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May 20, 2005
I'm on the road to Sydney today. I will try and post latter if I can find an internet connection. Meantime:
Cathy Wilcox
That is Amanda Vanstone, the Minister of Immigration, who has inherited the Howard Government's policy of mandatory and indefinite detention of unauthorised asylum seekers. Six years ago the policy rhetoric was based around the threat of boat people overrunning Australia words, with words such as 'illegal', 'detainee', 'riot', 'people smuggler', and 'queue jumper' being used. Australia was not going to be a soft touch for people smugglers. So we had tough screening to reject people by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs (DIMA). They saw their job to defend the Minister and the Government and to only provide the most minimal of material to Parliament. DIMA thumbed its nose at democracy.
Mandatory detention with its Pacific Solution detention camps in Nauru continues to remain central to the effective border protection policy of the national security state. Mandatory detention and the camps remain in place, even though the people-smuggling trade has eased, and there is evidence of the harmful effects of long-term detention. The Government sees that it owed its political success to the policy and it would not be changing it.
Minister Vanstone is beginning to challenge her bureaucrats to be more open to public criticism of their decisions. According to news reports, she told them they had to be prepared to change their defensive policy and practice, particularly in difficult cases, such as those involving wrongly detained Australian citizens, such as Vivian Alvarez Solon and Cornelia Rau.
Does this represent the start of a shift in departmental culture?
It is an unusual step as it is not the Minister just blaming her department or staff. A political shift is under way. It can be discerned in the way the Minister has been gradually relaxing of some of the previous Minister's (Phillip Ruddock) tough immigration policy decisions.
The next step is to respond to criticisms about the detention of asylum seekers and acknowledge that such policies stand in marked contrast to the rhetoric about supporting the global struggle for freedom. Or is freedom abroad and unfreedom for refugees and detainees at home? The mandatory detention system is based on the violation of the right to liberty. Cornelia Rau was an Australian, suffers from a mental illness, and she was detained legally.
That step would mean aiming to release long-term detainees and women and children from immigration detention, and to give permanent protection to refugees who come by boat.
Update: 24 May 2001
An example of the doors opening with respect to those who have become stateless. The rhetoric today is becoming more personal and compassionate with words such as victim, mother, sister, children being used and names being attached to the words: Corneila Rau, Vivian Alvarez Solon, Naomi Lweong.
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