The Australian Labor Party’s 47th National Conference was held in Melbourne from July 24 to 26. It is its highest decision-making forum and the largest political gathering in the country. The conference decides the policies that Labor will take to the next federal election and potentially implement in government.
A few days before the conference began, Labor leader Bill Shorten announced a policy of turning back asylum seeker boats, essentially agreeing with the Coalition government’s policy.
The conference’s acceptance of this policy is a stunning concession to the Coalition’s hardline approach. There is now nothing to distinguish Labor and the Coalition's asylum seeker policies. Both are committed to a unilateral response to boat arrivals that involves turn-backs and offshore processing to ensure no asylum seeker arriving by boat will be granted protection in Australia.
Indonesia, where most of the boat turn-backs are directed, strongly objects to the now bipartisan policy. It is in clear contravention of Australia's obligations under the UN Refugee Convention. It poses considerable risk to asylum seekers. The assessment of whether it is "safe" appears to refer only to a narrow assessment of the seaworthiness of boats that are turned back and not to the personal circumstances of the asylum seekers on board or their subsequent plight.
The ALP left put forward an alternative motion to reject that policy and ban turning back asylum seeker boats. After an hour-long debate the left’s motion was lost, but not before it was interrupted by protesters who shouted their opposition to the policy and unfurled a banner saying “No Refugee Tow Backs”.
Federal Labor MP Andrew Giles moved the left’s motion, telling the conference he regarded boat turn-backs as inherently unsafe and contrary to our international obligations. He also said that turning back boats was “an impediment to achieving a regional solution with nations like Indonesia”.
The left’s Michele O’Neil spoke in favour of the motion to ban boat turn-backs. This is a transcript of her speech.
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I’m the leader of the Textile Clothing and Footwear Union and many thousands of the members of my union came to this country seeking asylum. They came as refugees. They wanted a better life. Some of them came on dangerous boat journeys. Some of them came when an effective regional process was put in place to bring them here. Many of them remember the horror of those journeys and speak of it often.
Those members of mine and many other unions and many other people of this country have brought great richness and great diversity to this country. What a fantastic thing that we are the multicultural nation that we are today!
Friends, this cannot be an either/or debate. It cannot be that we say that we are prepared to turn back those people who are desperately seeking asylum. Remember, this is often misstated as a turn back boats policy. It is not a turn back boats policy. It is a turn back desperate people seeking refuge policy.
It cannot be that we must do that in order to find an alternative to stop that perilous journey. We have the capacity as a party, and as a party in government when elected, to significantly improve the lives of thousands of people. Much of what is being moved in this platform today will do that and I join in the thanks and the congratulations to all those people who have been part of bringing about that change, including Richard Marles and Bill Shorten.
But it cannot be that we say that in order to deliver a higher intake, to give more money to the UNHCR, to get children out of detention, to legislate our international laws in Australian laws, that we must somehow accept that we are also going to turn back people into dangerous situations.
Of course the notion of those children and adults dying at sea is a horror. It is abhorrent. But when you turn a boat around, you are turning a boat around into a risky, unsafe, perilous journey.
When you send people back, you are sending people back often into unsafe circumstances. We know the circumstances in refugee camps and other places around the world and in countries like Indonesia too.
You will be sending people back to circumstances where they will face abuse and exploitation. In some cases they will face torture and even death. This is not just one story of death and exploitation. It is many, many stories in many circumstances around the globe.
Some will say that we must do this because it is important to adopt the same policy as Tony Abbott to neutralise this as a debate, and that will help a Labor government be elected.
I am desperately committed to getting rid of Tony Abbott and this vicious government. But to suggest that neutralising the debate by adopting the same wrong and unfair policy will [get Labor elected] is not right. Let’s learn the lessons of our history. When we were silent about Tampa, did that work?
The lessons of our history is a point that I agree with Bill [Shorten] and Richard [Marles] about. They said a couple of times this week that Labor failed last time in government. We did fail on one really important issue. We failed to educate and change community attitudes. We failed to take the lead in changing hard views. We failed to persuade people that we are a generous country that can afford to bring those seeking asylum here and that we have nothing to fear from them. What we failed to do is to show true leadership, because great leaders take on hard issues and move public opinion.
Supporting a turn-back policy reinforces in the public’s mind that somehow seeking asylum is illegal, that it is wrong and that these are bad people. Well, they’re not. They’re desperate people exercising their rights under international law to come to a safe haven.
This is a genuine global crisis. There are literally millions of asylum seekers in the world. It is not easy. We have all said this. It’s hard.
But I absolutely believe we can introduce a policy and implement it in government that would effectively put in place regional processing so we can convince those desperate people that they do have options for a better life.
But while we are putting that in place and implementing the other parts of this policy today, don’t tell me that at the same time we have to say there’s compassion for everybody else but there’s no compassion for those we intercept on a leaky boat on the high sea.
Describing a policy of turn-backs in the context of a broader policy as compassionate and fair multiple times does not make it so.
I respect greatly the agreement we will reach today because, apart from two important issues, we will have made important leaps forward in improving this policy. But if every country in the world adopted a policy that they were going to turn back boats at sea, where would we be as a world? Where would the Refugee Convention be? Where would be fairness, compassion and justice?
Delegates, I urge you to vote in favour of the agreed parts of this policy because they are good, but I also urge you to vote in favour of those amendments that seek to make it better. Please support all four amendments.
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