Unwarranted Praise
Greens Senator Bob Brown, in a June 14 press release, congratulated
federal Labor leader Simon Crean for having “taken a large step in moving
Labor from the `me-tooism' on asylum seekers it proffered during the [2001
federal] election campaign”. Brown's comment was in response to Labor's
decision to oppose legislation to excise some 3500 islands from Australia's
migration zone.
Less than a week later, the Howard government had Labor's full support
in passing another piece of anti-refugee legislation — a bill which further
restricts asylum seekers' rights to judicial appeal.
Clearly the ALP hasn't taken the “large step” that Brown gave it credit
for. Instead, Labor MPs opposed the Howard government's excision bill because,
they argued, it didn't crack down hard enough on “people smuggling” and
illegal immigration.
Crean made every effort to argue that it was Labor that was “serious”
about “border protection”, and not the Coalition government. His tactic
was to generate more fear and hysteria that boats with hundreds of asylum
seekers would head straight for the mainland after they saw the government's
“white flag”.
In his June 20 speech to parliament, Crean lambasted immigration minister
Philip Ruddock: “You are selling out Australia, and you are not protecting
it. The government's idea of excision diminishes Australia. It purports
to protect our borders, but it puts the real borders of Australia at risk.”
The government, Crean said, stands for “border destruction, not border
security”. Australians want to feel secure, Crean told parliament, so lets
stop the boats coming here in the first place.
The excision bill has been shunted into a parliamentary committee for
further scrutiny, and won't be debated by the Senate until the next session
of parliament, beginning on August 19.
Labor's response to the Migration Legislation Amendment (Procedural
Fairness) Bill, introduced by the government immediately after the failure
of its excision bill, was to express wholehearted support for it. One of
Labor's core policy proposals is for faster and “more efficient” processing
of asylum seekers' claims.
According to Labor's Laurie Ferguson, given that drawn-out appeals are
only made by people who don't have “genuine” claims and who want to prolong
their stay in Australia, removing access to judicial appeal is a great
way to get people processed faster (and out of the country).
Opposition immigration spokesperson Julia Gillard made a plea to the
government to work with Labor. “If the real reason that the government
is engaging in the so-called Pacific solution is to get the benefits of
truncated processing, then why don't we have a real debate and a real exchange
about getting a better processing system in Australia?”
Ruddock assured Gillard that he was “more than happy” to “give her to
opportunity to try some of her ideas on us in good faith”.
With the latest piece of legislation stripping further rights from asylum
seekers, Labor continues to give the Coalition's xenophobic scare campaign
full support.
Labor leaders have made no effort to challenge or question the government's
allegations that Australia continues to face a “flood” of asylum seekers.
Yet the number of asylum seekers that have made their way to Australia
in the past five years, even the past 20 years, wouldn't be enough to even
partly fill the Melbourne Cricket Ground.
The “boat people” crisis has been completely manufactured by politicians
and the corporate media to serve a political purpose — to create a generalised
sense of fear and panic that the poor and destitute of the Third World
threaten the relatively higher living standards and comparative security
of ordinary Australians.
Through such manufactured fear our rulers hope to break down the sense
of human solidarity that Australian working people have for the Third World
poor, exhibited most recently by the outpouring of support in September
1999 for the people of East Timor. Such public expressions of international
solidarity limits the extent to which our rulers can exploit and wage war
against the poor countries of the world.
The two major parties' bipartisan approach to the issue of refugees
closely mirrors their bipartisan approach to the supposed war on terrorism.
Labor and the Coalition are in general agreement on every aspect of Australia's
involvement in the US-led war on the Third World. Their campaign to undermine
sympathy for those fleeing oppression (asylum seekers) will play a significant
role in determining what success they have in winning public support for
this ongoing and open-ended war.
From Green Left Weekly, July 3, 2002.
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