Tony Iltis, Melbourne
"The optimism that many Australians felt following significant reforms to asylum and refugee policy in 2005 has been cruelly dashed by the government's wretched response to Indonesia's displeasure at the granting of protection visas to 42 West Papuans in March", David Manne, coordinator of the Victorian Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre, told a May 5 forum hosted by the Castan Centre for Human Rights at Monash University.
Manne represented the 43 West Papuan refugees whose arrival in January was the catalyst for the changes.
Following the scandals surrounding the wrongful detention of permanent resident Cornelia Rau and the deportation of Australian citizen Vivian Solon, a compromise between the government and a group of dissident Liberal backbenchers led by Petrou Georgiou had created what Manne described as "significant but inadequate reforms".
While the release of children from detention and the resettlement of all but two of the Nauru detainees represented concrete steps in the right direction, they never signified a true change of heart by the government. By the end of July 2005, all children had been released at the minister's discretion, not by an enforceable law.
On April 13, immigration minister Amanda Vanstone announced the government's intention to introduce legislation further limiting the rights of asylum seekers who come to Australia by boat without valid documentation. Under the proposed legislation, all unauthorised boat arrivals will have their claims for asylum assessed at an offshore processing centre.
This new policy represents, according to Manne, a move away from the Georgiou reforms towards "a new era of extremity and cruelty".
The new policy will deny "illegal" asylum seekers access to the Australian legal system. Among other things, this will make the Refugee Review Tribunal (RRT) redundant. Manne pointed out that over the last four years the RRT had overturned 90% of immigration department decisions rejecting claims by Iraqi and Afghan refugees. His own role in representing the West Papuans, all but one of whom have been given temporary visas, would not have been possible if the new policy had been in effect earlier this year.
Furthermore, even those found to be "genuine" refugees will have to stay in the Pacific island camps until the Australian government finds a third country to accept them. "It is not clear why any other country, already reluctant to take up what are properly Australia's obligations and responsibilities, would be in the slightest interested in resettling people who have already been discarded as too troublesome politically", Manne said.
He also pointed out that when it was first introduced in 2001, the "Pacific solution" was justified on the ground that the Iraqi and Afghan arrivals were "secondary movements", i.e., they had passed through other countries on their way to Australia. The West Papuans, however, had come to Australia as their first port of call.
"The government has also refused to discount the possibility of using our navy to intercept or interdict boats with asylum seekers on board, without undertaking any assessment of the person's fears or need for protection, before handing them back to the alleged persecutor, such as Indonesia", Manne said.
Barrister and refugee advocate Julian Burnside QC told the forum that under the new offshore processing regime, asylum seekers detained on Nauru, which is not a signatory to the UN Human Rights Convention, would have their refugee claims examined by Australian officials, but not under the laws of either country, or indeed any country, and in total isolation. He said that the wrongful detention of Cornelia Rau would never have been uncovered if she had been detained on Nauru.
The full text of David Manne's speech can be found at < http://www.law.monash.edu.au/castancentre/events/2006/manne-A HREF="mailto:paper-5-5-06.pdf"><paper-5-5-06.pdf>.
From Green Left Weekly, May 31, 2006.
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