Sarah Stephen
When right-wing Murdoch columnist Andrew Bolt writes an open letter to PM John Howard calling for the release of children from detention, you can be sure that conservative elites are sniffing the popular mood in Australia and are starting to get a little worried. Carried in the May 27 Herald Sun, the letter was overflowing with lies and slander about asylum seekers and visa over-stayers.
Then there was this message: "Letting Naomi [Leong] and her mum go didn't seem to hurt that much, after all, and surely we dare to take this risk — and more, besides. How many of the other 64 children in detention can we free, even just as an experiment, to see if our kindness really will be punished?"
Of the 3000 emails that Liberal Party MP Judi Moylan has received since becoming part of the public face of Liberal opposition to the harshness of mandatory detention, only 20 have been hostile. "When a policy and its administration cause such deep human suffering, it is time to put aside party room and party solidarity in the interests of the preservation of human life and human dignity", Moylan told her party room during a debate on May 31 over two private members bills proposed by Liberal MP Petro Georgiou.
Mandatory detention has robbed tens of thousands of people of their human dignity for 13 years. But the reason that more and more Coalition MPs are starting to voice their concerns more boldly is because they see a significant and increasing number of Australians deeply affected and angered by the treatment of asylum seekers (and of all those caught up in the mandatory detention regime).
Georgiou's opposition, backed by several Liberal and National MPs, is a crack in the government consensus. This is the first such split in the 13 years since the introduction of mandatory detention. It would never have occurred without the broad and sustained refugee-rights protest movement, which continues to influence the views and attitudes of millions of Australians.
Georgiou's bills don't call for the abolition of mandatory detention. What they seek to do is address some of the most grotesque abuses of human rights that result from the mandatory detention regime — long-term, indefinite detention; the holding of children in detention; and temporary visas.
Although they fall short of many of the demands of the refugee-rights movement, the bills offer a wedge with which to force open divisions within the Coalition. World Refugee Day on June 20 will be one opportunity to influence from the streets — where real people-power lies — what happens in parliament.
Labor's role throughout this Coalition crisis has been nothing short of pathetic. Labor leaders have declared their "broad" support for the Georgiou bills, but qualified that they would like to "discuss the detail" and that they will, of course, be moving amendments. They haven't committed to supporting the bills if Labor's amendments don't get up, and Labor won't put up its own bills if Georgiou's aren't debated.
This painstaking effort to distance themselves from the significant break in Coalition ranks, when there is so little difference between Labor policy and the content of the Georgiou bills, is a joke. Matt Price wrote in the June 1 Australian that Labor seems "more uncomfortable with Georgiou's bill than the PM".
On May 31, Senator Bob Brown announced that the Greens will vote for Georgiou's bills and "so should Labor". Brown likened Labor's announcement that it "supports the private member's bills but may not vote for them" to a "spinning top at the wobbling stage". Brown said the Greens "are prepared to introduce the bills in the upper house if no Liberal Senator is willing."
On June 1, the day after the bills were debated in the Coalition party room, Labor tried to force Georgiou to introduce his bills into parliament. The government united to defeat the motion, and Labor MPs jumped up and down about the backbenchers not being serious; but it was nothing more than a Labor Party stunt.
Georgiou agreed not to put the bills and to advise the June 14 party room meeting if no compromise can be reached with Howard, in which case he will insert the bills for House of Representatives debate on June 20.
Howard, taking this backbench revolt very seriously, may try to head off any parliamentary debate by reaching a negotiated agreement. He has already alluded to a "speedier, more flexible, humane" administration of the policy. He will try to offer as little as possible, but he knows that he must offer something — it is his previous unwillingness to make any substantial changes that has brought this revolt to a head.
What the refugee-rights movement does to ratchet up the public pressure over the next month could make a world of difference to the changes we win. The struggle doesn't begin and end with the Georgiou bills, but their success would mark a significant step forward — a step towards ending mandatory detention.
From Green Left Weekly, June 8, 2005.
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