BY SARAH STEPHEN
It's hard to believe that it's possible, but the federal government is proposing to get even tougher on asylum seekers who arrive without proper documentation. Restrictions on their right to appeal, new regulations allowing officials to deem those without papers as fraudulent and five new detention centres are their latest innovations.
In recent weeks the media has treated us to a renewed frenzy about "floods" and "tides" of Middle Eastern people "invading" Australia by boat. More than 1000 have arrived during the month of August. But given that no boats arrived on Australia's shores from Indonesia during July due to bad weather, there are clear reasons for the spate of new arrivals.
The bulk of the recently arrived asylum seekers are from just two countries — Iraq and Afghanistan — which also account for the majority of asylum seekers arriving in Australia over the past three years. The reigns of Saddam Hussein in Iraq and of the fundamentalist, CIA-backed Taliban in Afghanistan have created intolerable conditions for tens of thousands of opponents and dissidents.
Reverend David Pargeter, the spokesperson for Justice for Asylum Seekers, spoke to SBS TV news on August 23, "This notion of flood is just hysteria. Last year we didn't even fulfil our quota of refugees for the intake. So when are these asylum seekers ever going to experience the humanity of a government rather than its harsh policies?"
Not any time soon, if Prime Minister John Howard and immigration minister Philip Ruddock get their way.
As of August 20, existing detention centres, with a maximum capacity to house 3820 people, were housing 3007. The federal government has announced the construction of two new permanent detention centres, planned for Brisbane and Darwin, due for completion in the next two years.
In the meantime, any "overflow" from existing detention centres will be taken to three military bases, which will be refurbished in the coming months at a cost of $22 million. The three additional sites will increase capacity by 3100 to 6920.
Australasian Correctional Management will run the three additional centres at El Alamein camp near Port Augusta, South Australia; Singleton base in the Hunter Valley in NSW and naval facility HMAS Coonawarra near Darwin. Immigration minister Philip Ruddock has indicated that the Darwin naval base will be a temporary facility, holding asylum seekers for just a few days before they're transferred to other centres.
Refugee rights supporters in all three regions are now gearing up for further campaigning.
Pargeter questioned the appropriateness of housing refugee claimants in military bases. It "probably gives the worst possible message to asylum seekers fleeing hostile regimes", he said. "They must be wondering whether this is a similar kind of regime."
John McGill, the convenor of the Socialist Alliance in Adelaide, told Green Left Weekly that the alliance "believes refugees shouldn't be put into detention in the first place — so we certainly don't think there's any need for more of them."
The Socialist Alliance in Adelaide has stated that it will campaign against the El Alamein camp, as it has done against the existing centre at Woomera.
The three temporary camps should be used for entirely different purposes, McGill suggests. "We're campaigning for the closure of all detention centres, getting rid of the barbed wire fences and transforming them into migration centres, which many of these detention centres were 30-40 years ago when migrants first arrived in Australia, to help them to make a transition into the community."
Howard has started to take a more prominent role in the debate over the treatment of asylum seekers, perhaps in an effort to back up immigration minister Philip Ruddock, who has come under increasing fire for his cold, inhumane attitude to the suffering of detained asylum seekers.
In response to the arrival of more asylum seekers, Howard told Melbourne radio station 3AW on August 17: "We have to redouble our efforts to make it less attractive to come to Australia and that means if possible getting further measures through the parliament to tighten the rules and make it less beckoning to come in the first place.
"I think we have to look yet again at further tightening of the law particularly the laws that can be abused so that people can stretch out an appeal after appeal."
Interviewer Neil Mitchell asked Howard if the government planned to remove their right of appeal.
"Well, you've got to", Howard replied. "I think you've got to ensure that the procedure is not abused."
Alongside a possible winding back of avenues for judicial appeal, the government's proposed legislative changes to the Migration Act include a bar on granting "a permanent protection visa for four years after the date of any conviction in Australia, whether during detention or while in the community, for a criminal offence carrying a maximum penalty of imprisonment of 12 months or more".
The effect of this amendment, if passed, would be to delay refugee status to those who participate in any property damage and threatening behaviour while in detention (maximum penalty seven years' jail) or who escape from detention (maximum penalty five years' jail).
Designed to make it harder for asylum seekers to prove their claims, another proposed amendment gives the immigration minister the ability to refuse to accept asylum seekers' stated country of origin if they arrive without documentation and fail to have a "reasonable explanation".
The proposed amendment states "in a claim for a protection visa, the Minister may, in the absence (without reasonable explanation) of acceptable identifying documentation, draw adverse inferences as to the veracity of the claimed identity and/or nationality".
In simple terms, Ruddock wants to drive home his view that anybody without identification is deliberately trying to defraud the system.
Nothing could be more incorrect.
Lucy, an Australian refugee rights activist living in Europe, explained her experience: "Most refugees don't have passports of their own — they may be lent them by traffickers or they may buy them en route and use them just once to get through borders. In Europe, having a passport can be a liability as the government uses it to show that you planned your escape."
Peter Wilkie from the Refugee Rights Action Network in Perth explained further: "In the case of Afghanis, very few have genuine passports, because it is dangerous to travel on real documents that identify you as someone who the government is trying to persecute. To get a visa to Indonesia they pay a bribe to Indonesian officials in Pakistan."
McGill lambasted the treatment of undocumented asylum seekers in Australian detention centres: "There are hundreds of asylum seekers without documentation languishing in Australia's detention centres including, for example, 102 Palestinians who are officially stateless.
"What is the government going to do with them? Leave them in detention forever? They have nowhere to send them to because no country will accept them. They have committed no crime. Whatever their reason for being here, they've nowhere else to go. On humanitarian grounds alone, we should release them from detention and let them stay."
Ruddock told the August 24 Australian, people smugglers "exploit our humanity and they exploit our vulnerability ... What it [the announcement of more detention centres] is saying is the mandatory detention will not be unwound regardless of the numbers".
"Sure, there is a problem with people smugglers", commented McGill. "But it's precisely because of the fortress policies of the Australian government. If the government was genuine about helping refugees they would make it easier to come here, and undercut the people smugglers altogether."
In 1999, three-year temporary protection visas were introduced to deter asylum seekers from making the journey to Australia. It was argued that the restriction of rights associated with TPVs — no provision for family reunion, no Medicare rights, no social security rights, and no right to make trips out of the country — would make sure Australia wasn't seen as a "soft touch".
Long waits — from months to years — in detention have also been deliberately used by the government as a "deterrent".
These measures have not and will not counterbalance the overwhelming need of people from Iraq and Afghanistan, and other countries with repressive regimes, to flee terror and violence and find a country where they will be safe. All they will do is extend the terror and deny safety.