Bruce Duncan. Australia’s moral crisis: shipping babies and families off to Nauru

Feb 8, 2016

How has it come to this, that the Australian government is poised to send back 37 babies, 54 children and their families – 267 in all – into the traumatic conditions of Nauru?

Only a few years ago many Australians would have considered it inconceivable that our governments should have imposed such shocking treatment on people who fled to our country seeking asylum as refugees.

What has brought matters to a head is the government’s cynical manipulation of the law to prevent the High Court of Australia ruling in favour of a Bangladeshi woman who had been brought from detention in Nauru to Australia because of complications in her pregnancy in 2014. She brought an action in the High Court to prevent her being returned to Nauru.

The government responded by rushing new legislation through both houses of parliament on 24 and 25 June 2015, changing the migration act to justify any action taken by the government to support its regional processing policies. The law came into force on 30 June 2015, but was backdated to take effect from 18 August 2012. Only one judge, Justice Gordon, dissented from the judgment of the other six judges of the High Court.

As Professor George Williams wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald on 3 February, by sending people back to Nauru, Australia was washing it hands of responsibility. ‘There is no requirement that children are well treated or that their best interests are safeguarded. There is also no need for asylum seekers to be treated fairly, such as by having their claims promptly and properly assessed.’ http://www.law.unsw.edu.au/news/2016/02/asylum-seekers-nauru-are-legal-black-hole

Waleed Aly in the Age of 5 February was more trenchant. ‘Nauru has become a screen behind which we hide our own culpability; its sovereignty a charade, really – a sort of legal fiction we use to obscure the consequences of our own policy’. We had descended into a ‘world of make-believe’ and become adept at ‘lying to ourselves’. https://theconversation.com/sending-children-back-to-nauru-risks-creating-a-generation-of-damaged-people-54115

The issue has provoked a crisis of conscience among many people, including politicians and decision-makers, about where the logic of deterrence of asylum seekers has led us. Undoubtedly many politicians are conflicted about the dilemma they face. Labor member for Fremantle and a former lawyer at the United Nations, Melissa Parke, insisted that Australia’s laws were ‘certainly a serious violation of our international legal obligations and are utterly repugnant in a moral sense.’ http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-03/labor-mp-melissa-parke-hits-out-at-immigration-laws/7137508

On the one hand, we all want to prevent asylum seekers arriving by boats, resulting in hundreds of people drowning at sea. To stop the boats, Australia established the deterrent of indefinite detention in harsh and remote detention on Nauru or Manus Island.

On the other hand, church, human rights and medical authorities http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-02-03/mental-health-children-detention-darwin/7137858 , and https://theconversation.com/sending-children-back-to-nauru-risks-creating-a-generation-of-damaged-people-54115

are protesting vigorously that our policies are driving hundreds of detainees into mental illness, especially children. It is unprecedented that Fairfax papers have given their front pages in early February to photos of many babies about to be sent back into detention with their mothers or families.

Growing protests against treatment of asylum seekers

Various Anglican and Uniting churches http://www.baptistcareaustralia.org.au/documents/item/965 have invoked the ancient right of sanctuary to prevent these children being carted back to Nauru, an island of 10,000 people with a barely functioning government, weak policing and very limited resources. Church leaders harbouring these asylum seekers could themselves face arrest.

Significant protest marches and meetings have been held in cities throughout the country, attended by many mainstream voters, as well as church and community groups. Mums and dads are undoubtedly moved by the thought of what harm such detention in the conditions on Nauru would do to their own children.

Morally it is repugnant to punish current detainees on Manus Island and Nauru in order to deter other asylum seekers who might think of arriving by boat, by demonstrating how harshly they will be treated, and keeping in indefinite detention with no prospect of settlement in Australia.

New Zealand offered in February 2013 to take 150 of the asylum seekers each year for three years, but Australia turned down the offer lest the refugees gain NZ citizenship after five years’ residence and then enter Australia. With the migrant crisis in Europe and the Middle East, few other countries will accept them. A handful has gone to Cambodia at a cost of $55 million to our government, which has also approached Kyrgyzstan and the Philippines. A small number of refugees has also tried to settle in Papua New Guinea and Nauru. However, most of the asylum seekers are in despair, and face years in detention.

What is to be done?

Many people are appealing to Mr Turnbull that the limited numbers of newborns and their families can be allowed to remain in Australia without reviving the boat arrivals. Church, community and academic http://opcvoice.com/index.php/news/item/45-letter-to-prime-minister-malcolm-turnbull-open-letter-to-prime-minister-calling-for-release-of-children-in-onshore-detention-and-on-the-nauru-opc and medical groups have been particularly prominent.

In Melbourne, Bishop Vincent Long, spokesman for the Australian Catholics bishops and a former refugee himself, urged Prime Minister Turnbull and Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, to show compassion and not cause more harm to these people. He called on the government to ‘ensure that no child is subject to an unsafe and harmful environment’ and that no one be returned to face ‘physical, psychological and sexual violence and harm.’ He said the Catholic Church opposed mandatory and detention and offshore detention. http://mediablog.catholic.org.au/media-statement-from-bishop-vincent-long-ofm-conv-australian-catholic-bishops-delegate-for-refugees-regarding-the-high-courts-decision-on-offshore-processing/ Thirty years ago Long set out from Vietnam, drifting at sea for seven days before spending 16 months in a refugee camp.

Robert Manne in The Monthly also appealed to Mr Turnbull. ‘The idea that allowing a few children out of detention in Australia would act as an international signal that would see the return of the people smuggling trade was insane.’ https://www.themonthly.com.au/blog/robert-manne/2016/03/2016/1454477557/how-has-it-come

Fr Frank Brennan in Eureka Street argued that turning back the boats has stopped the arrival of unauthorised asylum seekers; the harsh deterrent policies of Nauru and Manus Island were no longer needed, and hence they could be closed. Most immediately, the children in Australia should be allowed to remain here with their families, he wrote. http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=45948#.VrSD-E9yK4M

One of Australia’s most respected journalists, Michelle Grattan, saw some hope in Mr Turnbull’s cautious response that each case needed to be considered individually and that he wouldn’t ‘send children back into harm’s way.’ https://theconversation.com/governments-tough-reaction-to-high-court-judgment-contains-just-a-little-wriggle-room-54129

Public opinion on these most vulnerable of refugees has shifted decisively, as the latest appeals from state and territory government leaders in Victoria, Queensland, New South Wales and the ACT indicate. It is no longer seen as a party-political issue, but as a matter of human decency. All eyes will now be on Prime Minister Turnbull to recast our policies on refugees and asylum seekers and end this moral blight on the conscience of our country.

Bruce Duncan is a Redemptorist priest who lectures in social ethics at Yarra Theological Union within Melbourne’s University of Divinity. He is one of the founders of the ecumenical advocacy network, Social Policy Connections.

 

 

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