Issues topic: Boatpeople and border security

This term we will be examining the issues surrounding boatpeople and border security in Australia. Find below the articles that we will study. Also you are encourage to read Australian newspapers every day, searching for opinion pieces and graphic/cartoons that use persuasive language to position readers on this issue.

Background
On the 16th April 2009, a boat carrying 49 people from Afghanistan explodes as it approaches Australia. The people on board had hired an Indonesian ‘people smuggler’ to carry them from Jakarta to Australia.
Two days before the explosion, the Australian navy intercepts the boat and directs it towards Christmas Island. Two days later the boat explodes, killing three people and injuring 40 others. The Western Australian Premier claims that the people smugglers doused the vessel in petrol and set it alight deliberately. The navy denies this happened.
The Liberal opposition claimed that the government is indirectly responsible for a situation that better under John Howard.
The Prime Minister responded by saying that people smugglers are the ‘scum of the earth, and ‘should rot in hell’. He promised that the government would get tough on people smugglers.
In recent days, some of the survivors claimed that the ship was not set on fire deliberately.
The following articles provide some samples of the public reaction to this event. Read these articles and identify some of the issues that this event raises.

Rudd: Human smugglers 'scum of the earth'
(CNN) -- Australia's prime minister Friday ripped those engaged in human trafficking after an explosion aboard a boat carrying Afghan refugees killed three people and injured more than 40 others near Ashmore Reef, off Australia's northwest coast.
"People smugglers are engaged in the world's most evil trade and they should all rot in jail because they represent the absolute scum of the earth," Prime Minister Kevin Rudd told reporters.

"We see this lowest form of human life at work in what we saw on the high seas yesterday. That's why this government maintains its hardline, tough, targeted approach to maintaining border protection for Australia. And that's why we have dedicated more resources to combat people smuggling than any other government in Australian history."
The boat was carrying 49 refugees, officials said. In addition to the three killed, two others were missing.

Rudd would not comment on the cause of the explosion, citing the ongoing investigation.
The prime minister acknowledged that human smuggling was an increasing problem exacerbated by "global factors" but defended his government's border security policies.
"Our staff, our naval staff, our coast watch staff, our aerial surveillance staff and others, our police, are doing a first class job backed up by our intelligence officers as well, also in collaboration with partners across the region," the prime minister said.
"Because it is a global phenomenon and we are finding push factors operating from around the world, our active partnership with international governments and international agencies like the UNHCR is equally critical. This is a fight on many fronts. It is a fight which we have been engaged in for some time and a fight which other governments around the world are equally engaged in with us."

Rudd said the refugees' requests for asylum "will be treated under the normal provisions of the law through the examination of each of their individual cases."



Detained asylum seekers cast doubt on Oppn claims
Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Television Broadcast: 18/04/2009
Reporter: Geoff Thompson

In another development in the situation the Indonesia Government has arrested scores of Afghan migrants in a hotel in west java, and just a few hours ago they told Lateline they planned to travel to Australia. But amid claims that the latest boat arrivals were encouraged by the Rudd Government's changed policy, a leader of the group says many began their attempted journey from Afghanistan to Australia while John Howard was still in power.
Transcript

LEIGH SALES, PRESENTER: The political debate over border protection will doubtless continue following developments in Indonesia tonight. The Government there has arrested scores of Afghan migrants in a hotel in west Java. Just a few hours ago, they told Lateline they planned to travel to Australia. But amid claims that the latest boat arrivals were encouraged by the Rudd Government's changed policy, a leader of the group says many began their attempted journey from Afghanistan to Australia while John Howard was still in power. Indonesia correspondent Geoff Thompson travelled to west Java to file this report.

GEOFF THOMPSON, REPORTER: In a room made to hold stolen goods sit 64 men, two women, three girls and one boy, with only one destination on their minds.CHILDREN: Australia. Australia.

NUR ABDUL HASSAN HUSSAINI, ASYLUM SEEKERS SPOKESMAN: They are saying that we love Australia, we want Australia, we want to come Australia, yah?

GEOFF THOMPSON: These 70 Afghans claim to be ethnic Hazaras and were arrested in a hotel in the coastal town of Anya, two hours’ drive from Jakarta, before being moved inland to this room in Sarung.

NUR ABDUL HASSAN HUSSAINI: All of them are from Afghanistan. They are refugee. They have trouble. They came from different countries here by boat, by car. They have been in jungle about two weeks, three weeks in a jungle they were living. Mosquito - different mosquitoes, here, bitten mosquitoes, like this.

GEOFF THOMPSON: They say they have not eaten in two days and are asking to be transferred from the care of the International Organisation for Migration, or IOM.Asked whether they have heard of their fellow Afghan asylum seekers killed and injured this week, they replied that they know their venture is 99 per cent risk, but the one per cent of hope is worth it. Off camera, the apparent leader of the group inside this building told us that Australia had a good and kind Government and they wanted its help to solve all their problems. He also said some of the asylum seekers here left Afghanistan for Australia as long as one and a half years ago, before the Pacific Solution was dropped.

Column - People overboard, and the kindness than kills

Andrew Bolt
Friday, April 17, 2009
AT least three boat people now dead. So how much “kinder” do Kevin Rudd’s policies seem now?
John Howard was supposed to be the cruel one, said Labor. It was Howard when Prime Minister who put in the Pacific Solution, whisking illegal boat people to Nauru, rather than land them here.

Too harsh, said Kevin Rudd, and scrapped it. It was Howard who cut the legal circus that allowed illegal immigrants to play the system for years, until we gave up trying to deport them.
Too harsh, said Rudd, and laid on lawyers. It was Howard who cut the lure of benefits and then imposed on illegal immigrants the imminent threat of return.

Too harsh, said Rudd, and scrapped the Temporary Protection Visas, giving all illegal immigrants—including well-heeled ones fleeing no particular danger—instant access to permanent residency with all the tempting benefits and rights. Too harsh, said Rudd. And enlightened opinion cheered. Now we were nice.

Really? So how nice is it to have now lured at least three people to their deaths? To have not one child overboard—oh, what a confected scandal that was—but a whole boatload of 49?
Yes, indeed. This is a “people overboard” scandal, but for real this time.

The Rudd Government tried at first to deny and dodge, but West Australian Premier Colin Barnett let the mangy cat out of the bag—Defence sources had told him the explosion was caused when the boat people spread petrol around their vessel, clearly to prevent being turned away.
Here’s now what critics of “cruel” Howard so conveniently and willfully forgot or overlooked. Howard’s “cruel” policies saved lives. While Rudd’s “kind” ones now kill.

Howard stopped the illegal people smuggling almost instantly from the introduction in 2001 of his Pacific Solution. Boat arrivals went from 54 in 2000-01 to none in 2002-03. There was only one boat arrival in the two years after that, and just three in the year before Rudd’s election.
But now? The boat that blew up yesterday was the sixth to arrive this year—and the fourth in just a fortnight. It’s also the 13th since September, when the Rudd Government announced its latest measures to soften our treatment of refugees. This short year already, we’ve had 276 boat people arrive, compared with just 179 in all of last year.

But it wasn’t just the illegal immigrants that Howard stopped—people rich enough to pay perhaps $10,000 a head to get here, and choosy enough to pass through several safe countries before settling on ours. Howard also stopped the deaths—the drowning at sea of people drawn to our wealth, peace and too-easy welcome. Hundreds had died before he acted, most notoriously in the foundering of the SIEV X just off Indonesia’s coast.

A whole conspiracy over that sinking was built that falsely suggested Howard had blood on his hands, refusing to let the navy rescue the drowning. The Melbourne Theatre Company even commissioned a play showing a character clearly meant to be Treasurer Peter Costello letting the SIEV X passengers drown.

But if politicians must be blamed for boat people dying, then blame Rudd rather than Howard. It’s still unfair, yes, but far, far more justified. Rudd and his ministers have tried to insist the sudden rise in arrivals has nothing to do with them going soft. It’s Afghans fleeing a country gone bad, they claim, as if Afghanistan hasn’t been a basket case for years.

But Steve Cook, chief of mission for the International Organisation for Migration in Indonesia, had warned already in December: “People smugglers have clearly noted that there has been a change in policy and they’re testing the envelope.

“Up until about a year ago there was very little people-smuggling activity. Over the last year there’s been a considerable up-kick. There are rumours of a lot of organising going on.” And it was already clear that tragedy was just one boat away. As I wrote at the time: “Howard’s ‘inhuman’ policies stopped not just the people smugglers but the deaths at sea. If some of these boats lured here by Kevin Rudd now sink, how truly ‘kinder’ is he?”

Ask the moralisers now. But good news. Home Affairs Minister Bob Debus at last admitted yesterday that laws against people smuggling must be toughened, after all.
But here’s the sick joke. It’s Indonesia’s laws that are too soft, he claims, not our own. “We are in negotiation . . . and have been for some time with the Indonesians,” he burbled. “We are hopeful that they will change a number of their laws, particularly the laws that affect people smuggling directly.”

A farce. Pardon if Kevin Andrews, the former Howard Government Immigration Minister so reviled as vicious by Labor and the media, now allows himself a smile. “Labor’s response shows how different it is to govern than criticise,” he said yesterday.
And how different is seeming good from actually achieving it.


Crikey says
Friday, 17 April 2009
The asylum seeker debate has, over many years in Australia, witnessed plenty of low moments. But a new depth was plumbed by Andrew Bolt today, when he claimed "John Howard was called cruel for his Pacific Solution. But at least no one died. At least three boat people are now dead. So how much "kinder" do Kevin Rudd's policies seem now?"

Never mind the simple decency of waiting for the bodies to even be brought ashore before rushing to exploit them. This witless and contemptible remark is point blank wrong.

The sinking of SIEV X, with the loss of more than 350 people, was no less, or no more, the fault of the Howard Government than the events yesterday were the fault of Kevin Rudd. But the Howard Government was directly responsible for continuing and expanding the Keating Government's detention regime for asylum seekers -- an amplified regime that led explicitly to numerous suicides by detainees, as well as innumerable suicide attempts, including by children.
It was a sordidly opportunist and morally contemptible policy, one that left a trail of human misery, to the shame of Australia and Australians.

That is presumably the policy Bolt and his fellow travelers would prefer to see in force today. Never mind the facts, never mind that asylum seekers mostly arrive by air, that boat people are a minuscule subset, that Australia barely meets what should be its obligations as a first-world nation to offer sanctuary and a new life to the homeless, destitute and oppressed. Especially those fleeing from wars in which we are active participants.

The battle lines that have been drawn through the last 36 hours and their accompanying xenophobic, dog whistling blather, show our politics and public debate at their absolute worst.