Senator Andrew Bartlett
Saturday, August 27, 2005
 
The Legacy of the Tampa – 4 Years On
My weekend has been focussed on refugee and immigration issues. There have been many events around the country to mark the 4th anniversary since the Australian Government refused to allow the containership MV Tampa to enter Australia to drop off over 400 refugees that had been rescued at sea. I spoke at a rally outside Sydney Town Hall on Friday evening and another in Brisbane today. Tomorrow I am speaking at a meeting at the Gold Coast.

The legacy of the Government’s extreme reaction to the Tampa incident still lives on in two major ways. Firstly, the direct suffering still continues for many of the refugees on that vessel and the other boats which followed it in 2001. I met two people this afternoon at the Brisbane rally who were on the Tampa . After being locked up for 2 years on Nauru, they were both allowed into Australia in 2003, receiving Temporary Protection Visas of five years duration. One of them has a son who was one year old when he fled the Taliban in 2000. As the law currently stands, he is not able to leave Australia or apply for his son and wife to join him here until he accesses a permanent visa, which can only happen when his temporary visa runs out in 2008. This will mean he will have spent 8 years without seeing his family, and his son will be nine years old. Quite how this helps Australia, let alone this refugee’s family, is beyond me.

The massively expensive Pacific ‘Solution’ that was spawned by the Tampa incident also still lingers, with 32 people still detained on Nauru, although news has just come through that a few more should be arriving here next week, with up to four others following them soon after – which should bring the number to 25, down from the 54 when I last visited there in May. I am hoping the camp there will be empty by the end of this year, but no one knows for sure.

The second legacy is a far wider one, but is equally counter-productive to our national interest and able to cause just as much personal suffering. The Tampa incident was used to manufacture the political grounds to pressure the Labor Party into allowing the guillotining of a package of seven Bills amending the Migration Act through the Senate which dramatically amended the entire Migration Act, giving immense power to bureaucrats, further restricting judicial and independent oversight and in many cases enabling Commonwealth officers and Government Ministers to act completely outside any legal constraints.

This perversion of the rule of law, removal of due process and destruction of checks and balances which reached its peak in the aftermath of the Tampa is at the heart of the current shambles within the Immigration Department. Whenever any person in a position of power and authority knows they are able to act and make decisions with impunity, bad decisions inevitably follow.

This whole culture of being above the law and disregard for human suffering and dignity is at the heart of all the well known human tragedies and travesties of justice which the Department of Immigration have caused. But for every well publicised case – such as the deportation of long-standing Australian citizen Vivian Solon (and the subsequent cover-up), the wrongful detention of Australian resident Cornelia Rau, the proven assaults and major failures of duty of care of detainees, the callous disregard of the medical advice which may have contributed to the recent death of visiting Syrian grandmother, Aziza Agha – there are many more that have not been publicised. Very few of these involve asylum seekers or refugees – but the extreme over-reaction to asylum seekers, who pose no threat at all to the ‘security of our borders, has poisoned the entire administration of our migration system.

Until the Migration Act is reformed and the Government adopts a policy based on reality rather than myth-making and lies, the operation and administration of our migration system will remain severely dysfunctional. You cannot change the culture of the Department whilst the law and policy remains the same. An essential part of repairing the culture is to restore the checks and balances which were removed from the law by the Liberal and Labor parties in the irrational frenzy following Tampa in 2001. Until that is done, further tragedies and injustices are inevitable.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Saturday, August 27, 2005 Permalink
|


<< Home