BY SARAH STEPHEN
Determined to remake himself as a strong, decisive leader, Prime Minister John Howard declared in parliament on August 29, "That boat will never land in our waters — never!" Decked out in full combat gear, complete with automatic weapons, helmets and face masks, 49 crack SAS troops in high speed inflatable pursuit boats boarded the MS Tampa to make sure that's exactly what happened.
The Coalition government's figurative war against refugees has now become a literal one, with the use of armed military force to prevent 438 mostly Afghan asylum seekers setting foot on Australian soil and exercising their right to make claims for protection.
As a consequence, 150 family members will go via Port Moresby to New Zealand for processing, while the remaining 288 are flown to the tiny island of Nauru in the Pacific Ocean while their claims are assessed.
Howard has already admitted that "those assessed as having valid claims from Nauru would have access to Australia" for permanent settlement.
So then why go through the extraordinary charade of the past few weeks? The answer is simple: this whole exercise was a calculated political manoeuvre by the Coalition.
Social justice campaigner Reverend Tim Costello commented in the August 31 Sydney Morning Herald, "The message of not being a 'soft touch' will make no difference to people who are totally desperate. The victims of either Taliban madness or Saddam Hussein's tyranny will not be deterred. This message is cynically aimed at us, by both political parties, in an election year."
The lives and futures of 438 of the world's most vulnerable, traumatised people are being used as pawns in a campaign by the Australian government to regain the upper hand only months out from a federal election the government is by no means guaranteed of winning.
Incredibly, Howard has tried, and partially succeeded, in convincing Australian people that the Afghan asylum seekers were "trying to intimidate us with our own decency" and that Australia's "national sovereignty" is under threat from a menacing invading force.
Buoyed by public support for his hard-line stance, On September 8, Howard ordered the HMAS Manoora, already carrying 438 asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea, to intercept a boat near Ashmore Reef with 237 others aboard.
The government also plans to introduce legislation to exclude Christmas Island and Ashmore Reef from Australia's "migration zone" so that asylum claims made there will have no validity.
David Oldfield, an independent MP in the NSW upper house and former adviser to Pauline Hanson, issued a jubilant press release during the Tampa stand-off which congratulated Howard for his actions:
"'Praise be to Allah' — the words John Howard should be uttering. The infidels descending on our nation have given him the beginning of what he needs. When I created One Nation through Pauline Hanson ... one of my primary goals for our country was to push the Liberal Party away from the left. I would not suggest One Nation has changed John Howard. Rather, we have helped create the atmosphere in which John Howard can simply be himself."
Oldfield is correct about the space One Nation has given Howard to take his government's policies to the right. One Nation has never been more irrelevant, their political ground almost completely swallowed by the Coalition. For Oldfield, this is his mission fulfilled.
On September 1, Howard outlined his "Fortress Australia" plan, dubbed Operation Relex — a three-week deployment of two Anzac frigates, a guided missile frigate, a supply ship and a transport ship, supported by seven patrol boats stationed in Darwin and four PC-3 Orion aircraft. It amounts to a third of Australia's operational navy strength in international waters between Australia and Indonesia.
Yet for what? Nearly all Indonesian fishing boats, 98.5% to be exact, are already detected and warned off before they reach Australian waters. The government has refused to confirm what action it will take when a boat is intercepted.
Despite lengthy talks with Indonesian government officials, there is still no confirmation whether Indonesia would agree to receive any boats turned back from Australia. The Indonesian government has also declined an offer by Australia to build a detention centre there.
The actions of the Australian government have sent a signal to mariners that they could face Australian military intervention if they rescue people in danger of drowning and try to take them to Australian territory. In the 1980s, a similar situation led to a number of boats carrying Vietnamese asylum seekers sinking without help on the high seas.
In response to Howard's unprecedented actions, there has been a further polarisation of opinion on asylum seekers arriving outside Australia's resettlement program.
The government's stance has given renewed confidence to those Australians with xenophobic, nationalist attitudes who support the argument that asylum seekers who arrive on our shores threaten Australia's "national sovereignty".
But at the same time, it has also angered and horrified many who are more sympathetic to the plight of refugees.
Public opinion has largely run in the government's favour throughout the crisis. It would be too simplistic, however, to interpret this as across-the-board, gung-ho, enthusiastic support for an escalating war on refugees. The fact that both Labor and the Coalition, and much of the corporate media, have lined up together on the refugee issue means that many people have simply accepted their arguments more readily.
Many people who reluctantly supported the government's actions were concerned about the plight of the refugees on the Tampa. They may have felt that the government had no choice but to take the action it did.
There are questions which still, for many people, remain unanswered: "What else can we do? We can't go on letting every boatload into Australia. We have to draw a line somewhere. We can't give in to the people smugglers."
The challenge for the refugee rights movement is to begin to answer those questions with an alternative approach to the government's aggressive stance. It's a considerable challenge — but one which deserves our direct support.