BY MIKE BYRNE
BRISBANE — A new group has been established in Queensland to influence the Australian Labor Party's policy on refugees and immigration. Queensland Labor for Refugees was launched on November 27 at a meeting attended by 35 dissatisfied ALP members.
The draft charter for the group calls for an end to the mandatory detention of refugees, an end to the issuing of temporary protection visas, no privatisation of detention centres, eliminate the practice of processing asylum seekers offshore and for a judicial inquiry into the practice of mandatory detention and conditions within detention centres.
Acting co-convenor Matthew Collins told Green Left Weekly that the group's role is to link progressive ALP members with the refugee rights groups, including working closely with the Refugee Action Collective.
Collins said that a group has been formed in Victoria and there are plans to launch one in NSW. NSW Labor Council secretary John Robertson told visiting international trade unionists at a rally in Sydney on November 13 that the federal government had "outmanoeuvred the ALP by playing wedge politics".
He rejected claims that "blue-collar workers were racist" and said "they would respond to a compassionate refugee policy if it was clearly stated and fairly applied".
Other senior ALP figures, including Doug Cameron, Gough Whitlam, Lindsay Tanner and Duncan Kerr, have questioned Labor's policies on refugees.
There is a view among sections of the ALP membership that the party's failure to differentiate its position on refugees from that of the Coalition government and to tackle the broader issues of job security, financial inequality and social justice caused its third successive federal election defeat.
The Labor for Refugees draft charter advocates an environment in which the policy of the ALP promotes the cause of social justice and meets Australia's international obligations to refugees.
The success of Labor for Refugees will be measured by its ability to reshape ALP policy on the treatment of asylum seekers and its building of the opposition to the federal government's racist and xenophobic scapegoating of refugees by building solidarity within the working class.
State MP and Labor for Refugees member Jim Fouras will address a public meeting organised by RAC on December 12 (see activist calendar for details).
From Green Left Weekly, December 12, 2001.
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