Sarah Stephen
On May 11, the House of Representatives' last autumn sitting day, PM John Howard's government tabled the Migration Amendment (Designated Unauthorised Arrivals) Bill 2006 - legislation that will extend the 2001 "Pacific solution" to all boat arrivals of "illegal" asylum seekers, whether they reach the Australian mainland or not. All new boat arrivals will be sent to Nauru for the processing of their refugee claims.
Andrew Robb, parliamentary secretary for immigration minister Amanda Vanstone, argued during his presentation of the legislation that it "preserve[s] Australia's sovereignty" and "strengthens our capacity to deal sensibly and flexibly with unauthorised boat arrivals".
Rather than beginning debate on the legislation, the government referred it directly to a Senate committee for consideration, with a deadline of May 22, allowing opponents of the proposed new law just six working days to make submissions. The committee is expected to report to the parliament on June 13, a week before World Refugee Day.
This move seems to have been aimed at stalling parliamentary debate around the bill until the media spotlight moves elsewhere, taking the heat off the issue.
It is almost a year since Liberal backbencher Petro Georgiou and a number of his colleagues forced some minor concessions from Howard and legislation was introduced to have women and children held in detention only as a last resort.
In recent weeks, some of these backbenchers have voiced their opposition to the proposed new legislation, but it has been restricted to a concern that children may again be detained.
At a May 12 press briefing in Geneva, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees criticised the Howard government for not consulting it when drafting the new law. The May 14 Melbourne Age reported that UNHCR spokesperson Jennifer Pagonis was critical about the prospect of processing on Nauru. Pointing out that Nauru was not a signatory to the 1951 refugee convention, she said: "We had a bad experience with the arrangement set in place in Nauru after the Tampa incident, which left many people in detention-like conditions for a long period of time, with no timely solutions for the refugees, who suffered considerable mental hardship."
The Age noted that last month the UNHCR "made public its concern about any country with a fully functioning system for assessing asylum seekers pushing off responsibility for handling claims made on its territory. It has been cool towards informal Australian approaches for it to do the processing."
David Manne, legal representative for the 43 West Papuan asylum seekers given temporary refugee visas earlier this year, told a May 5 forum at Melbourne's Castan Centre for Human Rights Law: "The government's offshore processing proposal is far more than a mere extension or revisiting of the so-called Pacific solution. In my judgement, it would usher in a new era of extremity, indifference and cruelty to the treatment of those most vulnerable and deserving of our protection - a proposal best described as one of 'radical rejection'."
In a briefing paper criticising the proposed legislation, which it has dubbed the "ban the boat people" bill, Melbourne's Asylum Seeker Resource Centre commented: "The policy is unprincipled, unethical, impractical and undermines the purpose of the international refugee protection framework, which is that asylum should be provided to refugees in the country of arrival unless they can access effective protection elsewhere. The Pacific solution fails this standard."
From Green Left Weekly, May 24, 2006.
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