Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. On Friday night I had no idea where to start. Kevin Rudd’s new asylum seeker policy shocked me. I literally had no words. Over the weekend, I’ve been trying to ask myself, how have we ended up at this point? How has the PNG solution been the answer that we’ve apparently been looking for? For me, it all comes down to the policy question we have been asking, and I think we’ve been asking the wrong one for far too long.
The problem I have with the ALP’s policy is not the practice or the deal itself, but the logic that underlies it. A logic is based on one simple question; how can we deter people from coming to Australia by boat? How can we ‘stop the boats’?
Concern about stopping the boats is genuine. I don’t want to deny that. Even if I don’t agree, I am not here to say that concerns about border security, about asylums seekers taking jobs, and about the idea that they are jumping the queue are not real. The latest concern, the genuine horror of people dying at sea, is probably the most serious, and in many ways, the most compelling.
And if we look at it this way, deterrence makes sense. If we want people to stop dying at sea, we need to deter them from making the trip in the first place. The question, how do we deter people from coming, is obvious. But, when you look at this policy – one which is a pretty clear final answer (for the moment) of this question – you can see why the question itself is so problematic.
The logic behind a deterrence strategy is simple as well. You create an end destination that is worse that the place people left in the first place. You create a place that is ‘not worth the risky boat trip’. We’ve tried many different ways; detention centres, temporary visas, no-disadvantages tests – but they’ve all still resulted in the final goal – the opportunity to live in Australia. This policy takes that away.
Let’s just reflect on. I’ve never been forced to live in a war-torn country. I’ve never faced persecution that has made me fear for my life. I’ve never thought I needed to seek asylum somewhere. I cannot speak for the experiences asylum have and are going through. But it seems logical to me that in a world of terror, war, persecution, famine, disease and death, you have to create a pretty terrible place to be a real deterrence.
And this is where it all unravels. Because unfortunately for Rudd and the ALP, I don’t think the PNG solution finds that place. In fact, I don’t think anywhere does. In Australian Greens materials sent out over the weekend they featured an asylum seeker Najeeba who fled from Afghanistan by boat in 2000 fleeing the Taliban. Najeeba, the Greens said, is Hazaras, an ethnic minority in Afghanistan that still faces significant discrimination. One quote from Najeeba really stood out to me:
“We take our chances with boats because the Australian Government could never match the horror we flee from.”
And this is the reality, and will stay the reality for many when looking at the PNG solution. The terror so many people are facing means that deterrence is almost impossible to achieve. In fact in an interview over the weekend, Immigration Minister Tony Burke, unexpectedly highlighted that fact, saying:
“The commitment under the convention is not for people to be able to move to a country with a particular average income … [it] is for people to be safe and to be free from persecution.
“The Australian Government will assist Papua New Guinea in making sure those commitments can be met.”
In doing so, Burke admits one of the fundamental flaws of the policy – that it still provides an opportunity to find a place that is safer than many of the situations people may be facing, and therefore find a place that is worth a risky boat trip to. There is a real chance people will still come by boats – but we will now just be making life much more difficult for them.
But it is not the failure of the basic logic that makes this policy so bad. It is when it works that it becomes really terrible. By creating a place that is worse than the place people are fleeing what we are doing is potentially leaving people in situations of persecution, war and potential death.
Let’s take a look for example at people fleeing persecution because of their sexuality. Under the UN, the simple existence of legislation that bans homosexuality is cause for claims of asylum. The problem is however that these very sorts of laws exist in Papua New Guinea. Anal sex between two men is banned in PNG with prison sentences of up to 14 years. A person who ‘commits an act of gross indecency with another male person’ in public in subject to 3 years imprisonment. GLTBI people face significant discrimination in PNG. LGBTI people in PNG are not free of persecution.
That means we could easily have situations where people who are fleeing persecution because of their sexuality end up in a place where homosexuality is illegal. They end up in a place with legislation that the UN defines as harsh enough to warrant a claim of asylum. The capacity to escape persecution is gone.
And it’s not just queers who face this fate. We’ve heard plenty of statistics about violence against women, sex trafficking and general violence in Papua New Guinea. It is considered one of the most violent places in the world. Unfortunately, our most northern neighbour is not a safe place for many, and the details of the current plan don’t provide answers to how people will be safe in their new home.
And so for some, the policy will work. The deterrence will be enough. PNG will be an awful enough place to avoid to ensure people stay elsewhere. But that in itself is where the greatest tragedy lies.
Because whilst Labor and Coalitions politicians are talking about ‘saving lives at sea’, the harsh reality is that people are only risking their lives at sea because they are at risk at home. Most of the people who are coming to Australia by boat are not doing so because they just feel like risking their life, but because the threat at home is so grave that the risk is worth it. As Karl Kruszelnicki said:
“Refugees are not coming here because we have really good TV shows. They’re coming because people are shooting at them.”
And so when we deter them from coming, what we are doing is leaving them in a place where their lives are at even more risk than when they are at sea.
So yes, we may ‘save lives at sea’. But in doing so, we are ignoring the lives being lost at war, in famine, and through persecution overseas. We wont get awful images on our TV screens anymore, but the lives are still being lost.
So where does this leave us? For some, the trip on the boat will still be worth it. With the realities of life in so many places, I can still see why the option presented by this Government is a better option than what many may be facing at home. But for the ones we stop the fate could be even worse. For the ones we stop, the fate is to keep them in a world of persecution, fear and death. They may not die at sea, but they will face the threat of death and persecution at home – somewhere we can’t see them.
The fundamental problem with this policy is the underlying logic behind it. We are asking the wrong questions, and in doing so getting the wrong answers. The question shouldn’t be how do we deter people, but how do we ensure people are safe and free of persecution? Deterrence is not a solution to the refugee problem. Instead, the solution lies in ending the persecution and death in the first place, and then when it exists providing safe options for people to escape to safety.