Laws can’t stop refugees, any more than Canute could stop the tides. Motivated by persecution, hunger or the wish for a better life, people will always seek a distant shore. Australia should, argues Graham Macafee, re-think our approach to refugees to produce a policy informed by historical lessons and based on current humanity.
A Solution For The Refugee Crisis
By Graham Macafee*
Law and Order Cannot Solve Social Problems
In England as late as 1830, orphans as young as nine were still being publicly hanged outside Newgate Prison in London for petty thefts (to buy food) as a warning that property must be respected.
Some death sentences on children were commuted to a life of penal servitude in New South Wales. In 1788, the first convicts transported to Sydney included an orphaned chimney sweep who had stolen a silk scarf.
At the time, there were more than 200 hanging offences in England including (God knows why) impersonating an Egyptian. But the ultimate penalty did not deter orphans, thieves or prostitutes in dire straits due to social conditions.
Prohibition and Protectionism in Australia
In the early 1800s, Governor Bligh tried to enforce British laws that prohibited rum imports. He was deposed in the Rum Rebellion of 1808. Governor Macquarie legalised and taxed alcohol imports. He spent the revenue on overdue public works.
When Australia federated in 1901, the main debates in Parliament where about free trade versus protectionism and keeping Australia ‘white’. Australia is no longer ‘white’ and protectionism is history.
Provided terror, crime or quarantine are not involved, money and goods can cross our border at will. But autonomy is denied to refugees who are demonised and punished with a colonial era Governor’s Pleasure prison sentence imposed (not by a judge in an open court) but in secret by an anonymous government clerk.
Law and Order Cannot Solve A Refugee Crisis
Setting a limit on refugee arrivals (and punishing those who disobey) is as ridiculous and as futile as setting a limit on hospital admissions and imprisoning over-quota burn victims after a bushfire.
People in dire straits do not give (nor should they give) a rat’s backside about quotas, policies or politicians. Australia’s job is to care for (not demonise and punish) people in dire straits.
But Why Are Refugees Australia’s Problem?
Because we signed three UN Conventions.
The UN Convention on Refugees: We agreed that no Australian law will make it a crime for a person to seek to enter Australia to ask for asylum. Our mandatory detention laws have broken that agreement.
The UN Convention on Prisoners: We agreed that there would be no executions or prison sentences without a fair trial in an open court. Our detention laws, remote detention sites, and indefinite sentences (at the whim of a government clerk) have trashed that agreement.
The UN Convention on Children: Kidnapping and imprisoning children in a remote detention centre and subjecting them to an indefinite period of mental and emotional pain (and social deprivation) has debauched that agreement.
But What About Economic Refugees?
Only a well-fed Cabinet Minister (who has never missed more than two meals in a row) could devise laws that deem dying from persecution is more noble than dying from poverty or starvation.
But What About Well-heeled Queue Jumpers:
If there are no intake quotas, there are no queues to jump.
How To Protect Our Borders AND Be Humane
- All decisions that result in imprisonment are made by a court.
- Bail is available if an Australian citizen posts the surety cash.
- All investigations into terror or crime links take three months.
- If the government can’t provide evidence within that time
- the court grants full citizenship to the asylum seeker.
- No holding cases over under any circumstances.
But what if the government experiences delays?
- It hires more and more investigation officers.
- The three-month deadline is never varied.
The asylum seeker does not have to give evidence.
- Nor does he or she have to provide documents.
- The onus of proof of any terror or crime links
- resides in perpetuity with the government.
The court disregards any entry quotas.
- You are a refugee if you say you are.
- You enter Australia if a court says so.
The government’s role is to present evidence
- to the court (within three months) of any terror
- or criminal links that would cause the court to
- issue a deportation order for the government
- to enforce, or an arrest warrant for terror links.
But What About The Huge Resettlement Costs?
Wind down the huge apparatus of detection and detention.
- Use the savings to subside community housing for arrivals.
- Use the savings on English and Oz culture classes.
- Use the savings on employment initiatives.
Use the savings to create tax-free zones sited well away from our big cities. Why?
- Australia can absorb many refugees.
- But Sydney and Melbourne cannot.
Recommendation: There HAS to be a better way than serial Labor or Liberal kidnapping and child abuse to treat homeless refugees.
The better way is Do No Harm. It’s what all doctors vow to do – upon their graduation.
* Graham Macafee is an author, bloggist (www.effect.net.au/gmacafee) and former professional journalist. He is a CLA member from Canberra, who writes with authority on well-fed Cabinet Ministers, having seen many up close. Oct 09