Menu
Ireland's political and cultural magazine
— October – November 2013
T
he Australian Federal Election
in September saw Tony Abbott’s
Liberal/National Coalition party
perpetrate a landslide victory over
the embattled ALP (Labor) party under then
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd.
Of the issues that dominated the election
campaign, it was immigration and border
protection that sucked the imagination of
both the media and the public; as both can-
didates seemed determined to fix attention
on their policy, it was clear that immigration
had become a pivotal issue.
Rudd’s Labor government, formerly
under Julia Gillard, had indulged an influx
in asylum-seekers to Australia’s shores that
in the endsaw the party’s reformist policies
perform a U-turn towards draconian meas-
ures of border control. From January to
August of this year, almost , asylum-
seekers travelled by boat from Indonesia,
largely in the hands of well-paid peo-
ple-smugglers. Overloaded fishing boats
hazarding the treacherous trip to Australia
had occasioned numerous deaths, includ-
ing of women and children, fuelling public
unrest on the crisis.
In July of this year, following intense
media coverage and growing public pressure
in the wake of recent ‘boat’ deaths, Rudd
introduced the ‘Papua New Guinea [PNG]
solution’. Under this scheme, all ‘boat people’
arriving on Australia’s Indian Ocean territory,
Christmas Island, would no longer be reset-
tled in Australia but would be sent instead to
Papua New Guinea for processing and pos-
sible resettlement,with Rudd announcing
to the media at the time “From now on, any
asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by
boat will have no chance of being settled in
Australia”.
The first group of asylum-seekers under
the PNG solution ‒ including the first fam-
ily group ‒ were transferred to the Nauru
detention centre later in July. Included in
the group were twelve children ‒ four girls
and eight boys ranging in age from to
years. In the run-up to the Federal Election,
the PNG solution was Rudd’s very public
demonstration of machismo on border
control.
Tony Abbott’s testosterone-corroborator,
as part of his election manifesto proposed
‘Operation Sovereign Borders’, a military-
led taskforce for border security to patrol
Australia’s coastline. He also promised a re-
introduction of Temporary Protection Visas,
where recognised refugees were granted
visas ‒ subject to review every three years.
Most controversial though was Abbott’s
‘Turn Back Boats’ policy, a cynical electoral
ploy where boats with asylum-seekers enter-
ing Australian waters ‒ many overloaded
Uncivilised White
Australia
Competitive anti-immigration platforms, including
‘Turn Back Boats’ and the ‘Papua New Guinea solution’
dominated the recent election.
By Ken Phelan
Pic
captions
here
INTERNATIONAL AUSTRALIA
I and most Australians want
our immigration policy
radically reviewed and that
of muliculturism abolished. I
believe we are in danger of being
swamped by Asians. Between
1984 and 1995, 40 per cent of
all migrants coming into this
country were of Asian origin.
They have their own culture and
religion, form ghettos and do not
assimilate
Pauline Hanson of the One Nation Party,
in her maiden address to the Australian
Parliament, following the 1996 election.
“
and unseaworthy ‒ would be turned back
to Indonesia by the navy.
Australia, with its punitive post- human-
itarian approach to immigration control
has long been accused of ignoring inter-
national norms on human rights; Amnesty
International has claimed that the PNG solu-
tion shows “absolute contempt for legal and
moral obligations”, while the UNHCR has
stated that “there is no empirical evidence
that the threat of being detained deters
irregular migration or discourages people
from seeking asylum”. Australia is cur-
rently the only country where immigration
detention is mandatory for all unlawful non-
citizens; what Tony Abbott proposed was to
take ‘zero tolerance’ just one step further.
Australia’s detention policy evolved in
the aftermath of the Vietnam War, when the
first wave of so-called ‘boat people’ began to
arrive. Between and boats
carrying about , asylum-seekers hit
Australian shores. These first arrivals were
initially met with sympathy by the Australian
public and granted refugee status relatively
quickly.
When a further boats arrived between
November and January , the
reception was a little less charitable.The
Migration Legislation Amendment Act
introduced changes to how boat arriv-
als were processed, and many of the second
wave of asylum seekers – primarily from
Cambodia ‒ were arrested and detained as
‘illegal entrants’.
The Migration Amendment Act
under the Paul Keating Labor government
imposed mandatory detention for particular
‘designated persons’ in an effort to stem the
flow of boat arrivals. This was later revised
to include all ‘unlawful non-citizens’, as well
as introducing ‘detention debts’, whereby
asylum-seekers would be liable for the full
costs of their immigration detention. The
original -day (-month) detention limit
was also removed by the Migration Reform
Act , in effect giving lease to indefinite
detention.
In , public backlash against the
scandal of the Tampa affair, when over
asylum-seekers were rescued from their
sinking vessel having been refused entry to
Australian waters, gave rise to what became
known as the ‘Pacific Solution’. Conceived
by the Liberal-National government, the
Pacific Solution meant that asylum-seek-
ers were transferred to detention centres
in Nauru in the Pacific Ocean, or Manus
Island in Papua New Guinea while their ref-
ugee status was being determined. Under
the scheme, asylum-seekers did not have
access to legal assistance or judicial review
of adverse decisions.
Jesus knew that there was a
place for everything and it’s not
necessarily everyone’s place to
come to Australia
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott
speaking to ABC TV in 2010.
“
— October – November 2013
The Pacific Solution was ended by the
Rudd government in in favour of a
more ‘compassionate’ approach, only to be
reintroduced by then Labor leader and Prime
Minister Julia Gillard in in response
to unprecedented waves of boat arrivals.
Failure by Gillard to secure an agreement
to transfer asylum-seekers to Malaysia and
instigate much-needed reform conduced
to over , ‘boat people’ arriving on
Australian shores by the end of , and by
September , again under Rudd’s Labor
government, almost , asylum-seek-
ers had arrived, despite the re-introduction
of off-shore processing.
The White Australia Policy had come into
effect in the new Australian Federation with
the Immigration Restriction Act of as
a direct response to conflict between British
and Chinese goldfield miners, and to union
opposition to Pacific islanders working on
sugar plantations in Queensland.
The policy, or collection of policies,
restricted all permanent immigration by
non-Europeans to the country until after
the Second World War. As well as excluding
any migrants under agreement or contract
to perform manual labour within Australia,
the restrictions also included a dictation test
to exclude certain applicants, often given in
a European language with which they were
not familiar.
Then Prime Minister Edmund Bartan, in
support of the bill stated: “The doctrine of
the equality of man was never intended to
apply to the equality of the Englishman and
the Chinaman”, while prominent New South
Wales and Victorian politicians claimed
there was “no place for Asiatics or coloureds”
in the new Australian Federation.
The White Australia Policy remained
unchallenged until the end of World War II,
when Australia’s first immigration minis-
ter faced protests when he sought to deport
non-white refugees, many of whom had
married Australian citizens. It wasn’t until
that the policy was fully dismantled
by the Whitlam Labor government, although
implementation during the years of largest
population growth ensured its legacy was
palpable in the demographic of modern
Australia, where people are predominantly
of white ethnicity or European descent.
In , former Secretary of the
Department of Foreign Affairs Philip Flood
carried out an inquiry into Australia’s over-
crowded detention facilites. The results
showed widespread psychiatric problems
within the detainee population, as well as
incidents of self-harm and the physical, ver-
bal and sexual abuse of children. A report
by the HREOC (Human Rights and Equality
Opportunity Commission) in also gave
a scathing overview of the treatment of chil-
dren in detention.
Overcrowding, delays in processing,
protests and rioting in detention centres
have attracted criticism for successive gov-
ernments and in , the Royal Australian
and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists and
the Australian Medical Association (AMA)
demanded an urgent review of government
detention policy.
Despite an announcement by government
in June that most children had been
moved into community detention, ,
children remained in
some form of deten-
tion facility at the end
of . According
to Australian Human
Rights Commissioner
Gillian Triggs, there
are now more chil-
dren than ever in
immigration centres.
Since , over
, asylum seek-
ers have drowned
making the journey
from Indonesia to
Australia - includ-
ing five children,
an -month-old-
baby and a pregnant
woman in July of
this year. The solu-
tion proposed for
Australia’s immigra-
tion policy under
Tony Abbott’s new-
ly-elected Liberal/
National Coalition
government ‒ if fully
implemented ‒ can
only lead to more
tragedy.
Under Abbott’s
Turn Back Boats policy, overloaded fishing
boats travelling from Indonesia now face
the prospect of being turned back to sea.
Temporary Protection Visas offer a cruel
and uncertain future for refugees, who,
after three years may face deportation to
their country of origin, while Operation
Sovereign Borders, with a military approach
to immigration control seems unfitting for
any civilized democracy.
While Australia undoubtedly faces some
tough decisions on immigration, it now risks
precipitating a humanitarian crisis as over-
flowing boats continue to make the journey
from Indonesia. Although there have been
some expressions of concern for the welfare
of ‘boat people’ from Australia’s politicians,
the ghost of White Australia lurks behind
the public facade, and little enough seems
changed since .
Over 100
asylum-
seekers in
Indonesian
waters died
last year
after
Australian
authorities
failed to
react for 2
days after
the rst
emergency
call, and
told them
to go
back to
Indonesia
INTERNATIONAL AUSTRALIA
Abbott’s
‘Turn Back
Boats’
policy
requires
that boats
with
asylum-
seekers
entering
Australian
waters
be turned
back to
Indonesia
by the navy
“
