ALP ranks respond to mass pressure on refugees

ALP ranks respond to mass pressure on refugees

The overwhelming support among ALP state conference delegates for some change in policy has rattled the Labor leadership. After the NSW state conference decision on May 25, federal Labor leader Simon Crean was quick to reaffirm to the media the ALP’s support for mandatory detention for “as long as it takes”, although he also emphasised Labor’s commitment to bring children out of the detention centres, “mothball” the Woomera centre and an end the private management of detention centres.

State branches do not determine federal Labor policy, which is currently under review in an process overseen by federal ALP deputy leader Jenny Macklin. According to Macklin, a new policy will be released by the end of the year.

Crean talked tough to the media. “Nobody seriously argues that there shouldn’t be some form of detention”, he said in response to the NSW conference’s call for an end to mandatory detention and its replacement with “mandatory processing”. Shadow immigration minister Julia Gillard was more dismissive, saying of the motion, “it sounds like detention to me”.

And of course it does. The motion presented to the NSW ALP conference falls far short of what is needed to end the imprisonment of asylum seekers.

But the motion passed by the Queensland state conference on June 2 calls for an end to mandatory detention and its replacement with a “humanitarian and compassionate” system. It’s success indicates that the NSW Labor for Refugees group that drafted the NSW conference motion may have been underestimating what the delegates were willing to vote for.

These changes in ALP delegates’ attitude to mandatory detention are yet another indication of what Green Left Weekly has been arguing for some time — the large growth in the refugees’ rights campaign since the Tampa affair in September is putting the government and the ALP under considerable pressure.

The conference votes are not primarily a result of the dogged lobbying work carried out by ALP members; they are a result of more and more people being prepared to speak-out against the mandatory detention policy, which was brought in by the federal Labor government in 1992.

There are many signs of this, including the huge turn out at pro-refugee public meetings last month. Activists selling GLW on the streets have commented that pro-refugee covers elicit far less “let them drown” comments these days than they did even six months ago. Even the ninemsn web polls (of dubious reliability, true) show a big jump in support for refugees from around February — the same time that the Howard government’s lies about refugees throwing their children overboard were exposed.

The growing public opposition to its mandatory detention policy is showing in the behaviour and the rhetoric of federal government ministers. While nine months ago they were happy to be seen as aggressively anti-refugee, these days they attempt to throw a thin humanitarian cloak over the policy by sprucing up the desert prison camps with new licks of paint to entertain visiting United Nations observers, “scaling down” the worst prisons in Woomera and Port Hedland and moving the “problem” out of sight through the new Christmas Island detention centre and the “Pacific solution”.

The delegates to the NSW, Queensland and Victorian state ALP conferences are just as affected by the swing in public opinion as the Coalition government. In defiance of a national leadership hell-bent on moving to the right, and trying to compete with the Coalition for the racist vote, delegates want to the party to move with the swing in public opinion.

The state conference decisions of the ALP are a very positive sign — not because the ALP is going to ride in on a white horse and free the refugees (Crean and Macklin have made that clear, if anyone doubted it), but because the refugees’ rights movement’s enormous and broad support is having an impact.

That movement must flex the muscles of that support by mobilising it in large public protest actions. Not nearly enough people know they can protest against the government’s refugee policy on the weekend of June 22-23. Help us to spread the word, and bring Australia closer to a humane refuge for the world’s persecuted.

From Green Left Weekly, June 5, 2002.
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