BY PIP HINMAN
The brave hunger strikers in Woomera and other immigration detention centres have sparked broad and growing opposition to the federal government's anti-refugee policies. Three months after a federal election campaign, in which the "opposition" Labor Party refused to oppose the Coalition government's shameful treatment of asylum seekers, some misgivings are being expressed by some Labor MPs.
Labor frontbencher Carmen Lawrence's recent public apology for not speaking out earlier on Labor's policy on asylum seekers caused a stir inside the ALP.
"I feel ashamed about not having spoken out sooner", she told a 600-strong rally organised by the Perth-based Refugee Rights Action Network on February 2. "The current policy is wrong, inhumane, brutal and demeaning to refugees, and that is why we need a change in policy", she said, without elaborating on what changes there should be.
Her decision to speak out earned the wrath of shadow attorney general Robert McClelland and NSW Labor "left" Laurie Ferguson. Three Labor premiers — NSW's Bob Carr, Queensland's Peter Beattie and WA's Geoff Gallop — have strongly reaffirmed their support for Prime Minister John Howard government's policies on refugees.
On ABC's Lateline program, Ferguson, who is Labor's federal shadow minister for multicultural affairs, dismissed Lawrence's concerns and assured his "electorate" that Labor would not move from its bi-partisan policy with the government. In 1994, Ferguson was involved in drafting the Labor government's legislation that introduced the mandatory detention of unauthorised asylum seekers.
Lawrence is not the first senior ALP figure to express doubts about the party's immigration policy. Former shadow minister Duncan Kerr, now a backbencher, has also criticised mandatory detention and proposed an alternative system in which women, children and other selected asylum seekers could live in the community while their applications are being processed. Under Kerr's scheme, detention would be reserved for those deemed likely to be "troublemakers".
On February 6, former Labor PM Gough Whitlam criticised successive governments for flouting international refugee conventions.
Labor for Refugees
Senior figures in the trade union movement, such as NSW Labor Council secretary John Robertson, have become involved in a growing network of state-based Labor for Refugees groups that call for an end to mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
A motion from the group currently doing the rounds of trades and labour councils calls on the ALP to drop its support for mandatory detention and advocates that "those seeking asylum in Australia be allowed free access to communities and work on temporary visas while their case is being assessed, as happens in many other Western countries".
Shadow housing minister Mark Latham attacked Labor for Refugees' views as betrayal of the party's values. The January 26 Sydney Morning Herald reported that Latham, in a letter to Robertson, had accused Labor for Refugee groups of asking the ALP to "turn a blind eye to illegal immigration".
The ACTU also wants Labor to abandon its support for mandatory detention. Spokesperson Jeremy Vermeesch told Green Left Weekly that the ACTU had reversed its policy of support for mandatory detention more than a year ago and that the ALP should do the same. "The crisis in the immigration centres demonstrates the failure of Australia's mandatory detention regime and the federal government should now end the policy", he said.
But contrary to some media reports, Lawrence does not disagree with mandatory detention. When GLW asked her if she opposed the policy, Lawrence replied that her objection was to the length of time people were being forcibly detained. "Most countries place [asylum seekers] in some sort of detention to undergo a series of security and health checks", she said.
This position is similar to that of Julia Gillard, Labor's shadow minister for immigration. According to Gillard, the major problem with detention centres is the rate at which people's claims for refugee status are being processed.
'Parole-like'
"Ideally, the checking should be done in centres close to communities to reduce the trauma involved", Lawrence told GLW. She said that it shouldn't take more than a few weeks in most cases, maybe a few months, but certainly not years. Asylum seekers should then be allowed to live in the community on a "humanitarian visa" and report regularly to authorities "in a sort of parole-like way". Lawrence believes priority should be given to processing the claims of women, children and the aged.
Lawrence pointed to the recent report on the Woomera detention centre by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission as evidence of the failures of detention centres. Australia "is clearly in breach of international United Nations obligations", she said.
On the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Mary Robinson's request to send an envoy to Woomera, Lawrence asked what the government had to hide. "Why shouldn't they come? If we want to be able to be in a position to criticise other countries' human rights records, then we have to be prepared to allow scrutiny of ours", she told GLW.
Lawrence criticised the government's "Pacific solution" as "unprincipled and unsustainable". "We're preventing people from reaching our shores by excising parts of Australia for the purposes of the immigration act. We're shirking our international responsibilities, and it's all designed to create the appearance of there not being a problem. How much is it costing? And what sorts of distortions does it set up for relations with PNG and Nauru?"
Lawrence believes Australia's refugee policies have to include assistance to the countries from which refugees are fleeing. "We need to adopt a generous international perspective, with a commitment to the eradication of misery and poverty as this will be the way to stop people wanting to flee their countries."
'Bad conscience'
According to Lawrence, Labor's soul searching started in earnest after the November federal election. "Many people woke up the day after the election with a bad conscience. There was a lot of feedback that many Labor voters couldn't bring themselves to vote for us."
Lawrence wholeheartedly agrees with the concerns expressed by Neville Roach, a former adviser to immigration minister Philip Ruddock, who stated that the government's policies were rehabilitating racism and xenophobia. "The current policy has the potential to poison a whole range of relations between the so-called 'mainstream' and minorities."
After the federal election, Labor announced it would be conducting a full policy review. But nothing happened until the hunger strikers in the detention centres took their drastic action. Only then, with the pressure on, did federal Labor opposition leader Simon Crean initiate the review. In his Australia Day speech, Crean called on the government to release women and children from detention.
Lawrence told GLW that the debate over Labor's refugee policy "will be protracted". This is necessary "to take people along with us", she said.
While Labor's internal debates may have some impact on policy, it's clear that the one concession that Labor has been forced to make so far — to support the release of women and children from detention centres — has been in direct response to mounting community pressure triggered by the detention centre hunger strikes.
For now, Crean, Gillard and Lawrence continue to support mandatory detention. But if the recent explosive growth in the movement for refugees' rights across Australia is anything to go by, there will be no let up to the pressure on Labor to make a clear break with the government's cruel anti-refugee policies.
[Pip Hinman is the national secretary of Action in Solidarity with Asia and the Pacific. She is a member of the national executive of the Democratic Socialist Party.]
From Green Left Weekly, February 13, 2002.
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