Andrew Hall & Sarah Stephen
At its January 29-31 conference, the ALP will decide on a new policy towards refugees and asylum seekers. Framed by the impending national election, the policy debate is likely to be heated. Labor for Refugees has been lobbying for a more humane policy to be adopted, which appears to have significant support among rank-and-file members.
There is significantly more delegates at this conference — 400 — than previous ones. The factional wrangling involved in their election, however, may mean the body of delegates is not more representative of membership views.
New Labor leader Mark Latham has attempted to play both sides, promising to be "harder on border protection", while being "more compassionate" to those who make it through the "safety net".
On January 21, he announced that he would back a compromise deal worked out by immigration spokesperson Stephen Smith. The deal includes a pledge to allow refugees to stay on in Australia when their temporary protection visas expire.
Latham is pitching this as a way of providing permanent protection to refugees who apply in Australia, which the Coalition government has attempted to abolish. However, it is a long way from the demands of the refugee-rights movement, including Labor for Refugees, which demands the abolition of temporary protection visas, and their replacement with permanent visas.
There is widespread discontent within Labor ranks over the party's regressive refugee policy. The 2002 review of the party's structures by Bob Hawke and Neville Wran found that "No policy issue arose more frequently in our listening to and reading submissions from party members than that of boat people and refugees."
The review's recommendations, however, fell far short of the membership's expectations. Labor for Refugees has been focusing energy on the upcoming conference as the best chance of changing the party's policy.
Labor for Refugees is not putting out comments in the lead up to the conference, so as not to prejudice any deals that might be made. However, activists from the ACT Refugee Action Committee, including several members of the ALP, are hopeful of a positive outcome. They point out that the election of refugee-rights supporter Carmen Lawrence as ALP president in November is indicative of membership sentiment. "But we won't be holding our breath", one member told Green Left Weekly.
Many rank-and-file members are looking to Lawrence for a lead. Lawrence has called for TPVs to be abolished entirely and for asylum seekers suffering severe depression to be released from detention. "I have to say that I'd be very disappointed if TPVs were retained", Lawrence told the Jan 22 Age, in response to Latham's reported compromise deal.
Latham has made it clear he doesn't want changes beyond the compromise deal, which includes the release of children from detention, returning management of detention centres to the public sector, and increased media access to them. He certainly doesn't want the party to scrap mandatory detention.
The proposed policy being put to the conference by the party's leadership retains mandatory detention "for the proper administrative purposes of ensuring the health, identity and security checking of all unauthorised arrivals, enabling the expediting of processing and ensuring that those whose claims have failed are locatable and available for removal from Australia".
"I believe in mandatory detention", Latham told Sydney radio 2GB on January 18, it is just that "our approach is to do it as quickly as possible. We want to process 90% of the asylum seekers in 90 days."
Labor for Refugees is proposing that mandatory detention be replaced with an alternative processing system consistent with the United Nations guidelines on detention of asylum seekers. Under the plan, asylum seekers would be released from detention centres to live in hostels or other accommodation, with access to Medicare and jobs.
Labor for Refugees is calling for the return of all Australian islands to this country's migration zone. This contrasts with Latham's policy, which, while proposing to stop using Nauru and PNG's Manus Island, advocates the use of Christmas Island for processing asylum seekers.
Labor for Refugees points out that this would still entrench a two-tiered system. Asylum seekers processed on Christmas Island would be denied access to lawyers and appeals through the courts.
Whether a better position is adopted may well come down to the debate between those who fear that Labor is losing too much support to the Greens, and those who believe the party's tradition of nationalism and xenophobia ensures it a base of support.
The assessment of Latham and the party leadership seems to be that they have to be more successful at outsmarting the Coalition on their own ground. Latham is happy to use the Coalition government's language of "border protection" to refer to the supposedly equally dangerous threats from guns, drugs and refugees.
Arguing that the Coalition government wasn't serious about border protection, Latham referred to the Kurdish asylum seekers and four crew members who reached Melville Island last November when he told the media on January 17: "They sent that boat back so they could come back [to Australia] again and again and again. Why don't we arrest the people smugglers and throw them in jail?"
A national coastguard, with vessels stationed at Cairns, Darwin and Broome; and a doubling of the number of coastguard volunteers is a key plank in a proposed "security" upgrade that a Labor government would undertake.
Cairns Coastguard commander Brad Duck told the January 18 Age that the detection work was already being done. "But we don't guard the coast; we are a rescue organisation. You couldn't ask volunteers to be police people — we're not going out there with guns and whistles."
If Latham has his way, however, they might have to.
[A more detailed comparison of the proposed ALP policy, the situation pre-1996 and Labor for Refugees policy is available at <http://labor4refugees.org/nationalconference.php>].<|>
From Green Left Weekly, January 28, 2004.
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