THAT debate

It's been an interesting week for anyone in an interest in Australian refugee policy.  For regular readers of newspapers, followers of current affairs by whatever media or just regular conversationalists, the whole topic has been unavoidable for the last few days.  Blame it on PM Gillard, who asked us to let it all hang out.

There have been a couple of interesting items about this in the Fairfax papers.  Richard Ackland wrote this piece which was published yesterday, which began by surveying Australian immigration panics of times past:

Over the aeons there have been any number of ingenious tricks played by Australian officialdom to stem the tide of human traffic. In the gold rush of the 1850s and '60s, Victoria invented a hefty poll tax levied on the masters of ships bringing Chinese to the colony: £10 for every Chinaman on board.
This was met with more ingenuity. The ships pulled in at Port Adelaide or Robe and the Chinese would walk to the Victorian goldfields. South Australia soon cottoned on to the poll tax idea and Manning Clark described the consequences: ''Within a few months of the passing of the act the streets of Robe which had teemed with Chinese were almost deserted; the cats of Robe began to return.''
The arrival of the ''other'' has always unsettled Australia.
In the early 19th century, pastoralists pushed to bring in more boatloads of criminals from England. Apparently they liked the slave labour. The urban middle class, craving respectability, were appalled, as were the freedmen who had to compete with convict labour. And paying to import Irishmen wasn't popular. The upwardly mobile were anxious about sovereign debt, of all things.

 Go and read the rest here, including the comment thread.

Then today, The Age had a piece on the opinion page by Catherine Ford.  I'm going to quote a good chunk of this, because it really sums up the problem underlying this whole issue.

''OK, get this down in your survey,'' Mick told him, shifting his weight to a pile of capsicums. ''The government has very, very seriously f---ed up on this.''
The boy blanched but began to take notes.
''These people aren't coming out here on leaky boats because they feel like a little holiday,'' Mick told him. ''They're coming here because they're terrified of what's going to happen to them if they stay. They have no future where they come from. Do you understand?''
The boy nodded and scribbled.
''Now, what I can't understand,'' Mick continued, his voice rising, ''is why we want to make them suffer all over again by putting them in such a remote place, way out in the middle of a frigging desert, where nobody can reach them, hoping that most of us will forget about them. Again, why are they doing it?''
The gathering shoppers, the schoolboy and I stood silenced, galvanised by his urgent, honourable, incandescent questions. The boy fielded them, literally, as it occurred to me every last one of us residing in this country should be made to. Impressively, he wrestled with the subject, and before an audience of impatient, attendant strangers.
''They put these people there,'' he answered Mick, uncertainly, ''because they have to process them. And a desert's probably a good place to process somebody, isn't it?''
''Processed?'' Mick cast around at his customers. ''Can you believe this? They've got kids talking like this now! That frigging word.''
He turned to the boy. ''You ever heard of Villawood?'' The boy shook his head. ''Villawood's in Sydney, mate, right near the city. It's a s---hole, and I'm not saying put them there, but at least people can visit it. Who's going to drive to the WA desert to check on these people?''
The boy looked befuddled. ''But we have to put them somewhere, don't we? They can't just come straight in off the boats. They're illegals.''
''They've brainwashed you!'' Mick barked. He'd forgotten, it seemed, the real object of his anger, or else, like those of us who are similarly provoked to frustration and despair by the uncertain fate this country has consistently dished out to asylum seekers, he'd lashed out indiscriminately. I felt for the boy, taking the weight for something so grave and serious, a matter that properly belongs, after all, with mature, compassionate and politically engaged adults, men and women who have agency enough and a sense of moral duty to act on the matter.
''I want you to take your survey away and have a think about this stuff, OK?'' Mick said briskly. ''Take it home, go into your bedroom, lie down, and think bloody hard about it, because it's not right how we're treating these people. We have to let them quickly into towns and cities where they can start working, start living again.''

I really cannot recommend this piece more highly.  It really does hit the nail on the head.  Go and read the whole piece.

The whole issue of asylum seekers has been rendered toxic over the last decade or so.  I still remember the big argument over Pauline Hanson's maiden speech in Federal Parliament, way back in 1996.  In a sense, her ghost is what haunts this issue.  The most memorable lampooning delivered to an Australian politician was dished out to Hanson by the writers and cast of Fast Forward, who depicted her offering a map of Australia stamped with the word "FULL" as a special offer at her fish and chip shop.  Sadly, at the time, such maps were a favourite of footpath graffiti.

Whatever the merits or problems of the various international conventions about refugees, the Australian government has taken an unreasonable line for a very long time.  I thought the trickery with our maritime borders might set an unfortunate precedent, or at least come back to bite us some time.  Moreover, given our role in conflicts such as Iraq and Afghanistan, we are among the factors that makes it difficult for people to remain in their home countries.