BY SARAH STEPHEN
Boats carrying "illegal immigrants" to Australia could be "a pipeline for terrorists", defence minister Peter Reith told radio 3AW on September 13, in an opportunist attempt to make domestic political mileage out of the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
The attacks in the United States, Reith said, showed Australia needed to properly process and manage people coming into the country.
Reith cited fears that terrorists could be among asylum-seekers. The horror of the US attacks reinforced "the whole security issue in terms of dealing with terrorism", Reith told the Seven network's Sunrise program on September 14, "and that means you have got to be able to control your borders, otherwise if you have got people moving in and out willy-nilly, then this can be a conduit for extremist terrorist groups."
The defence minister failed to explain why would-be terrorists would chose to sneak into Australia by leaky boat, only to get locked in detention for a year, or why Afghan asylum seekers should be suspected of terrorism when they are fleeing the very Taliban regime accused of being behind the attacks in the United States.
Immigration minister Philip Ruddock followed suit on Sydney radio 2GB on September 15, saying "It makes me determined to have an immigration program which the government is able to conduct with integrity ... In which the people who ... respect our law and our institutions are those who are advantaged, rather than those who have no respect for our values and institutions."
Labor leader Kim Beazley has backed the government, saying on September 13 that ethnic groups should inform on any members of their communities, either in Australia or overseas, who are terrorists.
The ministers' attempts to link the plight of the asylum seekers with the devastating assaults in the US is part of its desperate attempts to overturn a Federal Court ruling in the case of the MV Tampa.
Justice Tony North found on September 11 that the government's detention of 438 mainly Afghan refugees on the Tampa was unlawful because it breached the principle of habeas corpus, which prevents arbitrary arrest, and that the asylum seekers should be brought back to Australia so that their claims for refugee status can be assessed.
The government has announced it will appeal the North judgement to the full bench of the Federal Court, a move which has been backed by the Labor opposition.
Since the Tampa incident and the interception of a second boat near Ashmore Reef, two more Indonesian boats carrying asylum seekers have been stopped by the navy and ordered to turn around.
Some government bureaucrat must have been out on Ashmore Reef, trousers rolled up, with a measuring tape on September 10, because the Howard government triumphantly declared that the Ratna Mujiam, carrying 130 asylum seekers, had hit short of the low-water mark and was therefore not within Australia's migration responsibilities.
For all John Howard's chest-beating about the huge military arsenal deployed in waters between Australia and Indonesia at an estimated cost of $30 million, it has had no effect on the determination of asylum seekers to make the journey here.
The Ratna Mujiam, carrying 130 passengers, ran aground on September 10 and was not seaworthy, so passengers were transferred to the Aceng which had had its 237 occupants forcibly removed and put on board the HMAS Manoora on September 8.
A second boat carrying 129 asylum seekers, the Sumbar Bahagia, was repelled by an Australian naval vessel on September 12, but returned the next day.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees has expressed concern that the Australian government has contravened "an important and longstanding humanitarian tradition against so-called 'push-offs'."
The government's next step? Legislation introduced into parliament on September 17 will move to exclude Christmas Island and Ashmore Reef from Australia's official migration zone, thereby excluding them from being subject to obligations we have undertaken as a signatory to the 1951 UN refugee convention.
The vast majority of the 4000 or so asylum seekers who have come to Australia by boat in the last six months have come via one of the two territories. The proposed law means that none who arrive on these territories would have the right to claim asylum in Australia.
The Labor Party has given conditional support for change to Australia's migration zone, conditional only on seeing more detail.
The Refugee Council of Australia has denounced this latest move, arguing that this proposal will not "stop people in desperate circumstances from seeking to reach Australia. At most it may incline some boats to head for the mainland, at greater risk to the passengers."
The government's other legislative moves, including the narrowing of the definition of a refugee and winding back of the right of appeal, have been sent to parliamentary committees for further discussion and investigation.
The government is also stepping up pressure on, and offering financial incentives to, other countries in the region to take on Australia's responsibilities: it will help fund Indonesia's program to deter asylum seekers and Nauru's "processing centres" for asylum seekers intercepted between Indonesia and Australia and is apparently considering an offer from tiny Kiribati to take further asylum seekers.