All of the “debate” about asylum seekers seeking Australia takes part in an historic, geographic, social vacuum. It is as if, until they appear on a leaky boat near Christmas Island, these people don’t exist, and, having appeared, that they exist only to help Tony Abbott become Prime Minister.
Did you see recently a beautiful animated map online showing changes in Europe 1000AD to present. A shifting kaleidoscope of colours ebbed and flowed before your eyes as countries emerged or failed, conquered or were conquered, combined or split. Nothing was firm, all was fluid, a mockery, if you thought about it, of all the nationalism associated with being born in a “country”. But these shifting political boundaries hid a more important shift. As boundaries moved so did people, displaced in their thousands, tens of thousands, millions, as ethnic and religious and nationalistic and economic based conflicts took place.
There isn’t a part of the world where the same kind of map couldn’t be drawn. That’s the salutary lesson. We look around now and see what appear to be fixed and stable countries, but some arose very recently, and few country boundaries are older than one hundred years. Since history began there have been records of people moving, escaping, fleeing, first this way, then that. And they are still moving, either on land in Africa, Europe, Asia, Central America, or on sea (Mediterranean, Caribbean, the sea between Indonesia and Australia), in huge numbers at times, depending on which places have hot wars, or civil wars, or religious conflicts, and which ones temporarily don’t. Most of the conflicts have little directly to do with Australia, but we did help the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, both now sources of asylum seekers heading in all directions out of the hell holes the wars created.
And we are already starting to see a whole new ball game – climate change. Not just rising seas, but loss of drinking water sources, and lack of rain for crops and animals, and the failure of marine resources. People are starting to move for these reasons, and we are going to see a gathering flood of such refugees. In addition the battle for shrinking resources will itself cause more warfare. At the same time Europe, America and Australia are going to have their own problems with climate change reducing their own ability to feed people.
Clearly we need to find a process that doesn’t involve people risking their lives on leaky boats. In the absence of refugee processing centres in the main places people are fleeing, there needs to be something in Malaysia or Indonesia that would allow processing there.
And stop pretending growing refugee numbers is the Australian government’s fault.
Hear! Hear! We can have all the economic policy arguments we want (and we’d disagree on any number of things, Watermelon Man) but on population movements in general; refugee movements as they affect or are likely to affect Australia more specifically; and asylum seeker boats in absolutely deadly detail, the faux nationalistic tub-thumping that’s been going on for a decade or more is a sad disgrace.
It really is time we all grew up – and well past time we all accepted that we have human duties to others that far outrank emotive political non-issues such as notional threats to national sovereignty.
And as for legislating to require naval commanders to ignore international maritime law in relation to safety and rescue at sea, which Abbott seems to be suggesting he might do – well frankly, as a former speech-writer, I’m speechless.
Why thank you kind sir. I am outraged, though unsurprised, that there isn’t a huge outcry about Abbott suggesting we become the country that instructs its navy to fire on refugee boats.
Hi David,
I’d like to offer a somewhat radical perspective, though some may consider it more ‘reactionary’ than One Nation. Suspend your disbelief for a moment before you condemn it out of hand.
There is no shortage of refugees seeking to come to Australia. An average of the various estimates suggest that there are about 20 million people around the world who are sufficiently distressed by their present living conditions – whether it is the direct result of military or political pressure, or simply a shortage of food and water – that they would be prepared to risk their lives on a leaky boat in order to get to Australia. That is a rather larger number than those who are both willing and able to do so, because they have sufficient mobility and above all the $10,000 to pay the people smugglers. Lets be honest about this, virtually all of the refugees who arrive by boat come via the Indonesian people smuggler network. Few if any have purchased their own boat and set off from their troubled homeland. But it is still a huge number, and we take only the tiniest fraction of those who deserve our care, most of them go to their deaths without troubling our consciences by drowning in Australian waters.
The system is rapidly becoming both more ghastly and more sophisticated at the same time. I understand that the people smugglers don’t crew their own boats, they buy cheap unseaworthy vessels and crew them with local fishermen and young villagers whom they trick into getting on board to crew the boat with the refugees while they (the true entrepreneurs) are getting off to sail back to Indonesia. Once in Australian waters (or the Australian marine rescue sector) they have instructions to put out a distress call that Australian Maritime Authorities are required to respond to by international Law-of-the-Sea. When approached by an Australian ship, the refugee boat suddenly becomes so un-seaworthy that it must be abandoned immediately, and the refugees transferred to Christmas Island – mission accomplished. Quite frankly, this inhuman and deadly trade is more disgusting and abhorrent than any drug trade that the Indonesian authorities seem to think is so bad – far worse than even terrorist massacres! I suspect that the extreme penalties associated with the drug trade are related to the ability of the drug dealers to pay for their early release. (I’m assuming that Islamist terrorists are a poor business deal because they’d rather martyr themselves than pay bribes for their release.) The fact is, the people smuggling trade is only possible because of the extensive corruption of the Indonesian police, immigration and coast guard authorities, and it will continue while that situation remains unchanged.
In a nutshell, then, we can’t hope to deal with the influx of ‘refugees’ by any humane means. Whatever we do costs a fortune, and doesn’t do much for the refugees’ mental and physical health either. We risk creating a permanent mental health legacy from our futile attempts at being humane.
Lastly, it should be accepted by all true ecologists that converting a refugee from a third world country to a citizen of Australia creates another person with a much larger resource footprint than before – about ten times bigger. By bringing poor people to the most polluting country on Earth, we are only making things worse for the world as a whole.
My unpalatable re-direction of our present policy is to close our borders to ‘illegal’ entry via the people smuggling network, through something like the Malaysia Solution, and to spend the majority of our ‘humanitarian aid’ improving conditions in the camps and ultimately in those third world countries where the major problems are ecological rather than military.
In our neck of the woods David, we’ve been having quite a battle keeping illegal immigration in check. It seems our leaders are not as interested in protecting our borders from illegal immigration as they are providing services to the illegal immigrants. The “border states” in the US are fighting a losing battle educating, providing health care for, and protecting the residents and legal immigrants from the criminal element that’s flowing over our borders as well.
Legal immigration has served our nation well for many decades. But illegal is a whole other matter!
It seems to me the problem can best be solved by not propping up the tyrannical, despotic and dictatorial regimes that re-locate folks from their property and deprive them of basic human rights (property ownership, education, etc.).
Eric, asylum seekers ARE NOT illegal immigrants. I do believe the USA is a party to the Refugee Convention.
Yes, I agree and, yes, the US signed on with the 1967 protocol. But, even asylum seekers have a legal process by which they apply to enter a nation. They don’t simply enter the country illegally via an unprotected border and take up residence expecting all the benefits of citizens. That is the situation we are dealing with.
“Asylum seekers” can be a pretty vague definition also. The US has had open arms to asylum seeking Hungarians, Somalis, Vietnamese, Thais, Iranians, Iraqis, Armenians, Romanians, etc. etc. But, these poor folks left their homeland because of tyrannical rulers that made life nearly impossible as opposed to the steady stream of people who simply want a better life and illegally enter the land they think will provide it.
I have a brother in the RAN and he doesn’t much like the idea of returning boats to Indonesia .. partly because it’s damned dangerous and partly because the Laws of the Sea don’t really allow it. Also partly because they don’t initially come from Indonesia in the first place! Even though he is a conservative by nature, there is a certain reluctance for him to allow his ship into this nonsense .. TA is pushing his luck when even a conservative RAN officer is reluctant to follow his blathering idiocy! By the way, the word “illegal” is totally wrong if referring to people fleeing religious persecution, war, famine, racial holocaust. “Asylum” is the ONLY word you can apply with any humanity! No such thing as “illegal asylum seekers”.
Three cheers for your brother. As a fellow conservative, I know how he feels.
David, we need to stop raping the planet. Australia is something like only 6% arable land, so we are not a great place to grow food. Humanity will have to learn to share, or perish.
It may well be us seeking asylum if the sea levels rise and we are left with not enough liable land as a result.
Viable land….
“Learning to share” seems to be a difficult concept for humanity (for the most part) to learn; at least it hasn’t been learned over the past several eons of human history. Pretty sure that’s not a reasonable solution.
Until the human heart undergoes transformation, it’s pretty much a program of “what’s in it for me?”