Senator Andrew Bartlett
Thursday, June 02, 2005
 
Does the Prime Minister really understand?
I was listening to the Prime Minister talk on the radio about the mandatory detention debate when suddenly I had the most horrible feeling – "this guy doesn't understand what he's talking about!" I'm not sure why this thought troubled me so much – I'm well and truly used to the half-truths, misleading statements, bureaucratic double-speak and absurd spin that is used in regard to immigration matters. But underneath it all, I'd always assumed that people like the Prime Minister at least understand what the law is and the context of its application, and just applied all this spin to make it more acceptable for public consumption.

In an effort to assuage my fears, I dug up the transcript from the ABC's AM program of 31st May and studied what was actually said. Please join me on a voyage of discovery and interpretation of the verbal landscapes we will encounter.

John Howard on ABC Radio: "The Government (has) a well established policy of having, regrettably, to have mandatory detention as an element of our policy to handle illegal immigration and people who overstay – for example tourist visas, that policy has already been softened and I have said repeatedly, and I’ll say it again, that we will always take opportunities to further liberalise the policy and make it more flexible, but consistent with maintaining mandatory detention as a necessary, although regrettable, element of the policy."

Leaving aside the bizarreness of so strongly defending a "well established policy" that he finds so "regrettable", equating asylum seekers with "illegal immigration" is wrong and misleading. Asylum seekers are not "illegal" and they are not "immigrants" in the sense that Australian policy uses the term. They are potential refugees. For fans of the English language (people my father would have called 'conservative'), the use of the term "flexible" doesn't sit terribly well with words like "mandatory". Last time I looked, "mandatory" means something like "obligatory" or "compulsory". Doesn't really gel with "flexible" does it?

The Prime Minster's suggestion that mandatory detention is necessary for tourist visa over-stayers is an exciting new angle. The Immigration Department's own figures says there were 50,900 over-stayers at 30 June last year, nearly 11,000 of who are from the UK or the USA. The majority of these are people who overstayed tourist or visitor visas. Quite what mandatory detention has to do with over-stayers is not immediately clear, but it clearly isn’t deterring them from overstaying (16,000 of them for more than 10 years), and it obviously doesn't apply to the vast majority of them.

Of course, when over-stayers are detected in the community, (or when people are found to be working in breach of their visa) they can be detained. However, the reality is that they are often given Bridging Visas if they can show that they are voluntarily making arrangements to leave the country and if they are not assessed to be a flight risk. The main point here is that it is not a Court or Tribunal who makes the assessment that these people should lose their freedom, it is a Government Minister or bureaucrat. Once they decide this, detention becomes 'mandatory', which shows the real reason why the Government likes mandatory detention – not because it "handles illegal immigration", but because the Government, not an independent body, gets to decide who gets locked up.

John Howard on ABC Radio: "you’re dealing here with a difficult issue but an issue where you have to balance the natural desire of everybody to administer the policy in a flexible, humane way, but also I believe the overwhelming view of the Australian community that this country should not again become a target for people smugglers and also a concern that I think is sometimes overlooked in this debate, that the real problem in many cases is people who apply for, and obtain tourist visas to come to this country and then overstay and apply for refugee status and I think if we went too far in relaxing the policy you could have a situation where people would say, ‘I’ll get a tourist visa, I’ll bring my children with me, I’ll apply for refugee status and after a short period of time we can be released into the community’. Now that would not be a good reform and it’s not one that I would want to support."

There's that word "flexible" again (coupled with "humane" just to make it more cuddly). It seems we're getting a new line of defence of mandatory detention from the Government – protect us from the dreaded overstaying tourist! I haven’t noticed many of them getting here through people smugglers, but it is always good to mention smugglers too - just to make it clear that this is a Serious Issue.

It was these words that really made me suddenly think 'my God, this guy doesn't have a clue how this whole thing works!!' The simple fact is that people can and do come here on tourist, student, business or other visas and then seek asylum – often validly but sometimes not. As long as they do so before their visa expires they are usually entitled to a Bridging Visa under existing law. In these circumstances detention – mandatory or otherwise – does not usually enter into it. The Prime Minister (that's the guy that's running our country who has thousands of public servants at his disposal to explain all this complex stuff) is "not wanting to support " a 'reform' that already occurs regularly as part of our existing law!! What the??!! Is anyone awake here in all this debate, or is everyone living in 'media grab land' where getting a few catch phrases like 'people smuggler', 'protecting our borders' and 'integrity of our migration system' into the media are all that matters?

John Howard on ABC Radio: "I mean if somebody comes to this country on a tourist visa and brings their young children with them and then overstays that visa, applies for refugee status, is it the fault of the Australian Government that they are detained? It’s not. I mean I’m sorry for the children but that is not the fault of the Australian Government and I think these are some of the facts that ought to be understood."

At least we now know whose fault it is that these children are being imprisoned for years!

If those parents who have been detained on Nauru for the last 3 and a half years had just agreed to go back to the country that we have decided would be unsafe for them, their children wouldn't have had to spend all that time locked up.

If only the Vietnamese refugees who we have just recognised as refugees after nearly 2 years in detention had gone back home to face persecution, (or better still stayed there and taken what was coming to them) their kids would never have been locked up for so long.

This Government who, more than any other in Australia's history has tried to push the notion of individual responsibility, is now saying to these imprisoned kids "Blame Your Parents!!!". Yes the Prime Minster of Australia is actually saying "it's not my fault that the law says I have to keep children in jail for years, it’s their parents fault". Apparently there's no blame on the Governments of countries like Vietnam or China or Iran who are doing the persecuting either. Talk about blaming the victim.

According to John Howard it is the parents' fault that the Australian Parliament has passed draconian laws that apply nowhere else in the democratic world. It is the parents' fault that the Immigration Minister or her Department have decided not to use their enormous range of existing powers and discretions to grant them Bridging or other Visas!

Soon they’ll be offering legal assistance for the imprisoned children to sue their mums and dads – whatever it takes to make it clear that locking them up has nothing at all to do with the people who actually implement and administer the law.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, June 02, 2005 Permalink
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