.

    It therefore seems curious that at least three Ministers, most notably the Prime Minister and Foreign Minister, have made statements that echo the wording that Australia’s new program to take 12,000 Syrian refugees under UNHCR auspices announced on 9 September would give preference to ‘persecuted minorities’.

    While on the surface this wording may sound consistent with the convention it has rightly raised a few eyebrows in the Australian Muslim community. In the Syrian context, does this reference indicate that Australia only considers ‘minorities’ as persecuted? Must members of the majority community in Syria have their claims under the convention downgraded?

    The Syrian conflict is an increasingly multi-layered scene where violence on all sides has risen to catastrophic proportions. It began as a citizens’ revolt against a brutally repressive government but has since become a multi-layered civil war in which a bewildering range of Islamist forces have competed to lead the fight against an oppressive regime. All parties to the conflict have their backers outside Syria with some contributing military resupply, others turning a blind eye to movements into Syria of fighters and arms.

    The first few years of the conflict saw fighting extend principally into Muslim majority areas of the country while many minority groups (among them Christians, Druze and Alawis) found shelter in areas under government control. Many Christians, in particular, became apologists for the regime in its efforts to project abroad its case that it was fighting the threat of ‘Islamic extremists’—a threat which was largely awakened as a result of the regime’s appetite right from the start for violence and repression as the answer to any form of dissent.

    The latest dimension to the conflict in the past year is the rise of ‘Islamic State’ or ISIS—a spillover from the Sunni vs Shi`a conflict in Iraq and thus another product of the Allied contributors’ failure to appreciate the consequences of the Malaki government’s marginalisation of the Sunnis. It is in this phase that many Christians in the eastern provinces of Syria—mainly poor agricultural communities not affiliated to the main Orthodox or Catholic streams that had congregated in the regime-held centres to the west— found themselves trapped by ISIS’ lightening rise. In the early years of the conflict, however, undoubtedly the Muslim suburbs of the major cities bore the brunt of the regime’s violent onslaught which brought the major waves of refugee outflows still trapped in the camps in Jordan, Lebanon and Turkey. In this situation, only a strictly needs-based selection process would be warranted. Part of that assessment process needs to take into account whether communities could ever safely return but that is a question that hangs over virtually every community that once comprised Syria’s mosaic of cultures and faiths.

    Picking favourites in this maze of tragic complexity is not a good idea. There is no Syrian community, ethnic or religious, which has avoided exposure to the violence that has washed across Syria. The pattern does not discriminate by race or creed. Even those who have found refuge in regime-held areas can suddenly find the lines have changed.

    The Abbott government’s new program is an admirably generous development. It is regrettable, though, that it has to be ‘sold’ to one element of the Australian public (the Coalition’s right wing) by code-worded rhetoric suggesting that the UN convention can be manipulated in a way that would minimise Muslim participation. Everyone will need to be on board to make this program a success. There is every reason to believe that Syrians have the background, particularly educational, and motivation to make their new lives a success. It would be tragic to spoil the program’s chances by allowing it to be labeled as an exercise in selective compassion, thus alienating parts of the community whose cooperation is essential to making it a success.

    Ross Burns was Australian Ambassador in Syria from 1984 to 1987.

     

  • Peter Hughes. Designing a more generous Australian response to the Syrian crisis

    The Australian government announcement of 12,000 additional permanent places for Syrian refugees is a reasonable scale of response, if implemented the right way.

    Taken together with the existing program of 13,750 refugees, the new program constitutes a manageable 13% of the planned 2015–16 migration intake of 193,485 permanent visas. It is only 4% of the 632,000 people already in the country temporarily with work rights.

    The fact that the places are permanent is essential. There is no reason to believe that Syrian refugees will be able to return to their home country in the foreseeable future.

    However, the lack of detail in the Prime Minister’s announcement suggests that the decision was taken very quickly and in the absence of any planning or readiness for action.

    For example, it is not clear over what period the 12,000 will be taken. To have immediate impact, the resettlement initiative should begin quickly and be completed within the current financial year.

    Implementation is vital.

    Fifteen years ago, the Howard government arranged for the emergency evacuation of 4000 Kosovars from Europe to Australia.

    The tipping point for intervention in that crisis was television coverage of masses of Kosovars stranded on a European border, unable to return home or to move forward.

    The evacuation was arranged in a matter of weeks as a result of Herculean efforts by a small task force in the then Department of Immigration. That task force, with government backing, found ways to accelerate all the usual requirements to respond to an emergency situation.

    The television images of a small boy washed up on a European shore have been the tipping point in Australian attitudes to the unimaginably large a crisis of displacement from Syria.

    It is surely possible for Australia to not only match what it was able to do 15 years ago, but to do even better in relation to a much larger crisis.

    There is no doubt that quick implementation presents significant challenges. However, sometimes a crisis is big enough to warrant imaginative arrangements outside the norm. A whole of government approach, including the cooperation of security agencies, would be necessary to speed up all of the required processes. It should be possible for a       forward-leaning Australian Public Service to do this. State and Territory government help will also be important.

    It is surely possible to devise a set of arrangements that evacuates very quickly smaller numbers of people in the greatest need of relocation, initially on a temporary basis, with later conversion to permanent status. The numbers could be ramped up to 12,000 over the balance of the financial year.

    It is a pity that the announcement contained the sting in the tail of a focus on resettlement of minorities, such as Christians. It is not clear what message this is designed to send. There is no doubt that threatened minorities should be part of the expanded intake. However, it is invidious for a multicultural society like Australia to select refugees primarily based on religious or cultural backgrounds. This should not form the basis for our choices.

    The advice of UNHCR should be taken in prioritising those who could most benefit from Australian resettlement.

    Some commentators say that taking more people would make no difference to the total problem. It would certainly make a big difference for those who came to Australia. Like the Howard government’ s Kosovar exercise, it would also show solidarity with those countries which are making even larger efforts and set an example to others to do more.

    It is clear that resettlement places will not be available for the 11 million Syrians who have been displaced, but greater resettlement will certainly ease some pressures.

    In this context, the decision to provide an additional $44 million for refugee agencies is welcome. Increased global contribution to the underfunded programs of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees is essential to provide better living conditions for those Syrians who cannot be resettled and stabilise them in safety in current locations.

    Peter Hughes is a Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy, Visitor, Regulatory Institutions Network, ANU. He was formerly Deputy Secretary, Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Peter Hughes

    9 September 2015

  • Peter McNamara. Are all Australians just ‘Bad Samaritans’, or is it just the media?

    I always thought Australians were good Samaritans, welcoming people from all backgrounds, all races, all religions, to their rich and prosperous nation.

    It belies belief to see the media reporting that Australian Christians, including Catholic Archbishop Fisher, say that preference should be given to Christian refugees from war-torn Syria. The Australian does not ring true with its leader: “Fleeing Christians should go to front of queue – archbishop” above Archbishop Fisher’s photo (The Australian online, Sept 8 2015, Tess Livingstone)

    http://www.theaustralian.com.au/in-depth/europes-migrant-crisis/fleeing-christians-should-go-to-front-of-queue-archbishop/story-fnws9k7b-1227516995573

    This reported urging is ignorant of the fundamental principles of refugee resettlement under the International Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees; and it is ignorant of the fundamental principles of the Christian faith.

    First, the International Refugee Convention, to which Australia is the first named signatory, (as is the Holy See) and to which Christian and Catholic lay and religious organisations were observers, provides at the very outset in Article 3:

    Non-discrimination: The Contracting States shall apply the provisions of this Convention to refugees without discrimination as to race, religion or country of origin.

    Second, if this were not enough for Christians to pause for thought, for even a minute, before calling for discriminatory refugee selection, then they should consider the principles of their own religion.

    How can Australians, and Australian Christians in particular, be such bad neighbours?

    Of course, the story is that the Samaritans were a minority, and unwelcome. Today’s Samaritans are the Australian Muslims that seem so hated by a noisy minority of Australians.

    Jesus, according to Luke, urged his listeners to follow the law that required Jews like Jesus to love “your neighbour as yourself”. The lawyers asked Jesus to define “neighbour” and Jesus in return asked the lawyers:

    “Which of these three do you think was a neighbour to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” 

    The expert in the law replied: The one who had mercy on him”. 

    Jesus told him: “Go and do likewise”. 

    It would be a horrible thing for Australian Christians to be seen as priests and Levites that pass by the injured because they are not Christian.

    Of course, one should not take the media on face value. The media has cynically taken Archbishop Fisher’s press release, and given it the emphasis it did not have: Fisher’s press release did not say, as quoted by The Australian “Fleeing Christians should go to front of queue”. To the contrary, Archbishop Fisher pleaded for religious minorities – he urged that “particular preference be given to persecuted Christians from Syria and Iraq and other religious minorities who have nowhere else to go…. We should also keep in mind the minorities within the Muslim community in these countries who are persecuted by Islamists and other Muslims”.

    Now the media, of course, would like to exploit divisions between religions. Heaven knows why? Surely not from some bigoted zealotry, that moreover fans the flames of debate, circulation, sales and advertising revenue? Have our editors become the priests and Levites in our own Australian parable of the Good Samaritan?

    Christians generally and Catholics in particular should decry this misrepresentation of their religion and ethics. Christian and Catholic organisations stand ready to welcome refugees of all, any and no religion, race or country, to help them resettle in a place safe from war and religious and racial discrimination. 

    Peter McNamara is a Sydney lawyer.

  • John Menadue. A one-off increase in the humanitarian program rather than a safe haven is now possible.

    In this blog several of us have advocated a safe haven arrangement, as was the case for the Kosovars, to meet the present Syrian refugee crisis. It was then clear that the government was not going to do much at all. That has now changed. The government has been reluctantly dragged along by state premiers, the backbench and the community generally. A part of the change has been the heart-rending photos of the young toddler lying lifeless on a beach in Turkey.

    The safe haven for Kosovars was predicated on quick processing and movement to Australia for a short stay in a number of designated camps. The people were required to return home at the end of a specified period. This arrangement worked reasonably well because most of them went home voluntarily when the situation in the Balkans cooled off. However there were some ugly scenes chasing people who had disappeared or who refused to leave. That undid much of the good will.

    The East Timorese safe haven arrangement worked much better because they were evacuated to escape a specific situation that improved quickly. Almost all went home without complaint.

    But the bottom line is that Syrians will not be able to go home in the foreseeable future.

    A problem with an immediate increase in permanent settlement in the humanitarian program is that the Department of Immigration and Border Protection will find it difficult to handle such a huge increase unless it changes its processes or even brings back experienced people to form a task force. Current processing time for a refugee visa is well over twelve months on average. Medical screening, biometric screening and security checks cause long delays.

    UNHCR may well ask for safe haven initially as they have in the past in emergencies. They might ask Australia to accept group resettlement through an UNHCR dossier process. But Australia has been highly resistant to this approach as we prefer to undertake a case determination by an Australian officer.

    In short, a safe haven arrangement would allow quick processing which is essential. But the intention must be to offer permanent residence subject to health, security and other checks.

  • Klaus Neumann. Stepping up to the plate.

    Angela Merkel said last week ‘There will be no tolerance towards those who question the dignity of others.’

    Prime minister Tony Abbott is in favour of increasing the number of Syrian and Iraqi refugees allowed to resettle permanently in Australia. But when he announced on Sunday that Australia would “step up to the plate,” he didn’t have in mind an increase of the overall number of visas for refugees, who currently make up just 3 per cent of migrants accepted into Australia each year. More Syrian refugees would simply mean fewer refugees from other countries, including those in our region. (Under pressure from NSW premier Mike Baird and other influential members of his own party, he is now likely to increase the overall intake.)

    Contrast this with Germany. Last weekend alone, around 15,500 displaced people crossed the border from Hungary. The German immigration service expects a total of 800,000 new asylum applications this year, and many of the new arrivals will be allowed to stay.

    Those figures don’t put Germany in the same league as Turkey, Lebanon or Jordan, which are accommodating close to four million displaced Syrians between them. But 800,000 is a frighteningly large number, and taking in that many people will stretch the capacity of Germany’s local governments and welfare organisations. In comparison to other affluent countries, Germany can claim with some justice to be doing more than its fair share.

    What explains the willingness of the German government, and also of the majority of Germans, to welcome such a large number of displaced people? The reception is all the more remarkable because it’s not too long since the arrival of a smaller number of asylum seekers triggered a public outpouring of hatred and eventually prompted the German parliament to water down the right to asylum enshrined in the national constitution, the so-called Basic Law.

    This was during the Balkan wars of the early 1990s, when hundreds of thousands of people fled to Germany from the former Yugoslavia. Refugees were frequently referred to as Scheinasylanten – “pseudo asylum seekers” – and told to go back where they came from. On at least two occasions, angry mobs tried to burn down hostels in which asylum seekers had been housed.

    We shouldn’t idealise Germany’s reaction to the latest surge in numbers. Arson attacks and xenophobic demonstrations have occurred this time, too, particularly in the southeastern state of Saxony, and there has been much racist chatter online. But these responses have been dwarfed by an overwhelmingly welcoming attitude.

    Germany has good reason to welcome refugees – particularly those who are young and have transferrable skills. It has an ageing population, and there are real concerns that the age pension system will become unsustainable. It also has a perennial image problem. Most recently, it has made itself unpopular among some of its European neighbours by vetoing Greek requests for debt relief. Opening its doors to refugees highlights Germany’s credentials as a good global citizen.

    But pragmatic reasons alone can’t explain why most Germans seem relatively relaxed about the large number of non-German-speaking foreigners being allowed across the border. Nor do they explain why Germany’s response contrasts so sharply with Australia’s: after all, Australia, too, has the opportunity to make its neighbours forget, once and for all, about the White Australia policy by leading the way in providing security to forcibly displaced people in the Asia-Pacific region.

    Anyone looking for the reasons for the differences – between then and now, and between Germany and Australia – could do worse than have a close look at a recent statement by chancellor Angela Merkel.

    For months, while a small minority of xenophobes had become increasingly vocal and violent, Merkel did what she does best: she adopted a policy of wait-and-see. Or – to use a term that is likely to be voted the 2015Jugendwort (youth slang word) – she merkelte, appearing to dither about an appropriate response both to the refugee crisis and to the racist reaction among some Germans.

    Last week, she finally spoke up. And when she did, she didn’t mince words: “Es gibt keine Toleranz gegenüber denen, die die Würde anderer Menschen infrage stellen.” (There will be no tolerance towards those who question the dignity of others.)

    The key word here is Würde, or dignity. It had also been used by interior minister Thomas de Maizière, who said that three principles ought to guide the approach to refugees: dignity, security for those seeking Germany’s protection, and decency.

    Würde resonates powerfully in Germany. Article 1(1) of the Basic Law of 1949 begins with the words, “Die Würde des Menschen ist unantastbar” (“Human dignity shall be inviolable”). This and the next eighteen articles of the Basic Law constitute a German bill of rights; for West Germans, in particular, the rights enshrined in the Basic Law have been an important part of what it means to be German.

    Merkel’s and de Maizière’s emphasis on Würde signals that any debate about how to respond to the thousands of migrants arriving every day in Germany will not just be about Germans’ compassion or anger or fear but will also be about the rights of the new arrivals.

    This is the vital difference between the current discussions in Germany and Australia, where an outpouring of public support for Syrian refugees didn’t happen until viewers and readers were shown the heart-wrenching image of a drowned boy on a Turkish beach.

    The second sentence of the Basic Law’s Article 1(1) is also relevant: “To respect and protect [human dignity] shall be the duty of all state authority.” Merkel – as well as just about every other mainstream political leader in Germany – has been unambiguous: the government will come down hard on anybody who does not respect the human dignity of those seeking Germany’s protection.

    German political leaders agree that in dealing with xenophobes there is no alternative to the zero tolerance approach. Not least, this consensus is the lesson drawn from the racist rhetoric and violence of the early 1990s. The genie of a populist xenophobia was briefly let out of the bottle when mainstream politicians empathised with Germans who said they were afraid of being swamped by foreigners. It took many years and the concerted efforts of the political establishment and civil society groups to put it back in.

    Merkel is afraid the genie could be unleashed once more. She knows the importance of not kowtowing to the populist far right. She was asked how to respond to xenophobes, racist thugs and people regurgitating the ideologies of right-wing extremists. Did she think it was important to establish a dialogue with people on the far right? She replied:

    We need to clearly distance ourselves. There can be no apologies… The key is not to show even the slightest bit of understanding. No biographical experience, nothing that happened in the past, nothing, absolutely nothing justifies [their] stance.

    In the second half of the 1990s, Pauline Hanson claimed to speak for millions of disaffected Australians when she railed against asylum seekers and Indigenous people. Australia’s mainstream leaders tried to accommodate some of the views of her followers, and publicly empathised with those who feared that “boat people” would take their jobs or that their front gardens would become subject to native title claims.

    Unlike in Germany, racist innuendo and the demonisation of asylum seekers arriving by boat still have a place in mainstream political debate in Australia. Politicians are still suggesting that seeking Australia’s protection is illegal. Shock jocks still have licence to make inflammatory statements directed at people on account of their religion or ethnicity.

    As long as the Australian conversation about refugees and asylum seekers is guided by feelings rather than by a human rights framework, and as long as mainstream political leaders try to gain electoral mileage by condoning views and policies that don’t respect the dignity of all human beings, citizens and non-citizens, Australia’s response will differ starkly from that currently on show in Western Europe. •

    Klaus Neumann is the author of Across the Seas: Australia’s Response to Refugees: A History, which was published by Black Inc. in June. He is Professor of History in the Swinburne Institute for Social Research.

    This article was first published in Inside Story on 7 September 2015.

  • Michael Kelly SJ. The challenge of people movements.

    Great as the gesture of Pope Francis is to mobilize parishes in Europe to accommodate the influx of tens of thousands of asylum seekers from the Middle East (they call them migrants), the problem is more complex than offering immediate support to needy people. The Pope knows that. He’s said so many times.

    The Pope is drawing a line in the sand. He will be called naïve and “grandstanding”. In a world where 60 million of the 7.3 billion humans on the planet are displaced, the cliché about protecting borders isn’t adequate to the challenge that confronts humanity now.

    The Pope is saying this is a significant moment in the life of Europe and the wider world, just as Jews escaping Nazism in the 1930s confronted the world with a choice: our world is faced with a choice and our response will confirm our mediocrity or enhance our humanity.

    Yet, however inspiring and absolutely correct as the responses of locals in Germany and Austria are, there’s a deeper problem that impacts on Europe and also in Asia. There is no agreed way to address the issue of people movement based on shared values and with respected institutions managing a common task.

    People movement is a constant in human history and the trigger is always human survival, most usually associated with the need for food. The biggest documented event of people movement in human history was the movement of the tribes of northern Europe south to Mediterranean in the Fourth and Fifth Centuries of the Christian Era.

    The tribes came in search of food and, along the way, they destroyed the buildings, documents and communities – in short the cultures – of Greece and Rome.

    We are seeing something like it again without the destruction of Europe. This time we are witnessing people fleeing the destruction of Syria and parts of Iraq. The catastrophe unfolding before our eyes on 24/7 newscasts is something triggered by the wrongly conceived intervention of the “Coalition of the Willing” led by the US in Iraq over a decade ago.

    That event prompted the Arab Spring that became a North African Winter, missing Summer and Autumn/Fall in between. One after another, the nations of Arab North Africa have collapsed into chaos.

    The result of this conflict: refugees and asylum seekers on a scale not seen in Europe since WW2. And what has been the response of governments in countries where the migrants/asylum seekers have landed? Everything from welcome (Germany, for example) to bewilderment (Austria, for example) to denial and rejection (Hungary, for example)

    And this year we have seen the worst humanitarian crisis in Asia – the Rohingya – since the exodus of people from Indochina after the Vietnam War. An estimated 10,000 members of this relatively small Muslim sect – already away from the ancestral home in Bangladesh -were lured into a modern slave trade with the active involvement of the military and slave traders in several Southeast Asian nations – Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia.

    And what has been the response of governments involved – everything from denial (Myanmar) to bewilderment (Malaysia) to reluctant accommodation (Thailand).

    What is missing in both Asia and Europe? The biggest missing link in the two scenarios is any agreed way to cooperate in a regional solution to what is a regional problem.

    It wasn’t ever thus. Europe and North America developed a plan to handle the post-WW2 crisis that then held for forty years. The United Nations developed protocols on the treatment of refuges that provided a set of principles and a process for handling refugees, especially those from parts of Soviet dominated Europe.

    However, for some decades, some UN member nations have been running down the UN’s resources to respond to these human crises. The UN just doesn’t have the money to meet the challenge because participating governments see the world organization either as a tool of their opponents or believe that its operations are wasteful and inefficient. Or both.

    Now, the bloated bureaucracy, the labored processes and the massive overheads that are involved in any UN operation mean that looking to that entity for solutions is bound to disappoint. As well, there are blockages to decisions and actions operating in the factionalized processes of the General Assembly and the Security Council that stand as an impediment to attempts to attempts at global action.

    A UN response is all too often underwhelming because it lacks the energy and urgency needed. With no stake in the outcome, why would a supranational body want speedy responses and lasting results?

    But there are alternative methods of response that include but have not been led by the UN. In the late ‘70s and ‘80s, Asian countries impacted by the Indochinese exodus learnt that it wasn’t a particular country’s issue but a regional one and needed a regional solution.

    All the countries affected – Philippines, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, Thailand – were countries of first reception. They clubbed together with countries that had created the problem – US, French and Australian involvement in the Vietnam War – along with other European countries and Canada to put some shape and order into the people movement in association with the UN.

    It was easier then than it is today to get consensus in Asia and earlier in Europe because the instruments created after WW2 to meet refugee crises and the enduring force of the Cold War meant that decisions about good and bad and right and wrong were quickly made.

    There were bad Communists and the right thing for good non-Communists to do was give those oppressed by the Party their freedom. At that time too, the US, Europeans and others in the West accepted responsibility for their part in creating the messes people were fleeing – after WW2 and the Vietnam War.

    There’s not much evidence that anyone is accepting responsibility much less committing to doing anything about the messes today – in North Africa, the Middle East or Asia.

    But perhaps it’s time to face the fact that the instruments we’ve inherited from the Cold War don’t fit any more or provide definitions that work in a post-ideological, but not post-religious world.

    The disarray in all three regions has distinct causes for each instance. Conflict and victimization on religious grounds are common to each. Politics and ideology take a back seat to tribal bonds and affiliation to particular religious groups among the great religions (Judaism, Islam and Christianity).

    Two things are needed:

    1. A revised refugee charter that accommodates the realities that contribute to the creation of asylum seekers today that go beyond Cold War categories including religion but also economic conditions created by conflicts that make life unsustainable for many, e.g. Iran until recently impoverished by Western sanctions; and
    2. Regional processes that draw together firstly those countries involved in the creation of a crisis as well as those willing to be part of its solution who may or may not have been part of creating the mess in the first place but can certainly help fix it.

    Inherited categories and existing institutions aren’t equal to the challenges today. Why should they be? They were invented and developed for another time and place. It’s time for new wine skins for the new wine.

    Fr. Michael Kelly SJ, Executive Director, UCAN.

    This article was published in Global Pulse on 8 September, 2015. 

  • David Isaacs, Alanna Maycock, The Senate Report on Nauru.

    On 31st August 2015, the Senate finally tabled its lengthy report on conditions at what is euphemistically called the Regional Processing Centre in Nauru (http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Regional_processing_Nauru/Regional_processing_Nauru/Final_Report). The RPC is in reality a prison camp where people live indefinitely in tents, their applications are not processed for over a year, and they are kept in ignorance of when if ever the applications will be processed. It is possible to appeal against a rejected application, but not against one which sits in limbo.

    Will the report make any difference? We know the Government will ignore its recommendations because the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection dismissed the enquiry before the report was published as “a political witch-hunt by an opposition-dominated committee.” He would know, because Liberal Governments have spent millions of tax-payer dollars on political witch-hunts called Royal Commissions.

    Will the public pay attention? We know from recent opinion polls that over half the Australian population believe we are not being harsh enough on asylum seekers. Little wonder when they are demonised by both major political parties and the Murdoch press, talked about as if they are terrorists and deemed unworthy of our compassion or even of being treated like human beings.

    The Abbott Government’s mantra when asked about detention centres, “we have turned back the boats and saved lives at sea” is dishonest on three counts. Firstly, refusing to reveal the truth about turn-backs because they are “operational matters” (another attempt to confuse asylum seekers with invading terrorists) means we have no idea whether the people turned back survive and one estimate suggests as many as 10% may be killed when returned to the country they fled. Such estimates cannot be confirmed or refuted because information is suppressed. Secondly, turning back boats contravenes International Law. The Europeans, who face a problem immeasurably worse than Australia, do not turn back boats; they try to prevent them leaving and they imprison captured people smugglers. The reason for not turning back boats is that in 1939, the SS St Louis sailed out of Hamburg carrying 907 Jewish refugees and was turned away from Cuba, the USA and Canada. The “Voyage of the Damned” retuned to Europe and over a quarter of the asylum seekers are thought to have perished in concentration camps. The UN Refugee Convention in 1951, to which Australia is a co-signatory, deemed turning back boats as unlawful. The third dishonesty is that turning back boats and mandatory detention are different and independent things. Whether or not turning back boats is effective or ethical, imprisoning innocent people fleeing persecution and making conditions so unbearable that they will opt to return to their country of origin is torture. The United Nations has said so, although Tony Abbott “will not be lectured to by the UN on our moral responsibilities.”

    The international media have been scathing about Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. Extreme right wing politicians have toyed with Australia’s policies but been shouted down in their own countries. Outrage characterised reports from New Zealand (http://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/283029/australia’s-senate-report-on-nauru-defended), the UK (http://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-34111019), Canada (http://www.cbc.ca/radio/asithappens/as-it-happens-tuesday-edition-1.3211233) and the USA. The Editors of the New York Times wrote: “Some European officials may be tempted to adopt the hard-line approach Australia has used to stem a similar tide of migrants. That would be unconscionable. Prime Minister Tony Abbott has overseen a ruthlessly effective effort to stop boats packed with migrants, many of them refugees, from reaching Australia’s shores. His policies have been inhumane, of dubious legality and strikingly at odds with the country’s tradition of welcoming people fleeing persecution and war.” (http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/09/03/opinion/australias-brutal-treatment-of-migrants.html?_r=0).

    The Senate enquiry found increasing numbers of whistle-blowers willing to tell the truth, doctors, nurses, social workers, carers and even security personnel. The Border Control Act 2015, which the Labor Party supported, is designed to deter any more whistle-blowers and suppress freedom of speech. The Australian Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs has warned how the creeping powers of government infringe civil liberties, citing many new laws, including meta-data retention laws, mandatory detention of asylum seekers, paperless arrests, and the Border Force Act ((http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/04/gillian-triggs-powers-for-australian-border-force-disrespect-human-dignity). Triggs said it was “particularly troubling” that the major political parties in a “complicit and compliant parliament” passed laws threatening civil and human rights, compounded by the militarisation of the government.

    What can we do? Protest to politicians, in person and in writing. Write to newspapers. Use social media. Persuade people to meet asylum seekers and volunteer their help. Joan Baez said: “As long as we can get shocked…there is something healthy about it.”

    Perhaps we can be optimistic. The photo of the body of three year old Syrian boy Aylan has affected many Australians. Thousands of men, women and children have taken to the streets all over Australia in “light the dark” candle vigils. Aylan’s image has touched the hearts of many Australians who seem now to favour welcoming refugees and are putting pressure on the Government to be more generous to those fleeing the war in Syria.

    David Isaacs is a consultant paediatrician and Alanna Maycock is a a paediatric nurse. They have both worked with children who are refugees or seeking asylum for over 10 years and run a Refugee Clinic at a tertiary children’s hospital in Sydney. They visited Nauru in December 2014 to consult on children in detention. They defied a restrictive contract to reveal the horrific conditions to the media and gave evidence to the Senate Committee.

     

  • Luke Fraser. True Blue

    On Father’s day, anybody around the world lucky enough to have been woken by a happy young son (as I was) would have been hard-put not to have paused and thought of the image of the young Ardyl Kurdi, washed up lifeless on a beach.

    Millions are again on the roads of Europe, running away, looking for safety and stability. Perhaps these are ‘the best of times and the worst of times’ that Dickens wrote of: The worst explains itself in Ardyl Kurdi. Perhaps we see the best in Angela Merkel and a relatively prosperous Germany planning to accommodate 800 thousand Syrian migrants. This will no doubt be resisted by many in that democracy, understandably: it comes with enormous risks. But perhaps Merkel’s pact recognises that Germany – the country of the Berlin airlift and a Marshall Plan beneficiary – still owes some debt of gratitude. If so, it is proposing to pay that debt out in spades. And in doing so it shames many of its neighbours, including countries whose own peoples were on the road not so long ago.

    In Australia things are moving rapidly as politicians grasp at what the public might want and their own ideologies might cope with.

    We have been here before. In 1999 I was a Defence infrastructure public servant charged with selling the surplus Brighton Camp Army Barracks outside Hobart. There were plans for a housing subdivision. Then the decision to grant safe haven to several thousand Kosovans came: the sale of the camp was suspended and work began preparing the camp for its new inhabitants.

    During that process I was a minor cog in a big machine, but I recall the tone set informally from on high: “we aren’t using the term refugee”. “They won’t be staying”. “They won’t be encouraged near the community, or anywhere where the ‘immigration industry’ can get to them”. None of this was official, but the sense of it permeated the exercise.

    Many Tasmanians overcame this callousness through their own acts of welcome and support for the Kosovans.

    The first question for Australia to ask is what to do. John Menadue has proposed an intake of ten thousand. Presumably the UNHCR is equipped to establish bona fides at source and genuine refugees will be flown out. Just as in 1999, there are facilities around the country that could do a job. These are mechanical things.

    The bigger question is how we choose to treat these people once they come.

    Do we treat the arrivals in the way that the Human Rights Commission has witnessed boat people treated in our offshore detention centres?   Do we take all candy off the table? This appears to have been the subtle tone of the Kosovar exercise. That tone has lost all subtlety since and has become macabre. Will our Syrian refugees be given a Manus welcome for the sake of consistency? Or will we allow real people in real Australian communities the opportunity, organically, to show our better side and work with these people to help them along? This is the approach of some Scandinavian countries. Social media helps it along.

    Australian communities never fail to make an effort for neighbours when houses are flooded or burnt down. They don’t wait for a form to be filled out, or to be coerced to assist. We celebrate that quality. We don’t lock flood and bushfire survivors up until new housing can be found for them.

    New South Wales Premier Mike Baird has shown moral leadership by stating publicly that humanitarianism towards Syrian refugees must begin now.

    Once the question of the size of intake and where they are housed is settled – as it surely will be soon by the Commonwealth – will we acquiesce to those political leaders who would be happy to parcel off the inmates in a flat-pack solution? It is passing ironic that we Australians pride ourselves on being laid back and friendly, but increasingly we deputise politicians and bureaucracy to shut out such elements from our lives.

    Presumably smart people will eventually work out a longer-term solution for preserving something of a Syrian diaspora of scale that might one day return to revitalise that country. But for now, our immediate moral challenge seems to be allowing the Syrian intake to co-exist with us in a way that reflects our best selves.

    Our laid-back selves. Not our Manus selves.

    Luke Fraser is an infrastructure policy and investment specialist who contributes occasionally for Pearls and Irritations.

  • Josef Szwarc. Measuring our response to the refugee crisis of Syria and Iraq

    “PM RESCUE MISSION” shouts the headline of the morning newspaper. My heart races with expectation that is immediately deflated by the first sentence: “Australian will open its doors to more Syrian refugees fleeing the troubled nation but won’t increase the overall humanitarian intake.”

    The prospect of an increase was hinted at by a press release from the PM, Foreign Minister and Immigration Minister yesterday as the latter prepared to travel to Geneva for “urgent discussions with the UNHCR and other partners” to inform the government’s consideration of “what further significant contribution we can make through our Humanitarian Programme to resettle those affected by the conflict in Syria and Iraq.” It went on: “as a result of the Government’s success in stopping illegal boat arrivals to Australia, we are now in a position to take more refugees from offshore refugee camps.”

    During the last week, particularly following the tragic deaths of 3 year old Aylan Kurdi and his mother and brother, a rapidly expanding body of federal and state politicians, non-governmental organisations (including my own) and members of the general public has been calling on the government to increase the number of refugees we accept who have fled and continue to flee the wars in the Middle East and elsewhere.

    Various models are being suggested, in particular:

    • expanding the general resettlement program  – this was about 10,000 places in last financial year’s Humanitarian Program, with around 4,400 people from Syria and Iraq – the program is currently scheduled to be increased to 18,750 by 2018/19;
    • implementing a ‘safe haven program’ as was used to bring people from Kosovo (around 4000) and Timor (around 2000) when there were crises there;
    • expanding a model of community sponsored refugees, which is presently on a small scale (500 per year) pilot basis.

    The calls have been for additional refugees from Syria to be permitted to settle here as part of an expended humanitarian program.  In rejecting this plea, the government states that “Australia, on a per capita basis, is the UNHCR’s leading nation for the permanent resettlement of refugees.” The PM has further claimed that Australia was “ahead of the curve” in allocating places specifically for people from Iraq and Syria last year.

    The claims may be accurate but are also misleading as to the proportion of the world’s refugees Australia hosts and our relative ‘generosity.’  They might cause noses to twitch when tested on customers at the very tiny pub frequented by a fairly small number of people familiar with the complexities and mass of refugee data.

    The government’s statements relate to the “resettlement” of refugees, a term that refers to the transfer of refugees from an asylum country to another country that has agreed to admit them and ultimately grant them permanent settlement.  There are only around 30 countries which offer resettlement in conjunction with the UN refugee agency (UNHCR), and in total the program places less than 100,000 people annually i.e.  a very small proportion of the 19.5 million refugees in the world at the end of 2014 (up from 16.7 million in 2013).

    A number of countries have quite small resettlement programs but host large number of people recognised as refugees and asylum seekers who have applied to be recognised as refugees. For example:

    • Germany resettled around 4000 refugees in 2009-13 yet at the end of 2014 had over 200,000 refugees and 200,000 asylum seekers; as widely reported, it is anticipated that over 800,000 people will register for protection there this year;
    • Finland (population 5.4 million) resettled around 3000 during the same period and prepares to accept perhaps 25000- 30,000 asylum seekers this year – Finnish Prime Minister Sipila has said he will offer  a home he owns (not the one in which he usually lives) to house refugees.

    Almost nine out of every 10 refugees (86 per cent) are in regions and countries considered economically less developed.  Of the 4 million Syrians who have been forced to flee, 1.8 million are in Turkey, 1.1 million are in Lebanon, 250,000 in Iraq, and 630,000 in Jordan. Refugees from other countries also generally reside in neighboring states such as Pakistan (2.6 million) and Kenya (650,000).

    Australia’s contribution to assisting refugees by allowing them to settle here has not matched the increase in need. Over the last 20 years, government has planned to accept around 12,000 – 13,750 people each year (with the exception of 2012-13, when it was 20,000). In terms of our population and economic growth, this form of critical assistance has shrunk.

    In the face of the highest level of global displacement since World War II, UN High Commissioner for Refugees Gutteres has stated that “for an unprecedented mass displacement, we need an unprecedented humanitarian response.” That provides a meaningful measure of Australia’s response.

    Josef Szwarc is Manager, Research and Policy, Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture.

     

  • Two years in – even supporters despair of Abbott’s feeble government.

    The Abbott government marks its two-year anniversary of winning office today, September 7. I was tempted to begin by claiming that Tony Abbott has established himself as one of Australia’s more successful prime ministers, but I struggled to find a second sentence.

    The headlines in the opinion pages of August 29’s Weekend Australian show that even Abbott’s supporters despair:

    Why the Australian economy is going to hell in a handbasket [Judith Sloan]

    Shazam me some faith because I’m losing it with the Liberals [Grace Collier]

    Forget reforms, fear and loathing will decide the 2016 election [Peter van Onselen]

    Mixed messages on domestic policy

    What Abbott himself claims as achievements are all reversals of previous policies: stopping the boats, repealing the carbon and mining taxes.

    Abbott now tells Australians the government is firmly focused on jobs and growth, and points to small-business tax incentives and free trade agreements as proof of success. But all governments spruik jobs and growth. Good economic management is the lowest common denominator for governments, even if few achieve it in the long run.

    The Abbott government has been remarkable for its mixed messaging. Last year the greatest economic challenge was a ballooning deficit; now it is more tax cuts. Treasurer Joe Hockey proclaimed the end of the age of entitlement, but rejects substantial changes to a superannuation system that perpetuates intergenerational inequality.

    If the Liberal Party combines elements of both conservative and liberal philosophy the Abbott government has shown itself unable to satisfy either. A truly conservative government would see environmental degradation and climate change as central challenges, rather than embark on hollow – and expensive – minimalist solutions.

    A truly liberal government would treat asylum seekers with compassion, and be very cautious in expanding the state’s role in the surveillance of its citizens. Nor would a liberal government refuse a parliamentary vote on same-sex marriage, and risk clouding the much-needed constitutional debate about Indigenous recognition with a face-saving and unnecessary popular vote on same-sex marriage.

    Abbott overshadowed on foreign policy

    As the world becomes increasingly enmeshed in global forces our politics become ever more parochial. Abbott has been largely absent as an international figure, which has allowed Julie Bishop to create the persona of a successful foreign minister.

    Like Abbott, Julia Gillard came to power without much involvement in foreign policy, but she quickly grasped the centrality of the world to any Australian future. Abbott, who had the enormous luck to inherit both a UN Security Council seat and the G20 chairmanship on taking office, has yet to make that transition.

    In opposition, Abbott spoke of the importance of the Anglosphere and of hisdesire to turn Australia’s attention back to Jakarta and away from Geneva.

    In practice, the opposite seems to have occurred. This is in part due to unexpected events – the execution of Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan in Indonesia, and the downing of MH17 – as well as his foreign minister having been more successful in the halls of the United Nations than in fostering closer ties with Indonesia.

    While Bishop has taken a strong interest in the Pacific, she has spent much of her time explaining the government’s position on asylum seekers. It is unlikely that the region’s countries are impressed by attempts to move refugees to Cambodia – one of the poorest countries in Asia – or Abbott’s response to the Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar.

    Australia is allied with its North Atlantic allies in attacking Islamic State (IS) militants in the Middle East, but there are major gaps between Abbott and the American and British leaders in attitudes to climate change and international development assistance. Yet climate change and stark inequalities are a greater threat to Australia’s long-term security than is IS.

    And while Abbott seeks support for increasing airstrikes against IS, his government seems oblivious to the humanitarian crisis in Syria, which will require Australia to greatly increase its refugee intake. This is where we can make a far more meaningful contribution to helping end the suffering of the Syrian people.

    Failure to unite and inspire

    Successful prime ministers find means to unite the nation and move it forward in new directions. We remember them for moments when they brought the nation together around difficult policies. John Howard did it in his tough line on guns; Kevin Rudd in his apology to the Stolen Generations; Gillard with the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme and the Gonski school funding reforms.

    So far, Abbott has failed to position himself as anything more than an opposition leader who has been given power and is unsure what to do with it.

    Two years after being elected, the Abbott government continues to campaign against its predecessors, explaining virtually everything it does in terms of the alleged failures of its predecessors.

    The government’s negativity is poisoning political debate, encouraging a response from its opponents that can be childish in its automatic rejection of all government policies. But, increasingly, the prime minister carries the burden – and the opportunity – to appeal above party lines to the best instincts of the nation.

    The Left has consistently underestimated Abbott. He may still win re-election. For now, one is tempted to recall the warning of Edmund Burke, one of Abbott’s favourite philosophers, that:

    Nothing turns out to be so oppressive and unjust as a feeble government.

    Dennis Altman is Professorial Fellow in Human Security at La Trobe University. This article was first published in The Conversation on September 7, 2015.

  • John Menadue. The death of Aylan Kurdi may not have been in vain.

    In the last week our media has been extensively covering the plight of Syrian and Iraqi refugees fleeing into Europe. Their reception has been mixed but the governments of Germany and Austria, and their people, have been extending help and kindness.

    I have posted three blogs in recent days on these issues: Mother Merkel and 800,000 refugees; Suffer the little children; Syrian and Iraqi refugees – a time for a bipartisan and community response (Arja Keski-Nummi and Josef Szwarc).

    In response we are seeing the generosity and concern of many Australians.

    Premier Baird in NSW said ‘We should do more and we should do it now.’ After seeing photos of the lifeless Aylan Kurdi, he said we must move beyond the debate about boats.

    The Tasmanian Premier, Will Hodgman, has offered to help refugees under a safe-haven scheme that was very helpful a decade and a half ago for refugees from Kosovo.

    The SA Premier, Jay Wetherall has said that ‘We will certainly be offering SA as an open and welcoming destination for those Syrians fleeing violence.’

    Barnaby Joyce has said that we need to do more. Many other MPs from all parties have expressed similar views. Trade Minister Andrew Robb has said that an initiative to help Syrians fleeing the war ‘was under review’. Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton will travel to Geneva to ask the UNHCR what more Australia can do to help refugees from war-torn Syria and Iraq.

    Tony Abbott is also responding by saying today that ‘We are proposing to take more people from the region as part of our very substantial commitment to the UNHCR. Mark Butler has said that at its last federal conference the ALP decided to increase the refugee intake from 13,750 to 27,000 pe annum. He said this gave substantial headroom to help Syrian refugees.

    The generosity of the countries bordering Iraq and Syria has been remarkable. Lebanon, Jordan and Turkey have taken millions of refugees. But their generosity has been severely tested to breaking point. That is why we are now seeing the outflow of refugees into Europe.

    We were all appalled by the site of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi lying lifeless on a Turkish beach. His death and that of his sister and mother may not have been in vain. The human tragedy in a picture tugged at our hearts more than statistics ever could. But what a dreadful prices the Kurdi family has paid.

    Let’s hope that the Australian response both by governments and community groups will be generous enough to meet the tragedy which is now unfolding.

    Can we match Germany’s generosity, perhaps not in numbers but in spirit?

  • Suffer the little children

    the lifeless body of a child near the Turkish resort of Bodrum early Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2015
    The lifeless body of a child near the Turkish resort of Bodrum, early Wednesday 2/9/15 (Huffington Post)

  • Arja Keski-Nummi and Josef Szwarc. Syrian/Iraqi Refugees: Time for a Bi-partisan and Community Response

    Harrowing images and reports in our daily media give a human face to the grim words of the UN refugee agency: the number of men, women and children forcibly displaced by persecution, war and human rights violations is the largest on record. Nearly 60 million at the end of 2014 and greater since then.

    That Australia can and should significantly and as a matter of priority increase its contribution to the alleviation of the plight of so many people in urgent need is accepted by the major political parties and in many sectors of civil society.

    Last Wednesday the former Howard government immigration minister Philip Ruddock and Labor’s Chris Hayes called for Syrian refugees to be given safe haven visas to come temporarily to Australia, similar to the program adopted for refugees from Kosovo in 1999.

    This is the start of a conversation we must have at the political level that responds humanely and with compassion to the plight of people caught up in a bitter war and whose lives are being irrevocably changed.

    The fact is that in the past the Australian community and successive Australian governments have responded generously and with open hearts to people whose lives have been devastated by war. From the massive post war resettlement of people in the displaced persons camps of Europe, the substantial Indochinese resettlement programs of the 1980s and indeed our unbroken commitment since 1977 to have a planned refugee resettlement program. Our modern day society, the vibrancy of our cultural diversity and linguistic strengths are the rich by-products of these efforts.

    Now, again we are challenged to look at the assistance we provide and see what more we can do. There may be significant differences of view about the scale, timing and means of the contribution we should make but that does not mean we should not start doing more now.

    To begin with we should examine how we could provide immediate sanctuary through the safe haven visa arrangements for children and families affected by war as has been called for by Philip Ruddock and Chris Hayes. This could be done in coordination with the UNHCR, and community and faith based groups here in Australia. These groups could assist with both identification and hosting arrangements in Australia.

    We are mindful this is not a solution – but a temporary measure to get people out of danger. It is abundantly clear that the war in the Middle East will be long and drawn out – we should also be considering how, once people are in safety, we can assist with a transition into permanent resettlement when after a period of time, it is clear that return is not a safe or realistic option. Only in this way will people whose lives have been so severely disrupted by the war start the process of healing and building a new future for themselves.

    We believe the current Community Proposal Pilot whereby communities assist in hosting families and supporting them in their settlement pathway could be substantially expanded and adapted as both an on-shore as well as an offshore program. Frank Brennnan in his recent address to the University of Melbourne Law School has usggested a number of 7,000. This is a good start. Communities could for instance assist with visa application processes (on and off shore) including payment of visa application charges as well as settlement and community orientation processes. From the perspective of the government’s budget, the financial contributions of civil society would mean that it costs will be far less than the main resettlement program. Given this contribution we would strongly urge that such a program should not be counted as part of the established offshore humanitarian program that already responds to global refugee needs but as a unique response to an unfolding humanitarian crisis of enormous proportions. To do otherwise the government would be properly criticised as simply cutting public spending.

    Our understanding is that there is strong support for such community involvement with many more potential nominations than places available in the current program.

    Given the urgent situation in the Middle East and elsewhere, we are confident that Australians of all backgrounds would respond generously and enthusiastically as they have done on previous occasions when community involvement was sought.

    Reports from other countries suggest similar strong support from civil society groups such as church congregations to provide practical assistance and support for displaced people from that conflict.

    We know that we cannot be immune from global developments – action in this way will show we remain a generous and open hearted community willing to be there in tough times.

    Arja Keski-Nummi is active on refugee policy and operations. She was formerly First Assistant Secretary, International and Refugee Division in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.

    Joseph Szwarc is Manager, Research and Policy, Victorian Foundation for Survivors of Torture.

     

    This proposal offers a practical and bi-partisan way to help the people who are displaced or who have fled Syria and Iraq. Could readers of this blog consider approaching Members of Parliament, community and faith groups to offer support and encouragement. Frank Brennan has suggested 7,000 places. Could we make it 10,000?

    Let’s do it.   John Menadue

  • John Menadue. Why are we so cruel? The problem starts at the top.

    The news out of Manus and particularly Nauru shows how callous we have become. It is not that we are always as cold-hearted as this. The response to the attacks on Adam Goodes and the murder of an AFL football coach shows our generous and humane side…our better angels.

    But we don’t seem to care about the cruelty being inflicted on children and women in Nauru. The Nauru government is corrupt. There is no rule of law worth the name. Magistrates are sacked by the government. In effect, we bribe the Nauru government to do our dirty work. Women and children in Nauru are crying and we turn away.

    There is poison in our public life but we don’t seem to care.

    I suggest there are three main reasons why we have become so callous.

    The first is the abdication of political and moral leadership. Asylum seekers have been demonized for years. It goes back to John Howard and his exploitation of fear of the outsider. He told us that asylum seekers were so inhuman that they would even throw their children overboard. For years Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison described asylum seekers as illegals and by inference, criminals. Scott Morrison told us that asylum seekers brought disease and wads of cash. He said that we should have a ‘behavioral protocol’ for asylum seekers living in the community. Senator Abetz told us that asylum seekers in the community should be publicly listed like pedophiles.

    If asylum seekers are as inhuman as Ministers have repeatedly told us, why should those with administrative responsibility take particular care?

    Leaders set the tone on how people behave in any organization. Put more bluntly is the old adage that the fish rots from the head down. People dealing with asylum seekers can read the signs from the top. These signs tell them that we don’t need to take particular care of asylum seekers and refugees. Surely the staff in the field for Transfield must be reading these signs. The signs tell them that if you rough up asylum seekers they probably deserve it.

    Every organization has a spectrum of people who are concerned about discipline and police-like roles. These organizations also have people that are generous and humanitarian in their outlook. When I was the Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs I was aware of the tension in the department between enforcement and control people on the one hand, and humanitarian and generous people on the other. I was fortunate that I had as Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser and Immigration Minister Ian Macphee who made it clear where the balance should be. The staff in the department could read the intent of the Prime Minister and the Minister. That strongly influenced the culture of the department.

    I think I was able to shift the culture of the department at least temporarily because we knew what the Prime Minister and the Minister wanted. People in the department today would get a very different reading. It would explain, at least in part the fiasco in Melbourne last Friday.

    The second reason for our callous disregard of asylum seekers and refugees is that there is no effective supervision. Journalists are largely excluded from Manus and Nauru. The President of the Human Rights Commission was vilified for defending the rights of children in detention. There is no UNHCR to assess and report on what is occurring in our name in Nauru and Manus.

    The third problem is contracting out. The government seems to have contracted out both refugee policy and operations. In some respects contracting out makes sense but contractors, with pursuit of profit, have a different ethic to public servants who are directly responsible to the government for the public good. In these circumstances it is essential that departments retain the ability to effectively supervise contractors. But over the years competence in our public service has been stripped away in the name of getting rid of red tape and downsizing government. Our public service must maintain its competence and it cannot contract out its moral responsibility to private corporations. When working holiday makers are exploited as fruit pickers, it is not defensible for the employer to say that hiring of staff has been contracted out to a labor hire company.

    As the prime contractor how could Transfield not know what has been happening!

    If governments won’t listen, we should welcome action by superannuation funds like HESTA and UniSuper and others to withdraw support from companies such as Transfield. I welcome the growing disinvestment from companies who are acting unethically. It gained momentum with divestment in tobacco companies and then companies that did business with apartheid South Africa. It is growing rapidly in fossil fuels. The business elite and their supporting business commentators will tut tut but if governments won’t listen, it is important that civic groups take action when they believe that companies are acting unethically or improperly. Unethical investments, even if they are legal such as investments in tobacco companies are seldom good investments in the medium and long term.

    It is interesting that in 2015-16 the cost of the offshore management of less than 2,000 asylum seekers in Manus and Nauru is expected to be $811 million. Companies such as Transfield have been gorging themselves. Yet UNHCR in South East Asia has a budget of only $160 million to cover over 200,000 refugees, half a million internally displaced people and nearly 1.4 million stateless persons in the region. It says a great deal about our priorities and our morality.

    Our processing in Nauru and Manus is unsustainable. It is unethical. It is wasteful.

    We should not be surprised at what is unfolding in Manus and Nauru. There are prices to be paid when our leaders demonize and dehumanize human beings. Innocent and vulnerable people are paying a heavy price for failed moral leadership and the exploitation of fear in the community. Our problems start at the top and not just in one political party.

    Today is Migrant and Refugee Sunday. Pope Francis has chosen the theme ‘Church without Frontiers, Mother to All’ and asks us to build ‘a culture of acceptance and solidarity, in which no one is seen as useless, out of place or disposable…Suspicion and prejudice conflict with the biblical commandment of welcoming with respect and solidarity the stranger in need..’

  • Bob Kinnaird. China FTA truth still elusive

    Two months after releasing the China FTA text the Coalition government has still not told the Australian people the truth about the labour mobility provisions in ChAFTA.

    The result is confusion even among usually well-informed commentators. Greg Sheridan Foreign Affairs Editor for The Australian says ‘the clause in the FTA that says there is no need for labour market testing applies only to projects over $150 million’ (‘Shorten hits rock bottom with China FTA stance’, The Australian, 27 August 2015).

    The fact is that FTA clause applies to all Chinese nationals on all non-concessional 457 visas and 400 visas regardless of where they are employed, that is, on projects over $150 million and elsewhere.

    An AFR opinion piece from Angus Taylor Liberal member for Hume is the latest example from the government side (‘Campaign against China FTA defies reason’, Australian Financial Review, 26 August 2015). The AFR says that Mr Taylor was formerly a partner at McKinsey & Co and a director of Port Jackson Partners. So he should be a reliable witness on ChAFTA, but he is not.

    Mr Taylor’s column criticises the union campaign against the foreign worker provisions in the ChAFTA package and claims that: ‘At the heart of the campaign is a false assertion that the China free trade agreement frees up Chinese workers to work on Australian projects. Nothing could be further from the truth. Treaties don’t override domestic laws in this country. If we were to free up the regime for offshore workers, we would need to change legislation, but this won’t happen. The 457 visa regime will remain unchanged, because nothing in the agreement requires workplace legislation changes.’

    It is Mr Taylor’s assertions that are false.

    The China FTA, and the associated MOU on an ‘Investment Facilitation Arrangement’ (IFA), do ‘free up’ Chinese workers to work on Australian projects and in Australian employment more generally.

    The FTA itself commits Australia not to apply ‘labour market testing, economic needs testing or other procedures of similar effect’ to all Chinese nationals in the non-concessional 457 visa program, and the shorter-term 400 visa program for Chinese ‘installers and servicers’ of machinery and equipment. This obligation also carries over to any other temporary visa through which Australia chooses to implement its international obligations under ChAFTA.

    In 2013 the Migration Act 1958 was amended to require labour market testing (LMT) by sponsors seeking non-concessional 457 visas for workers in specified occupations: Skill level 3 (mainly trade-level), engineering and nursing occupations.

    The ChAFTA obligation means that from the date ChAFTA enters into force, Australia will not be able to apply LMT as legislated in the Migration Act to all Chinese nationals nominated for non-concessional 457 visas in trade-level occupations, engineering and nursing.

    It also means that once ChAFTA enters into force, the Australian Immigration Minister will no longer have the discretionary power to require legislated LMT for sponsors nominating Chinese nationals for non-concessional 457 visas in all other 457 occupations. Before ChAFTA, the Minister could simply issue a new legislative instrument requiring LMT for these currently exempt occupations. After ChAFTA, the Minister can no longer do so, in respect of Chinese nationals.

    All this very real change comes about because, contrary to Mr Taylor’s assertion, international trade treaties do ‘override’ domestic laws in this country, in this case the Migration Act 1958.

    Mr Taylor appears unaware that the Migration Act specifically provides that LMT cannot be applied in the non-concessional 457 visa program where it is ‘inconsistent with Australia’s international trade obligations’, as determined by the Immigration Minister (s.140GBA of the Migration Act 1958).

    Assistant Immigration Minister Michaelia Cash has so far made three such ‘Determinations’ by legislative instrument under s.140GBA, including in relation to the two North Asian FTAs concluded by the Coalition government, the Korea-Australia FTA (KAFTA) and the Japan FTA.

    Mr Taylor should also know that these Ministerial determinations resulted in declarations that LMT would no longer be applied in the non-concessional 457 visa program to all Korean nationals and all Japanese nationals from the date these FTAS came into force; and that the relevant ChAFTA definitions of ‘natural persons’ of China covered by this obligation are the same as those in the Korea and Japan FTAs.

    It is true that no ‘legislation’ is required to implement this particular ChAFTA obligation (only a regulatory change). But this is only because Australian migration legislation already provides that international trade obligations take precedence over our domestic migration legislation on ‘labour market testing’ in the non-concessional 457 visa program.

    The MOU on an ‘Investment Facilitation Arrangement’ (IFA) also ‘frees up’ Chinese workers to work on Australian projects. This MOU is not part of the formal ChAFTA treaty but is listed on the DFAT website of ChAFTA Official Documents under the heading ‘Related documents’.

    This MOU gives employers on Chinese-funded projects of $150 million or more (including Chinese State-owned-enterprises) access to Chinese concessional 457 visa workers under so-called umbrella ‘project agreements’ and ‘labour agreements’ for direct employers on these projects. These are over and above the non-concessional Chinese 457 visa and 400 visa workers granted LMT-exempt entry under the FTA itself, described above.

    ‘Concessional’ 457 visa workers mean Chinese and other foreign workers in semi-skilled occupations, and those nominally in skilled occupations but who do not meet the standard minimum requirements for a 457 visa, such as minimum English language skills.

    Mr Taylor’s piece does not mention the MOU and it is not clear if Mr Taylor understands that the MOU on IFA is not part of the formal ChAFTA treaty.

    But in any case, the salient point is that like the momentous change expanding Chinese worker access to 457 and temporary work visas via the FTA itself, implementing the MOU on IFA for Chinese concessional 457 visa workers does not require legislative change under current arrangements. This is because such arrangements are currently governed not by legislation but simply Ministerial ‘policy’.

    That says more about how inadequate the current arrangements for regulation of concessional temporary work visas are, not that the changes involved in this MOU are trivial.

    The question to ask is if these ChAFTA labour mobility concessions by Australia are really so trivial, why are they are so important as to be a potential deal-breaker for both China and Australia? The answer is that for both China and Australia, these labour mobility concessions are far from trivial. They are significant and substantial.

    Bob Kinnaird is Research Associate with The Australian Population Research Institute and was National Research Director CFMEU National Office 2009-14.

     

     

     

  • Sydney’s Holroyd High School and asylum seeker children.

    Refugees and their children face many difficulties in settling in Australia. But the evidence shows that after this settling in period, refugees and their children outperform Australian-born people in many areas. We see the results for refugee children in university-entrance exams and in university performance.

    One remarkable example is the experience of refugee and asylum seeker children at Sydney’s Holroyd High School. The principal of Holroyd High School, Dorothy Hoddinott, was interviewed recently by Eleanor Hall on the ABC’s The World Today.  Read about the remarkable story of Holroyd High School and its students in the link below.

    http://www.abc.net.au/worldtoday/content/2015/s4298964.htm

  • Stephen Harper. The closing of the Canadian mind.

    Canadian Prime Minister, Stephen Harper, has no greater foreign admirer than Tony Abbott who gushed about him when he visited Ottawa a year ago.

    Like Tony Abbott, Stephen Harper has attacked science and the media. He has weakened citizenship laws and supports polluters. It sounds very familiar. For an article in the International New York Times by Stephen Marche, see link below. John Menadue.

    http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/16/opinion/sunday/the-closing-of-the-canadian-mind.html?smid=nytcore-ipad-share&smprod=nytcore-ipad

  • John Menadue. Saving lives at sea!

    To justify its harsh refugee policies, the government has been telling us that their policies are designed to save lives at sea. What hypocrisy!

    And only last week we saw at the ALP Federal Conference, former Labor ministers justifying their ‘turn-back’ policies as a means to reduce drownings at sea.

    Please spare us this charade.

    The objective of our inhuman refugee policies is overwhelmingly political, to be seen to be tough on boat arrivals and win electoral support as a result. The object of the present government has been to deride the Labor party for its alleged softness on refugees and to parade its own toughness on boat arrivals, and particularly towards Muslims. It has been overwhelmingly playing to our fears of the foreigner. It is not about stopping drownings at sea.

    John Howard led the breakdown of bipartisan policy on refugees and deliberately sought to divide the country by the promotion of fear. Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison followed even more unscrupulously. This promotion of fear of the outsider and the person who is different has been exploited to the full and it has paid off politically, to our great shame.

    Boat people were no longer people in great need and distress. For political purposes they have been demonised. They were ‘illegal’ and akin to criminals. Scott Morrison told us that they brought diseases and wads of cash. We were told that they were so inhuman that they would even be prepared to throw their children overboard.

    To justify these disgraceful policies we are now told continually that their purpose was to stop the drownings at sea.

    If the objective was to stop the drownings, we would have been sending ships to rescue distressed people at sea. That is what the Italian navy has been doing. But we send out our ships to stop arrivals, return asylum seekers to Indonesia or detain them off shore almost indefinitely. It is not designed to save lives at sea.

    During the Indochina outflow in the late 1970s and early 1980s there were tens of thousands of refugees drowned at sea. We will never know the number. Thousands were thrown overboard, raped or robbed by pirates on the high seas. But we did not turn away from the plight of desperate people by suggesting that if we helped it would only encourage more risky voyages and more drownings.

    If we were seriously committed to a genuine policy of stopping drownings at sea, one would expect Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison to be nominated for humanitarian awards – perhaps a Nobel Prize each. But when they are honest with themselves they will know that this argument about their policies being designed to stop drownings at sea is disgraceful and dishonest nonsense.

    And by what moral authority have we a right to say that we should stop desperate people taking risks for freedom. If a family is fleeing the Taliban or that death cult IS or fleeing persecution and facing death in Iraq or Syria have we a right to say that they should not risk their lives in flight either by land or sea. Surely it is for them to make the calculation that the risks in flight are less than the risks of staying in their homeland and facing persecution or worse. How can we honestly say that it is up to us to make the moral decision about whether other people should take risks for their own survival?

    The whole campaign against boat arrivals is to politically exploit our fear. It is not to stop drownings at sea.

    Let’s be honest with ourselves.

  • John Menadue. Don’t tamper with citizenship.

    The Australian Government has presented new legislation that would enable the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection to revoke Australian citizenship for dual nationals who might have been involved in terrorism activities. There would be no judicial review.

    As a result of an apparent disagreement in Cabinet, the government has deferred a decision on how to deal with sole Australian nationals who might be linked to terrorism.

    This is a massive overreaction for largely party-political purposes – promoting fear of terrorism and feeding anti-Muslim sentiment in the community. Determined not to be wedged on the issue the ALP is yet again in ‘me too’ mode.

    There are good reasons why we should not tamper with citizenship. Citizenship is a critical and unifying national symbol and should not be used to address alleged short-term problems. Acts committed by Australians should be punished under criminal law and if the law is not effective for the job it should be strengthened.

    Some four million Australians are dual citizens. They are a national asset. We are a country built on migration and citizenship is the culmination of that migration process. Citizenship is a key part of nation building and should never be discounted or discouraged. It should basically only be revoked on the basis of false claims in the application for citizenship. We should not be diverted from the centrality of citizenship.

    A key principle of all citizenship is that people of many different backgrounds can become good and loyal Australian citizens. In the present situation that means that Muslims, like others, can become good Australian citizens. It is belief in that principle that holds this country together. If we debase that principle we should not be surprised that many people, particularly young people with origins in the Middle East might decide that they have no future in this country.

    Australians citizens commit many crimes – murder, drug trafficking and child abuse. Should we revoke their citizenship? Why only IS supporters? Each year our police forces are called to intervene in over 200,000 cases of domestic violence. Surely that is a much greater problem than IS. All offences including supporting IS must be addressed with rigour but we must ensure that citizenship is open to all people who have met our criteria.

    Some ministers have sought to strengthen their case for denial of citizenship to dual-citizen holders by pointing out the citizenship revocation legislation in the UK. But the UK is not a country built on migration. We are.

    The government estimates that revocation of the status of Australian citizens who have dual citizenship would affect less than half of those allegedly assisting IS. The numbers would be small but the consequence would be that the legislation would probably prevent these people returning from overseas. This would leave a few of our jihadists overseas to continue their damage. How perverse this would be. It would be much better if they return to Australia and we prosecute them under our laws.

    The government legislation proposes that the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection should have the power to revoke citizenship based primarily I would expect on information from ASIO or other security services. There would be no judicial review. The rule of law would be trashed. What a worry it would be relying on ASIO and Minister Dutton!

    In addition to strengthening our criminal law there are other ways that we can protect ourselves against terrorism or discourage possible recruits. We can withdraw passports to prohibit travel. We can also suspend legal entitlements such as Medicare and social security payments which attach to permanent residence, and not to citizenship.

    As Malcolm Turnbull has said, citizenship revocation should not be a ‘bravado’ issue and used to weaken our rule of law. Government bravado and promotion of fear is making us less safe. It is undermining citizenship.

     

  • Arja Keski-Nummi. “Half a Step Forward” – ALP Policy on Refugees and Asylum

     

    There is more to the ALP policy on refugees and asylum than what we heard from the media, focused as it is on factional battles and the language of “back- flips” on contestable pieces of public policy such as boat turn backs.

    As always in such a highly charged area of public policy the “devil is in the detail”. Labor however gets it about right in focusing on the priority for international engagement and the development of regional and bilateral responses to population displacement. But this policy also hardens the shift in asylum and refugee policy begun when Labor was last in office by maintaining the Offshore Processing Centres (OPCs) , regional resettlement and adopting a policy of boat turn backs.

    It will be several weeks before we see the final endorsed platform but putting together the draft platform and the amendments voted during the conference Labor appears to have crafted a policy strong on border protection but mixed on responses regarding asylum seekers.

    For instance, detention will be as a last resort, community processing will be the norm, the refugee status determination will be improved, the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) reestablished and there will be better oversight of the offshore processing centres. These are all welcome policy aspirations. The track record with implementation has not been as good so if Labor wants to avoid another policy mess it would be smart to start working on such implementation plans now.

    On the most controversial pieces of policy, the maintenance of the Offshore Processing Centres, regional resettlement and boat turnbacks Labor has lost an opportunity to articulate why these are important planks of their platform – beyond the deaths at sea argument and having an independent oversight of OPCs.

    For this reason parts of the platform read more like a tactical and political response than a comprehensive policy on asylum and refugees. This policy is tactical because it gives a little to those people opposed to OPCs and boat turnbacks – an increase in the program, removal of Temporary Protection Visas, reinstatement of the RRT , insertion of critical Convention obligations into domestic law and more funding to UNHCR – in exchange for a reluctant acceptance of the offshore processing arrangements and boat turn backs.

    The fact is that turning back boats is an ethically contentious policy. While the argument of deaths at sea is compelling – the reality is any on water operation, including transfers to lifeboats or navy vessels is risky. Moreover such a policy is not a sustainable long-term approach – cost wise or through the deployment of additional vessels. It is a last resort policy, reflecting the failure of our regional engagement strategies.

    Australia’s approach in the region has been selfish – it is all about our domestic problems and us – we do not hear what the regional issues are or how we could help. The most recent example of this is Australia’s refusal to assist in search and rescue of boats carrying displaced Rohingya from Burma in the Andaman Sea, when even the USA deployed flights to search for vessels.

    What Labor needs to now do is strengthen its policies on regional and international engagement. It needs to set in context these controversial pieces of policy. It needs to say they are there only for so long as we get the regional architecture right and we have an agreed regional approach to displacement and asylum – where burden sharing is genuine and people are treated with dignity and humanity.

    For instance, a regional response needs to be more than increased funding to UNHCR or a statement that they will work on a regional cooperation framework. It should clearly articulate the regional partnerships and bilateral arrangements that are needed to support displaced people.

    It could for example articulate a regional response strategy that highlights:

    • Partnerships with regional governments and international agencies and NGOs to put in place alternative protection arrangements which could include – access to a fair and transparent assessment of claims, security of stay  and access to education and work as well as health services and shelter.
    • Development of agreements that allow for transfer of asylum seekers to regional processing centres,
    • The place of readmission agreements in certain circumstances,
    • Explore alternative migration pathways such as orderly departure arrangements  that ease the pressures on regional asylum systems
    • Work with regional governments and international agencies in the development of a complementary regional protection system that would support early resolution of peoples claims and a system of burden sharing in finding durable solutions for refugees as well as other displaced people.
    • Develop a new displaced person program (axed in this years budget by the government) that would support the ability of displaced people to stay in a country of displacement in safety and security. Such arrangements are more than increased funding to UNHCR but building partnerships across government and non government sectors that mean people do not need to use people smugglers because they are in a place of safety.
    • Respond to the regions concerns about trafficking .

    It is in this context then that an increased humanitarian resettlement program makes sense, as well as the maintenance of hard-nosed policies such as turn backs and the OPCs.

    But if such cooperation is to be sustainable it needs to be a long-term project not easily achieved in electoral cycle and in reality should be bipartisan in approach. If Labor is serious about regional engagement then it needs to be working now on its implementation strategies.

    As with any policy response to a complex issue and one involving desperate and vulnerable people displaced from their homes and countries this is a curate’s egg of a policy. There are good elements to the policy and some that will challenge our sense of fairness and well-being. Labor has a chance to articulate that this is a humane response by moving away from the language of military operations, singularly inappropriate for dealing with asylum issues, and acknowledging that as a package it does make us confront very difficult policy choices concerning our fellow human beings.

    Arja Keski-Nummi is a former First Assistant Secretary in the Refugee Division of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. She is a fellow of the Centre for Policy Development.

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • John Menadue. A graph on boat arrivals for lazy journalists.

    I have reposted below an article I wrote on 8 December last year pointing out that Tony Abbott did not stop the boats. But the debate proceeds, assisted by journalists who still claim that Tony Abbott stopped the boats. He didn’t. 

    So that my argument can be better understood, see the graph below which reveals quite clearly that there was a dramatic fall in boat arrivals from July 2013 when Kevin Rudd announced the policy that future boat arrivals would not be settled in Australia. We may argue about the wisdom of this policy, but it effectively stopped the boats. There is a current debate about turn-backs of boats, but they were only a marginal influence in stopping the flow of boat arrivals.

    Boat People Arrivals

    Not only did Tony Abbott not stop the boats, but he, together with the Greens was responsible for the dramatic increase in boat arrival numbers after the rejection of the Malaysian arrangement in August 2011. At that time, irregular maritime arrivals were running at less than 300 per month. That increased to over 4,000 in July 2013 when the Rudd Government acted. For further background see repost below,

    Repost from 8 December 2014.

    The data just does not support the never-ending claims by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison that they stopped the boats. The under-resourced and uncritical media accepts the Coalition’s line.

    I will come to the recent data, but first the evidence is clear that action by the Coalition along with the Greens in the Senate to prevent amendments to the Migration Act greatly assisted people-smugglers and boat arrivals from 2011 onwards.

    The rejection of the arrangement with Malaysia by the High Court started the rot. The High Court decision may have been sound in law, but it had powerful consequences for boat arrivals. The arrangement with Malaysia needed improvement but it did provide guarantees that Malaysia had never provided before. The UNHCR was prepared to actively cooperate. When the High Court rejected the Malaysian arrangement in August 2011, irregular maritime arrivals were running at less than 300 per month. That number increased to 1200 by May 2012, and kept on rising.

    The Labor  Government  attempted to amend the Migration Act to address the problems identified by the High Court but the Coalition together with the Greens blocked the amending legislation. They bashed Malaysia at every opportunity. The failure of the Malaysian arrangement sent a very clear message to people smugglers that boat arrivals would succeed. Boat arrivals were running at over 4,000 per month in July 2013.

    The action by Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison in association with the Greens triggered this dramatic increase in boat arrivals. Both Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison made it abundantly clear that they did not want to stop the boats with an arrangement such as that with Malaysia. They wanted to stop Labor stopping the boats. Their political intentions were revealed by WikiLeaks that reported that ‘a key Liberal Party strategist told the US embassy in 2009 that the more boats that come the better’. (SMH 10 December 2010). Scott Morrison became Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship in December 2009.

    Action by the Coalition in the Senate triggered a large increase in boat arrivals in 2012 and into 2013.

    But did Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison really stop the boats when they came to power?

    The data shows that the downward trend in boat arrivals occurred from July 2013, two months before the Coalition came to power. See data below.

    2013 Boat people arrivals(excluding crew) Boats
    January 2013 471 10
    February 925 16
    March 2455 37
    April 3396 47
    May 3315 47
    June 2715 41
    July 4145 47
    Aug 1591 25
    September 837 15
    October 339 5
    November 207 5
    December 355 7

    Source: Department of Immigration and Border Protection, and Australian Parliamentary Library.

    What largely stopped the boats, although not completely, was the announcement by Kevin Rudd on the 19th July 2013 that in future any persons coming by boat and found to be a  refugee would not be settled in Australia. We may argue about the wisdom of that policy, but it effectively crippled the business case of the people-smugglers.

    In the data above, there are undoubtedly some leads and lags and seasonal factors, but the data shows that the Rudd announcement of 19 July 2013 dramatically cut the number of boats and people arriving by boat. The major turnaround occurred between July and August, before the Coalition came to power.

    As the Abbott Government was not sworn in until 18 September 2013, its policy on boats would also have had only marginal effect on September arrivals.

    So between July and September, people arriving by boat fell from 4,145 to 837 and the number of boats fell from 47 to 15. The trend largely continued after that time.

    Peter Hughes a former deputy secretary in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship put it this way in an article in the Canberra Times in late 2013. ‘The arrival of 546 asylum seekers in October and November 2013 represents only 14% of the number of arrivals for the corresponding months in 2012. This is a dramatic reduction … The announcement of long-term resettlement of refugees in Papua New Guinea and Nauru by the previous government has likely been decisive in changing the decision to travel to Australia on the part of those asylum seekers who have not yet handed over their money to a smuggler. ‘

    The game-changer was Kevin Rudd’s announcement of 19 July 2013 on no resettlement in Australia for boat arrivals. It is also likely that tighter visa procedures on Indonesia’s part would have helped reduce the number of boat arrivals.  In effect the Rudd Government slammed the door although the boat turn a rounds pushed the final bolt home. In other words, if there was any doubt in the minds of people smugglers and asylum seekers trying to come by boat those doubts were removed.

    The Abbott Government capitalised on a trend which the Rudd Government clearly started in July 2013.

    Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison have wrung every political advantage they could from boat arrivals. But the evidence is clear that they helped accelerate the numbers before they came to power and it was the action of the Rudd Government, before they came to power in September 2013 that put boat arrivals on a downward track

    Operation Sovereign Borders has really been quite marginal and would not have been ‘successful’ without the July 2013 decision. Navy and Customs were able to turn a few boats around. This would have been impossible if boats had continued to arrive at 47 a month as they were in July 2013. OSB has been very high profile and very expensive – and offensive to Indonesia. But OSB has not been the main game.

    The game-changer was Kevin Rudd’s announcement in July 2013.

  • Bob Kinnaird. More government dishonesty on China FTA

    Now that Federal Labor Leader Bill Shorten has publicly stated his opposition to the China FTA labour mobility provisions, the Coalition is ramping up its attack on union and political critics of the deal.

    Trade Minister Robb lead the charge this week, with allegations of union ‘falsehoods’ and a ‘racist scare campaign’ over the China FTA that do not stack up (‘Don’t give credence to union scare campaign’, AFR, Letters, 21 July 2015).

    The main alleged union ‘falsehood’ is ‘that Chinese companies will be allowed to bring in their own workforces at the expense of Australian jobs’.

    The fact is that Chinese companies will be able to do exactly this under the FTA package that Mr Robb negotiated. Under the terms of the China FTA, any China-based enterprise with ‘a contract for the supply of a service within Australia and which does not have a commercial presence within Australia’ can bring in an unlimited number of its own Chinese employees as skilled workers on non-concessional 457 visas, without ‘labour market testing or any economic needs test’ (ChAFTA, Chapter 10, Annexe 10-A, Clause 10(a)).

    This includes Chinese companies with contracts on ‘significant infrastructure projects’ of $150 million or more under the Investment Facilitation Arrangement (IFAs) in the China FTA package.

    This means a China-based enterprise contracted to perform say all the engineering and design work on a project in Australia, or all the welding work, can bring in unlimited numbers of Chinese engineers or welders to Australia on non-concessional 457 visas, with no obligation to even look for skilled Australian engineers or welders, let alone prove that none are available.

    Chinese companies with these contracts can access unlimited numbers of 457 visas for their Chinese employees in all ‘skilled’ occupations – meaning all 651 occupations currently on the non-concessional 457-eligible list (known as the Consolidated Sponsored Occupation List or CSOL), and any added to the list over time. ‘Non-concessional’ means the Chinese workers must meet all the standard minimum requirements for a 457 visa, including minimum English language skills (which the Coalition has reduced), qualifications and salary.

    The FTA also grants the exact same 457 visa privileges to China-based companies transferring their staff to Australia as ‘intra-corporate transferees’ moving ‘to fill a position in the branch, subsidiary or affiliate of the enterprise in Australia’. These include Chinese and other foreign nationals ‘with advanced trade, technical or professional skills’, who can be moved to Australia in unlimited numbers with no 457 LMT, for any reason including to perform work associated with ‘significant infrastructure projects’.

    Mr Robb’s China FTA also permits unlimited numbers of Chinese workers as ‘installers and servicers’ of machinery and equipment where installation or servicing by the supplying Chinese company ‘is a condition of purchase of the machinery or equipment’. These Chinese workers enter on shorter-term 400 visas also with no labour market testing, like the non-concessional Chinese 457 visa workers mentioned above. Chinese project investors in Australia will preference suppliers of cheaper Chinese machinery and equipment, so we should expect many Chinese 400 visa workers under the FTA.

    Coalition Ministers say nothing about these outrageous FTA concessions but instead deflect attention solely to the Memorandum of Understanding on Investment Facilitation Arrangement (IFAs), alongside the formal China FTA treaty.

    Chinese companies can also bring in their own workforces of concessional 457 visa workers under these IFAs. ‘Concessional’ 457 visas mean Chinese and other foreign workers in semi-skilled occupations, and those in skilled occupations who do not meet the standard minimum requirements for a 457 visa, such as minimum English language skills. The government tries to conceal the fact these are concessional arrangements for lower-skill workers, with Ministers like Mr Robb saying IFAs are for ‘skilled’ overseas workers.

    The arrangements for concessional 457 visa workers under IFAs are different to those for the non-concessional 457 workers covered by the FTA itself. The government has surrounded these IFAs with the fog of obfuscation since they were first announced back in November 2014 and has done little in nine months to clear that fog and persuade Australians that these are in the national interest.

    Unlike the non-concessional 457 visas for Chinese workers, there will be negotiated limits on the numbers of concessional 457 visa workers on IFA projects. The number of concessional 457 visa workers and ‘guaranteed occupations’ on an IFA project will be set in an umbrella IFA project agreement, from which individual direct employers on the project will then draw down under concessional 457 ‘labour agreements’. The MOU expressly rules out any requirement for labour market testing for a project company ‘to enter into an IFA’, which will be valid for at least 4 years.

    It now seems that the total number of concessional 457 visas approved for an IFA project will be determined based on consultants reports and similar speculative data as to projected future ‘shortages’ of Australian workers in up to 4 years time, provided to the Immigration Department (DIBP) by the project owner. On this basis, the IFA project owner will get approval for say 1,000 concessional 457 visa workers over the life of the project. IFA project employers can then ‘bid’ for a share of the 1,000 concessional 457 workers.

    To access these 457 workers, there is no legal obligation for these IFA project employers to undertake 457 labour market testing (LMT) as legislated in the Migration Act 1958. The legislated LMT obligation does not apply to sponsors of concessional 457 visa workers under labour agreements, only to sponsors of non-concessional 457 visa workers. Labor must surely regret this oversight in its 2013 legislative amendments on 457 LMT which the Coalition will not remedy. Its policy is the abolition of legislated 457 LMT entirely.

    The MOU says that direct employers on IFA projects may be required to undertake some form of labour market testing (LMT) before accessing concessional 457 visa workers. The MOU also states that ‘where labour market testing is required, employers may satisfy this requirement by demonstrating that they have first tested the Australian labour market and not found sufficient suitable workers. DIBP will make publicly available information on how any labour market testing requirements could be met’ (MOU on IFA, clause 8 and footnote 6 – emphasis added).

    On 22 July, Assistant Immigration Minister Cash said DIBP Project Agreement guidelines for companies seeking to recruit overseas workers will give effect to IFAs. These guidelines, dated May 2015 but strangely not mentioned in DFAT’s ‘Myth-busting’ Fact Sheet on the FTA issued in mid-July, state that employers: “must provide a comprehensive written statement of the labour market need for the requested occupation(s), demonstrating ongoing shortages …. as well as evidence that you have made significant efforts to recruit workers from the Australian labour market within the previous six months.” Furthermore: “The department will only enter into a project labour agreement where it has been satisfied that Australians have been provided first opportunity for jobs.”

    This is a much lower standard than the legislated 457 LMT obligation where sponsors must prove to DIBP that no suitably qualified Australian is available to do the job, at the time of each 457 visa nomination, where the LMT condition applies. Like most obligations and provisions in concessional 457 labour agreements, it also is embedded only in Departmental ‘guidelines’ and policy, not legislation or regulations.

    The Minister’s attempt to assure that these ‘guidelines’ offer adequate protection for Australian workers also conveniently ignores the fact that these applications for concessional 457 visa workers by individual IFA project employers will be made in a context where the project owner has already secured approval for large numbers of these workers, in the umbrella IFA agreement.

    This places undue and unfair pressure on DIBP officers to approve 457 visa applications from individual IFA employers, especially operating in a high-profile visa program area with no legislative framework and far too much room for Ministerial and political intervention.

    The Coalition government will not admit that these IFA arrangements are unprecedented. Australia has never before in an FTA package deal permitted concessional 457 visas for even skilled workers, let alone for semi-skilled workers (like concreters, scaffolders, truck drivers, even office workers). It is also unprecedented for any Australian government to allow foreign companies access to concessional 457 visa workers under labour agreements. Until the China FTA package, only Australian businesses could access these concessional 457 visa workers because these arrangements are too high risk for abuse and exploitation.

    Time for government honesty about the China FTA labour mobility package.

    Bob Kinnaird is Research Associate with The Australian Population Research Institute and was National Research Director CFMEU National Office 2009-14.

     

     

     

  • John Menadue. Refugees- from toxic politics to a humanitarian policy.

    The ALP Federal conference which will be meeting in a week’s time, will be considering refugee policy along with other major issues.

    I have re-posted below a post from 22 June on refugees .  

    Media reports suggest that boat ‘turnbacks’ will be a contentious issue at the conference. There are several issues that I think should be kept in mind on this issue.

    The first is that the dramatic drop in boat arrivals has not been due to turnbacks, but the decision by the Rudd Government announced on 13 July 2013, that any people arriving by boat in future would never be settled in Australia. That was the game-changer. Tony Abbott’s actions were quite marginal, including some turnbacks. These turnbacks had a great deal of publicity but they were not significant in curbing the flow of boats. 

    Second, turnbacks should only be considered as part of a regional agreement that importantly involves Indonesia, Malaysia and the UNHCR. Unilateral turnbacks should be rejected. 

    Third, the issue of turnbacks reminds us again how important it is to build trust and arrangements with regional countries. This will require considerable diplomatic effort and resources. It will take time. Unfortunately, as I mentioned in the post below, we treat regional countries as fair-weather friends and go to them when we have a problem, but turn our backs when they have a problem.  John Menadue

    Refugees – from toxic politics to a humanitarian policy (repost from 22 June 2015.

    The old Irish story tells of the guide who spoke to a lost Irishman. If you want to get to Dublin I wouldn’t start from here.

    The same is true of refugee politics today. We are in a dreadful position at the moment but we need to be pragmatic and determined to get to a humane and generous policy.

    Before looking at practical ways to an improved future for refugees, there are several things that we need to keep in mind.

    First, the Australian public in my view will not support a generous refugee policy if arrivals are seen to be irregular and not under the control of the Australian government, particularly if the arrivals are being determined by people-smugglers.

    Second, the generous acceptance of Indochinese refugees in Australia thirty years ago would not have been possible if we had had the arrivals of boat people that we had in Australia in 2013. At one stage, boat arrivals that year were running at the rate of close to 50,000 p.a. At the height of the outflow of over a million people from Indochina in the late 1970s and 1980s, the largest number of people arriving in Australia by boat was 1423 in 1977-78. From my experience as Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs from 1980, I was very conscious that a large numbers of boat arrivals would have prejudiced the Indochina program. We put a great deal of effort into minimizing and downplaying boat arrivals.

    Third, the success of the Indochina program depended on two related features. The first was that countries of the region would hold asylum seekers for a period for processing on the understanding that, secondly, countries like Australia, the US, Canada and France would resettle large numbers of those refugees. It was called burden-sharing.

    Fourth, the collapse of the arrangement with Malaysia triggered the dramatic increase in boat arrivals in 2012 and 2013. People-smugglers realised that there was no effective Australian counter to their activities. The collapse of that arrangement with Malaysia was the result of the collaboration and joint action in the Senate by the Coalition, the Greens and supported by major refugee advocate organisations in Australia.

    Fifth, Tony Abbott did not stop the boats. As I set out in my blog of 8 December 2014 the decisive factor in stopping the boats was the decision by the Rudd Government on 13 July 2013 that no future boat arrivals would ever be settled in Australia. People arriving by boat fell from 4,145 in July 2013 to 1,591, 837, 339, 207 and 355 in subsequent months. The number had dramatically fallen by the time the Abbott government came to power. The new government attracted a lot of attention with turn-backs to Indonesia but these were really only minor operations with boat arrivals dramatically reduced by then. The decision of the Rudd Government on 13 July 2013 was the game-changer, not the Coalition rhetoric about ‘stopping the boats’. The media seems remarkably willing to accept Tony Abbott’s one-liner on the subject and refuses to examine the facts. The result of all this was Manus and Nauru. What a price we are now paying for the collapse of the arrangement with Malaysia with which the UNHCR was prepared to cooperate and which would have been an important building block in regional cooperation.

    Against that background, how should we now proceed? For further background see article by Peter Hughes,Arja Keski- Nummi and myself.

    The key to an acceptable future refugee arrangement is joint responsibility and burden-sharing with our regional neighbours. Countries of the region have severe problems with irregular people flows as we have seen recently in arrivals from Myanmar and Bangladesh. As co-chair with Indonesia on the Bali process, our foreign minister should have shown good faith by seeking to convene a meeting with affected regional countries to tackle people-smuggling and trafficking. But too often we are fair-weather friends with our neighbours, and show interest only when we have a problem. We say ‘nope, nope, nope’ when they have a problem We need to give high priority to building effective cooperation on refugees in the region, together with UNHCR.   It is in that context that turn-backs should be addressed and not through unilateral action.

    Regional cooperation is the only long-term arrangement that makes sense. But it will take a lot of time and trust. We are not really trying at the moment. We must accept that Manus and Nauru are not sustainable in the future.

    We should negotiate Orderly Departure Arrangements where possible to address problems at source. I would expect that Myanmar would be interested in Australia taking some Rohingya . Sri Lanka would also be likely to be cooperative in our taking of Tamils. In both cases the arrangements would be part of an orderly program.

    We should focus part of our aid and trade programs on regional countries that have persecuted or alienated minorities.

    We should increase our refugee increase to 20,000 plus. At the peak of the Indochina program we were taking about 35,000 refugees p.a., adjusted for our population increase since then.

    We should consider new migration pathways, e.g. 4-5-7 Visas, for vulnerable persons. There were over 800,000 temporary entrants, excluding tourists, in Australia at 30 September 2014.

    We should think again about blanket opposition to offshore processing. The important issue is not where the processing occurs, but is it fair and effective, and is it done in cooperation with UNHCR. Some years ago I was opposed to offshore processing, but I changed my mind in light of the dramatic increase in asylum numbers in 2012 and 2013 after the collapse of the Malaysian arrangement. A consequence of the collapse of that arrangement is that we are now faced with Manus and Nauru.

    We should formally end mandatory detention. It was introduced by the Keating government. It is very expensive, cruel and does not deter asylum seekers. With the near-end of boat arrivals, the numbers who are in Immigration detention has declined dramatically. We should formally end mandatory detention except for detention necessary for safety, security and health checks.

    We should set a time limit for the final processing of the 30,000 asylum seekers who arrived by boat and whose status has not yet been determined.

    The unfortunate souls on Manus and Nauru must be treated with dignity and respect and either repatriated if found not to be refugees or resettled as soon as possible in third countries with the cooperation of UNHCR.

    The key to resolving the political problem surrounding refugees is to insist that vulnerable people that we accept in future must be part of an orderly program. I see that as the best way to gain the support of the Australian community and develop refugee programs that we can again be proud of.

  • John Tulloh. Why Eritreans are crossing the Mediterranean.

    Current Affairs.

    ERITREA: THE NORTH KOREA OF AFRICA 

    It is the seventh youngest nation in the world. It was born in 1993 after a 30-year war. Its flag was raised for the first time as an independent nation with high hopes for democracy in a continent dominated by too many despots. In its first years it set an example of frugality when its people were encouraged to ride bikes and, what vehicles there were, had to be modest small ones. Its original leader is still in charge 22 years later. Time for an election? ‘Never’, he said. Instead he has created a harsh dictatorship with thousands of desperate citizens deciding life must be better elsewhere. Hundreds have died in the process. Their country has been likened to North Korea.

    Such is life in Eritrea, the sun-baked former Italian colony on the African shore in the south of the Red Sea. Its people today cause nervousness in the capitals of Europe. They make up a considerable proportion of asylum-seekers risking their existence among the huddled masses crossing the Mediterranean to make a future in Europe.

    Recently, the UN took a look at how the fledgling nation was doing. Its report was damning. The initial sense of democracy, it said, ‘has been extinguished by the government under the pretext of national defence’. The UN investigators said the regime of President Isaias Afewerki was guilty of extra-judicial killings, widespread torture, sexual slavery, Orwellian mass surveillance and enforced labour. In short, it may have committed crimes against humanity.

    Eritrea has a system known as ‘national service’. The report says this really involves ‘arbitary detention, torture, sexual torture, forced labour and absence of leave’. Compulsory military service can be open-ended, continuing for years. Avoidance can lead to execution. Women recruits are rounded up to satisfy the lust of their commanders. Eritrea is a country ruled not by law, but by fear, said one of the UN investigators.

    No wonder five percent of Eritreans have fled, according to the UN. Even that can be dangerous. Abandoning the country is regarded as treachery and until last year soldiers at border crossings routinely shot anyone trying to escape. It is a similar story for North Koreans who’ve had enough of their country.

    It is a sad tale when the birth of Eritrea was greeted with such lofty expectations. A reporter for the Washington Post was moved to write:

         On a continent of millionaire dictators, where broken promises of democracy dovetail with collapsing living standards and unpayable debts, Eritrea’s revolutionaries hold out the possibility of an efficient, self-reliant African nation, run by Africans who have had 26 years to learn from the failures of independent Africa. 

         The trouble is that they didn’t learn or didn’t want to know. As a result, Eritrea has ended up like the Ethiopian regime – the Derg – which it fought for the three decades to get rid of. Its ratified constitution was suspended with no explanation and has now been abandoned altogether. Promised elections at the outset never took place and again without explanation. All private newspapers were closed and their journalists detained. Land was nationalised. Aid agencies were driven from the country. ‘Short of North Korea or an ISIS slave cave, there’s no more hopeless place on earth’, wrote Spectator columnist Mary Wakefield last month.

    Eritreans in exile are unanimous in saying the villain for all this is President Alwerki. He apparently regards himself as indispensable and clearly sees himself as president for life – just like the Kim dynasty trio of tyrants in  North Korea. In a strange twist of irony, Eritrea in its written response denouncing the UN report lifted lines word for word from a North Korean fulmination to the UN on another matter:

    “We are fully ready for any confrontation with the U.S. and will shatter the reckless “human rights” racket by the hostile forces through our toughest reaction. 

    “The moves of the hostile forces to dare provoke the socialist system of the DPRK which was chosen and has been consolidated by the Korean people will not be able to escape disgraceful doom.”

    The West pays little attention to Eritrea other than warning people travelling there. The EU in April approved an aid package of 122 million euros. ‘The more it gives, the faster the population decamps’, observed Wakefield.

    The country is of little strategic value despite the Soviet Union once having a naval base there before independence. While Eritrea has a majority Christian population, more than 40 per cent of its people are followers of Islam. But no doubt the West is content in the knowledge that Eritrea’s brutal president will keep any Islamic radicals in their place.

    Just as North Korean defectors have a tough time adjusting to life among even their own kith and kin in the south, for Eritreans it is an entirely new challenge in a new continent where they are far from wanted. ‘They were in Africa until yesterday and are fleeing like lost goats in Rome’, a social worker was quoted in The Times about newly-arrived Eritreans now trying to evade a different type of authority.

    The number of Eritreans who made it to Italy by the boat last year was 40,000 or 23 percent of all asylum-seekers. That compares with just 32,000 of all asylum-seekers who made it to Australia by the dreaded boat in the 18 months to June 2013. The Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, can only pale when this year’s likely record-breaking exodus across the Mediterranean is totted up.

    If there is a glimmer of hope for Eritreans, it may be it’s because gold has been discovered in their benighted country and other minerals could be there as well. That’s if President Alwerki doesn’t follow the example of other African dictators by pocketing the money for himself and keeping his country to remain among the 10 poorest in the world.

    FOOTNOTE: Australia has had a connection with Eritrea ever since 1987 when the late Fred Hollows began his work there to restore sight to thousands of people. Despite the crackdown on NGOs, the foundation in his name continues his work there today.

     

    John Tulloh had a 40-year career in foreign news.

  • Ian Macphee. Celebrating the arrival 40 years ago of Vietnamese refugees and their contribution to Australia.

    Current Affairs. 

    Throughout Australia the Vietnamese community in Australia has been holding meetings to commemorate the arrival of the first Vietnamese refugees forty years ago. Sadly but appropriately these functions are also commemorating the wonderful leadership of Malcolm Fraser in welcoming the Vietnamese and consolidating the end of the White Australia policy. In this he was supported by the Labor Party and this bi-partisan policy continued until 1993 when mandatory detention was established by the Keating government. This worsened under the Howard government from 1996 onwards and the bi-partisan policy since has been inhumane.

    Underlying the deep bond that Malcolm and I shared was our abhorrence of racism. It was a privilege to be his Immigration minister from 1979-82 and to welcome refugees from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. My close dealings with those refugees broadened and deepened my understanding of people. I listened to people in refugee camps in Malaysia and in settlement centres in Australia and understood challenges they faced in adjusting to the vastly different Australian culture. Not only did they integrate easily but also they have helped ease the ignorance of other Australians about other cultures.

    Many Australians of Vietnamese origin have made varied public contributions, especially as governor, mayors, councillors, Constitutional Convention delegates and State Parliamentarians. Like other migrants they have moved to regional areas and spread understanding and tolerance as they assisted in the blending of cultures. The national identity which people must accept on arrival here is shared values of equality and compassion. Cultural interaction at work may identify new ways of doing things and improve productivity. And sports, art and other leisure activities can broaden open minds and enrich our culture in the process. At the 25th anniversary of the first arrival of Vietnamese in Sydney I felt an overwhelming joy as I gained an appreciation of the huge intellectual, cultural and economic contribution of a small wave of boat people.

    We are socially cohesive because of our mutual striving for civilising goals. Bigotry mostly stems from ignorance. When we encounter bigotry we should confront it with reason. That challenge faces all in leadership positions, whether in politics, professions, media, religious institutions, educational institutions, sporting organisations or the workplace. Tragically, since 1993 our politicians have gradually abandoned humane principles and international law. Sensational tabloids and shock-jocks on radio and television engage in racist provocation.

    The challenge for young people of all ethnic origins is to use social media to oblige our major political parties to return to humane values. If the major parties will not listen, young people must take necessary actions, form a new party to return to our shared values and devise a range of policies that reflect those values. That is important for Australia and its reputation in the world. We have lost respect and influence in our region and elsewhere since the rejection of bi-partisan humane policies. I beg young people to commence public debate on asylum seeker policy and its relevance to foreign policy.

    Relevant to this is the Vietnamese Council of Australia. It was formed in December 1977 and has made a marvellous contribution with government agencies and NGOs to assist refugees gain jobs, health and education. The Council’s widespread activities also helped broaden Australians’ understanding of all people from Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia and Malaysia. The integration of Vietnamese has also helped Australians of Chinese origin to be treated more equally than many had experienced over many generations. But a new phase of the work of the Vietnamese Council lies ahead. It must combine with other caring groups to place grass roots pressure on our major political parties or help other parties win more support and influence.

    The Rohingya crisis on the border of Myanmar and Bangladesh is appalling and the response of our major parties is disgraceful and undermines Australian values of “a fair go” as well as damaging our reputation elsewhere. While we are on the UN Security Council we should ensure that the UNHCR is properly funded and administered. At present it spends $3.3 billion on trying to help over 50 million displaced persons while we spend the same amount pushing boats away and imprisoning a few thousand. We should be working with our neighbours and the UNHCR to try to resolve the Rohingya crisis. That is the type of challenge that young Australians face.

    I thank all Australians of Vietnamese origin for enriching my life and those of all Australians they encounter. In doing so I share your distress for the loss of your Father and Saviour and my dear friend Malcolm Fraser.
     

    Ian Macphee was Minister for Immigration and Ethnic Affairs in the Fraser Government.

     

  • Brad Chilcott. Refugees, possibility before protest.

    Current Affairs.

    As founder and national director of Welcome to Australia my dream is that many thousands of refugees and other migrants arrive safely in Australia every year to be welcomed into a fair, diverse and inclusive society where they will live free from vilification, fear and prejudice.

    For asylum seekers and refugees themselves, the greatest risk of Labor’s upcoming National Conference is not the danger of an imperfect chapter in the Platform. It is the danger of Labor failing to deliver real and practical outcomes to help ease their plight, while causing them to endure the real-world impact of re-energising the politics of fear and vilification of the world’s most vulnerable.

    I do not believe this analysis should be dismissed as conceding the ideological argument to realpolitik. For as long as political leaders concentrate Australia’s attention on the irregular arrival of asylum seekers, asylum seekers will continue to suffer. The last fifteen years clearly demonstrate this truth.

    If Australia were bereft of conservatives willing to politicise the approach of each boat to our shores, if there was no aligned media hungry to demonise the asylum seekers on them, the current political strategy of some advocates would be validated. The relevant Platform chapter could reflect an Australia where the electorate sees images of desperate people risking their lives at sea on the evening news and responds by asking their Government to rescue, care for and house them.

    Unfortunately, the last 15 years of toxic debate have convinced Australians that “leaky boats” are a threat to our national security, that leadership is best measured in brutality and that people seeking our protection by crossing the ocean are of questionable integrity and intent. Measured public opinion demonstrates that 70% of Australians want us to continue our harsh deterrence policies – in fact, nearly a quarter of our community want us to increase our cruelty.

    But there is another statistic worth our consideration. Research by the Scanlon Foundation indicates that 70% of Australians have a positive attitude towardsrefugees and this number is growing.

    Put bluntly, for most Australian voters, refugees are welcome and the perception of porous borders is not. Or put another way, the public will not countenance any policy or proposition that appears to reopen the boat journey from Java to Christmas Island. This socio-political reality creates difficulties for any opposition and requires that Labor is strategic in its approach.

    Labor party refugee advocates have a choice. To precipitate a fresh round of fear-mongering and vilification of asylum seekers, providing the politics of prejudice and division with new impetus, by authoring a perfect Platform chapter that will never become Government policy. Or to set aside the deep disappointment regarding the Labor Party’s record in this area and unite behind a framework that could not only be realised as the policy of Government, but would also change the lives of thousands of asylum seekers and refugees for the better. In other words, to choose an approach that keeps the public onside, delivers significant outcomes, and detoxifies the rancorous political debate around refugees.

    Labor can be the one voice of progressive possibility – or another voice of progressive protest.

    A successful and progressive Platform chapter on asylum seekers and refugees would achieve five primary outcomes – and remain durable in Government without abandoning them

    1 )   Offer thousands more refugees the chance to belong and contribute to Australian society every year.

    2 )   Protect the asylum seekers currently in our community and onshore and offshore detention centres from harm, providing them with real opportunities to work, study and prosper.

    3 )   Neutralise a toxic, divisive and damaging public debate.

    4 )   Open up the policy, political and social space required to effectively build a durable regional resettlement framework

    5 )   Ensure excellence and effectiveness in Australia’s settlement services.

    Such a policy is not only conceivable – it would the best possible outcome for asylum seekers, refugees and Australia’s national character and one that progressives must advocate for.

    A truly compassionate Labor policy would immediately give people living on Bridging Visas the right to study and work and abolish Temporary Protection Visas; commit to transparent, independent oversight of all detention centres operated or funded by Australia; legislate for time limits on all forms of immigration detention; end the fast-tracking of asylum seeker claims; reinstate Government funded legal aid for asylum seekers; commit to closing the ocean route to Australia; and create a safe pathway to protection by increasing the humanitarian intake to 27 000 with a special focus on those displaced in our region.

    Labor in government would have a real opportunity to transform the lives of countless thousands while maintaining the confidence of a population committed to“stopping the boats”.

    It could be argued that there are more progressive policy positions. However, there are no more progressive possibilities. Labor’s National Conference can be used to demonstrate just how “perfect” it is when it comes to people seeking asylum, or can unite behind meaningful change in the right direction.

    Brad Chilcott is the founder and National Director of Welcome to Australia, a national movement of people working together to cultivate a culture of welcome in our nation. This article first appeared in The Chifley Research Centre. http://www.chifley.org.au/possibility-before-protest/

     

  • Peter Hughes. Subsidising foreign investment with visas.

    Current Affairs

    Visas which give wealthy business people and investors a pathway to permanent residence and Australian citizenship through various forms of investment have been around for many years. The new twist, under the Government’s recently announced ‘complying investments‘ for the Significant Investor Visa, is to channel some money out of safe investments and into venture capital and start-ups.

    The $5 million worth of investment that a foreign investor must make in Australia to qualify for a visa must now include at least $500,000 in eligible Australian venture capital or private equity funds investing in start-ups and small private companies. The Government expects to increase this to $1 million for new applications within two years. In addition, at least a further $1.5 million of the $5 million total must go into in eligible managed funds or listed companies that invest in emerging firms.

    Some commentators, including venture capitalists, have applauded the move. On the other hand, migration agents reportedly have concerns over whether their clients will see this requirement as too risky and turn their attention to other countries. The Government has tried to manage this by only requiring 10% of the total investment to go into the highest risk investments.

    One wonders why, if these investments are truly desirable, they cannot stand on their merits and attract sufficient capital without the need to effectively subsidise them by offering visas and a pathway to Australian citizenship as an incentive to foreign investors. Alternatively, why aren’t broader-based non-visa options being pursued to attract venture capital, such as a HECS-style loans scheme?

    The changes also raise the broader question of the effectiveness of migration schemes to attract wealthy business people and investors.

    Australia has experimented with variations of such schemes over several decades. State and Territory governments are attracted to them in the hope of bringing foreign business talent and money into their economies.

    The traditional migrant ‘bargain’ with the host country is that he or she contributes their skills, resources, physical presence and family to that country’s future in return for permanent residence and access to citizenship and its benefits. However, because of their wealth, business and investor migrants have a lot more scope and flexibility to gain benefits without making much contribution.

    The Australian Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Migration, in its March 2015 Report of the Inquiry into on the Business Innovation and Investment Programme, struggled to find any substantive benefits, noting in the Foreword that ‘the data provided by the Government was limited and furnished little evidence that the programme was actually meeting any of its objectives.’

    And yet the risks are substantial. Migration schemes for business people attract a disproportionate number of applicants from a small number of countries, usually countries where it is difficult to verify all aspects of the background of the individuals and the sources of their wealth. China was by far the largest source country for the over 6000 visas granted in the Government’s Business Innovation and Investor programs in 2013-14.

    There is an ever present risk of attracting people of character concern who will, down the track, be the subject of criminal investigations in the source country and embarrassing extradition proceedings. There is also the risk of attracting ‘hot’ money, borrowed money and dubious financial arrangements.

    Then there is the underlying public suspicion about wealthy people ‘buying’ their way into Australia. One of the earliest schemes, the ‘Business Migration Program’, was terminated following a critical report of the Joint Committee of Public accounts in 1991 , including concerns about the role private migration agents had been given in the system.

    Despite all these dilemmas, Australia probably has to compete with other countries and have at least a limited facility for interested business people to migrate permanently. It is untenable to say that a genuinely interested wealthy business person cannot settle here in the way that a skilled migrant can.

    However, policy and administration in this area need to be tightly controlled and the results closely monitored to ensure there is a real benefit for the country. The trick for governments is to find a set of rules that lock in the benefits for Australia without scaring away most of the genuine migrants. Scams that undermine the integrity of this element of the immigration program must be quickly identified and terminated.

    Without careful scrutiny, there is a good chance that any new arrangements will end in tears, like some of their predecessors.

    Peter Hughes was formerly Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Citizenship. This article was first published by the Lowy Interpreter.

  • Peter Hughes. The War on Australian Citizenship

    Current Affairs

    It’s hard to be sure when the “War on Terror” became the war on Australian citizenship.

    I think it started in March 2014 when the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor was persuaded to recommend in his report[1] that the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection be given the power to revoke the Australian citizenship of dual citizens on national security grounds.

    Even though the idea of dealing with Australian Jihadists by revoking their Australian citizenship has been around since then, there has not been a convincing sense of urgency or clarity about it as an effective solution. The Prime Minister announced the government’s commitment to implement the idea in February 2015 and announced it again last week, but no legislation has yet been introduced into Parliament.

    Public discussion to date has shown that the idea is extremely problematic in terms of its actual effectiveness against the Jihadist problem, the processes to be used to make revocation decisions and the collateral damage it would do to the status of Australian citizenship.

    The crucial details of the proposal are still not available for scrutiny.

    In a statement with the Orwellian title of “Measures to Strengthen Australian Citizenship”, the Prime Minister describes in very broad terms who will be the targets of the proposed citizenship revocation powers.

    However, neither the actions nor personal affiliations that will make Australians the target of citizenship revocation are clearly specified. The statement refers to people who fight with or “support” groups “such as” ISIL or Daesh.

    Nor does the statement tell us what impact adopting these extraordinary measures would actually have either in terms of stopping the return of Jihadists or removing any from Australia.

    Australian dual nationals are said to be the primary target, but the prime Minister is reported as saying that only 40 to 50 per cent of the Australian jihadists fighting overseas appear to be dual nationals. The actual nationalities have not been stated publicly.

    The government already has powers to restrict their movement through cancellation of travel documents. Revocation of Australian citizenship might be a further barrier to return of some Jihadists, but it would still leave them at large to engage in further political violence.

    In terms of the domestic targets of such legislation, the statement is silent as to the extent of their dual nationality. Even if the Australian citizenship of dual citizens of concern in Australia could be revoked, this does not necessarily mean that they would leave Australia. For example, in some cases, foreign governments refuse to accept their own nationals back if the person concerned does not want to return voluntarily. Citizenship solutions are not as easy as they look.

    The government has compared its proposed new powers to the existing provision in the Australian Citizenship Act 2007 which mandates automatic loss of citizenship when an Australian dual citizen serves in the armed forces of a country at war with Australia. However, unlike the current proposals, the test in the existing legislation is crystal clear and relates to facts which are objectively verifiable.

    And then there is the question of how a decision to take away Australian citizenship would be made. Existing Australian citizenship policy sets a high bar for revocation. Before revocation of the citizenship of a naturalised citizen can even be considered by the Minister, the person must have been convicted of a serious offence (primarily fraudulent acquisition of citizenship) committed before becoming an Australian citizen. Offences committed after becoming a citizen are a matter for the criminal law.

    The process proposed by the government by which an Australian would lose citizenship is that the decision would be at the discretion of the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection (presumably based on intelligence information). This is an extraordinary weakening of the status of Australian citizenship, even if judicial review is available. It is also the thin end of the wedge. There are other crimes which might be considered equally repulsive as those the government has targeted.

    The completely new proposition, put up for public comment (meriting only one paragraph of a seven page discussion paper) of depriving an Australian of citizenship when they don’t actually have the citizenship of another country, but “there is reasonable grounds to believe the person is able to become a national of another country” is just a recipe for statelessness.

    The government’s arguments for these measures have been backed up by references to similar powers being available in the United States, United Kingdom, France and New Zealand. However, it appears that what is proposed in Australia goes beyond what these countries have done.[2]

    In summary, the government has not made a convincing case that a wide ministerial discretion to deprive Australians who are in some way connected with terrorism of their Australian citizenship is going to have any serious impact on the problem. However, there is no doubt that the availability of such a power would dramatically weaken the status and certainty of Australian citizenship.

    Prosecution and incarceration of Australian citizens breaching Australian law on terrorism is the only thing that will keep them out of circulation. If criminal law standards for this type offence are the problem, why not look at them rather than targeting something as fundamental as our Australian citizenship?

    One thing is sure, ISIS is already winning a victory on this because they have got us discussing proposals that would have us reduce the certainty of Australian citizenship to something comparable to that of a tourist visa.

    Peter Hughes, Visiting Fellow, Crawford School of Public Policy.
    Visitor, Regulatory Institutions Network.

    This piece was first published on Policy Forum, the website of the Pacific Policy Society: http://www.policyforum.net/the-war-on-australian-citizenship/

    [1] Annual Report of the Independent National Security Legislation Monitor, Brett Walker SC, 28 March 2014

    [2] http://theconversation.com/proposals-to-strip-citizenship-take-australia-a-step-further-than-most-42398