An approach to refugees that isn’t shameful

I consider myself a centrist slightly on the left. I would like to vote labour. I liked the Gillard government—its policies, its leader, its principles, just about everything except its machinations. But last year I sent the immigration minister an email saying that if refugee policy kept racing to the bottom I would be forced to change my vote to the greens, much in the manner of people who voted greens when Rudd backtracked on the emissions trading scheme in the previous election. Shortly thereafter, Australia excised itself from its own immigration in a pathetic attempt to manage the ‘boat people’ ‘problem’. I sent the minister another email saying I was changing my vote. Since then we’ve announced the PNG ‘solution’ and the opposition’s only response was to announce an even more atrocious policy, namely the Nauru ‘solution’.

some solution...

These policies are morally bankrupt and a disgrace to the nation. I would like to think helping those in need is a basic human instinct. At the very least I would like to think it is a socialised human discipline. I would like to think that we’ve all been down on our luck at some point and benefitted from the assistance of a Good Samaritan. Why can’t we extent this same sympathy, hospitality and care to those fleeing war zones, dire poverty, persecution and terror? Worse, why do we spit in their face and consign them to indefinite detention on small islands in the middle of nowhere? Why do we think it is okay to detain children in the conditions present in our detention centres? Why do we think it is okay to employ a company that specialises in managing US prison’s to run our detention centres for refugees? Why do we think solitary confinement is an acceptable punishment for misbehaviour in these centres?

Why does a country that values the principles of liberalism think it is okay to detain indefinitely without trial?

How does a nation build in large part by migrants, many of whom were refugees from China, Vietnam and Eastern Europe, get to this point?

There are a few arguments worth addressing. The first is that marginalised Australian’s need to be protected from foreign labour. This argument misses the fact that boat arrivals represent a small percentage of our total migrant intake. The government’s total migration program for 2013 is 210 000 places. At current rates, boat arrivals will equal c. 26 000 this year. That’s less than 13% of total migration. If the government was serious about protecting marginalised people from an influx of foreign workers they might want to review their immigration policy.

Doing that would be incredibly stupid economically in any case. Australia has a shortage of skilled labour that is only going to get worse as the baby boomers retire. Migration is an important part of the solution to this challenge to our ongoing prosperity, and actually needs further liberalisation. For more information, see this interview with ANU demographer Peter MacDonald.  

Australian’s don’t need to be protected from foreign labour, because we have a labour shortage. They need to be given better opportunities to get educated and get better jobs. They also need to be exposed to the rigors of the labour market rather than be allowed to blame foreign workers for their woes when the responsibility lies with their inability to skill-up and move to places where work is available. It’s obviously sad when communities end because a company shuts down, but that’s life. Provided the government assists with the transition to new jobs and new environments I have no sympathy for people who want a welfare check, whether in the form of cash payments to households or subsidies for uncompetitive industries, especially when they channel their feelings of insecurity into barbaric policies towards the world’s most vulnerable.

A second argument is that we need to stop people from drowning, and here’s where things get interesting. There’s obviously a tremendous amount of xenophobia and outright racism associated with refugee policy, why else would the government run ads like this:

and this:

What the hell do these ads have to do with people’s safety?

But it is also a fair statement that people smuggling represents a threat to human life and we should do things in our power to minimise it. Smugglers often use poor quality boats and overfill them, leading to drowning.

So far our policy in response is to make it ‘unattractive’ to come to Australia by boat. To show why this is a stupid policy I give you the following photograph:

"Don't come by boat, it's too dangerous"

Boats may be unsafe, but they're a damn sight better than staying put. 

What this deterrence approach misses is the fact that refugees arriving by boat are not poor. A recent article in the Australian tells of an Afghani family that paid $25000 to people smugglers to come to Australia by boat. That is more than enough to fly a family of five into the country. Boat arrivals would rather arrive by plane, they just can't. This isn’t about queue jumping; it’s about the difficulties of having appropriate documentation and fleeing a country in the middle of a civil war when numerous groups are trying to kill you. The solution is not to trap such people, wealthy, educated and skilled, overseas, but to improve the capacity of Australia to process visa and asylum applications.

Yet we do the exact opposite. We have frequently declared that we are freezing visa processing, as though it is something to be proud of, and our visa processing centres are infamously under staffed. A report from the auditor general for 2011-2012 said the security assessment arm of ASIO is understaffed by up to 30%!

These are the kinds of issues that go missing in the simplistic distinction between ‘stop the boats!’ and ‘let them all in!’. Neither policy is a good one. Open borders would not be good for security or the economy. Flows of people need to be managed at least enough for us to be able to monitor their size.  

What is needed is a policy with broad vision that approaches Australia’s refugee obligations with an eye to a concerted regional response. If we had started implementing such a policy back when the Rudd government first came to power it would have been realised by now. But such a policy takes more than one election cycle to see implemented, so instead politicos have opted for either quick fixes or no policy at all.

What kind of policy am I talking about exactly? Here are some starting points:

1. Establish well funded and well staffed visa processing centres in our South East Asian neighbour countries and in countries bordering the principle sources of refugee flows. This would be similar to the processing centres in Austria during the communist period. People who make it to these refugee centres could have their visas processed quickly and then board planes or seaworthy boats to make the trip to Australia. This would overcome the principle complaint of those on the left of this issue, namely that people are consigned to excessive periods of detention. It would also overcome the principle excuse of those on the right, namely that people are drowning, by allowing more people to get on planes. To make things even safer Australia could sponsor the establishment of a passenger shipping route between South East Asia and Australia (). 

2. Negotiate with ASEAN nations to work out a robust refugee sharing arrangement to manage those refugees who are not offered places in Australia and those who need to wait a longer period before being allowed across the ocean. This is imperative for managing our intake. Australia is not a large nation and it is not equipped to handle enormous inflows. We could take more than we do, for sure, but opening the floodgates is not a sensible policy. Our quota needs to be developed with an eye to our leadership responsibilities to the international community, our moral responsibilities to ourselves, our economic needs and capacity, and our absorptive capacity. 

Keeping a relatively low quota for Australia could be managed by offering ASEAN nations more aid in exchange for carrying the bulk of the refugee load. The cost of our current refugee policy is more than $1billion per year. That is 17.5% of our $5.7 billion aid budget. Diverting that cost to a more robust regional policy would go a long way to making it happen. Such a policy would have the additional effect of fostering regional integration and cooperation, an important programme for the Asian Century. 

4. Create a strong system of incentives to encourage new arrivals to move to those parts of the country that have a labour shortage rather than just simply settling in the capitals. This system should be extended to everyone in Australia, not just migrants/refugees. This would prevent the emergence of large ethnic blocks in the outer suburbs of the capital cities, which make locals feel that the pace of change is too fast. It would help alleviate labour shortages across the country. It would also push ethnic diversity into rural areas where racism is most concentrated (there, I said it).


Bringing about this kind of policy, by which I don't mean specifically my policy above, but rather just a regional approach to managing refugee flows and a detailed policy of resettlement in Australia, requires both the right and the left to approach the refugee debate in a more mature manner. Right wing commentators have to admit that xenophobia is a major and unacceptable part of this issue, and that mandatory indefinite detention is not a 'tough' policy but an abhorrent one. The left needs to be willing to engage in an open and nuanced discussion of assimilation. How much is necessary, and how do we sensitively and effectively bring it about. When Arab youths harass volunteer life savers, when Serb and Croatian fans march across tennis tournaments throwing furniture at each other, and when Imams describe Australian women as 'uncovered meat', it's understandable that people think 'go back to where you came from'. We have a duty to help the world's vulnerable and welcome those who would like to call Australia home, but only if they recognise a reciprocal duty to respect those of our customs that made Australia an attractive migration destination in the first place. 

By world standards, our parliament and government institutions are remarkably effective at handling extremely complex issues. We should be able to resolve this one without recourse to policies that many of us ashamed to be Australian. Yet the parties contesting the election in two weeks either have a 'fuck off we're full policy' or an equally braindead 'everyone love everyone' policy. If we're going to resolve this issue to everyone's satisfaction, the first step needs to be an honest, intelligent, adult discourse, the rest will follow.