How low can Ruddock go?

Issue 

@box text intr = The Honourable Philip Ruddock, John Howard's minister for racism, plumbed new xenophobic depths this week with his full-frontal assault on a Joint Parliamentary Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs report on conditions in detention centres.

The report was not exactly an attack on government policy. But the members of the human rights sub-committee that prepared the report were clearly deeply disturbed by their experiences in the centres and talking to the detainees.

Liberal MP Bruce Baird told parliament, "In the 13 years I have been a member of Parliament ... there are very few things that I have found as confronting as the ... visit to the migration detention centres.

"The physical environment ... is one thing — centres with 20-foot-high barbed wire fences, the remote location, the basic nature of the accommodation. But the psychological impact of these centres is another: the feeling of despair that permeates these places, the general unhappiness and lack of activity".

But this did not lead the sub-committee members to break with the bi-partisan travesty that is mandatory detention. The report does not even go so far as the ombudsman's report in suggesting a re-examination of government policy, instead concentrating on minor cosmetic changes.

But this has not been enough for Ruddock, who furiously attacked the committee's key recommendations, which are:

l to give refugees access to daily newspapers;

l to ensure all children receive appropriate schooling;

l to offer classes about life in Australia to detainees;

l to review occupational health and safety standards for the work done by detainees;

l to give detainees regular appointments with their case officers;

l to nominate an independent person to receive complaints from refugees about ACM staff in each detention centre;

l to stop the practice of waking detainees in the middle of the night to verify their identity unless security concerns exist; and

l to release detainees who have passed an ASIO security check into the community after 14 weeks in detention, under a community sponsorship scheme.

This last proposal led Ruddock to denounce all the committee members, including the Liberals, as naive and "lacking in life experience."

Ruddock's vicious attack on the parliamentarians shows how determined the government is to continue its inflammatory ideological campaign against refugees. Ruddock's barely-contained fury at his colleagues springs not just from the report's recommendations, but from the obvious sympathy that they feel for those fleeing persecution.

Ruddock understands that it is only through demonising the refugees as "queue-jumpers", "illegals" and "bludgers" that the government can maintain any support at all for its punitive approach to refugees. This is why he and Howard worked together to pull the Liberal party room into line and attack those who might dare to sympathise with on-shore asylum seekers.

Unfortunately, the ALP non-opposition's response to the report has been little better than Ruddock's.

Under questioning by ABC radio, Kim Beazley conceded that the report "should not be dismissed out of hand", but then went on, "At the end of the day it has to be understood that it is not an acceptable thing to come into this country unlawfully no matter how good the reason. It also has to be understood that our borders are bleeding."

He then explained that the ALP would solve the refugee "problem" by instituting a better Coast Guard.

The parliamentary report, despite the weakness of its recommendations, represents a step forward for refugees in this country. By painting an honest picture of the abuse that occurs within the concentration camps that our government puts refugees into, it will help to challenge the racist stereotypes the corporate media assist the government in building up.

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