Stirling Griff (SA, Centre Alliance) Share this | Hansard source

I am responding to the Governor-General's opening address and will tonight be talking about the power of words, and how the choice of words of successive governments has slowly corroded public sentiment towards vulnerable asylum seekers.

Not so long ago, refugees who arrived by sea were just 'boat people'; now they are 'illegal arrivals', even though they have not broken any laws, or 'queue jumpers', even though there is no such queue. The vast majority of asylum seekers are found to be genuine refugees. They've often fled horrors we can only imagine and yet we treat these men, women and children as though they should be punished for seeking asylum in Australia.

Let's look at Australia's hardline policy. Prime Minister Morrison takes pride in having stopped the boats, but this has become such a mindless mantra that the government ignores the irreversible harm its own policy is doing, as though stopping one evil cancels out another. Make no mistake: what Australia is doing to these people amounts to ongoing torture.

The United States has so far taken a few hundred refugees from Manus Island and Nauru, but even if it does eventually resettle the 1,250 refugees that President Trump has begrudgingly agreed on—and that is still a big 'if'—that still leaves hundreds more behind. Where do they go? Unfortunately, their fate is to keep mouldering in offshore detention, because there is no plan B. Their ongoing suffering, their rates of suicide and self-harm, their lack of hope and their disintegrating mental states are preferable, in this government's mind, to any other option put before them. Even New Zealand's generous offer to take an extra 150 asylum seekers was knocked back. Apparently it is better to keep these 150 people in arbitrary detention than risk any softening of its position.

Professor Jane McAdam, who heads up the University of New South Wales's Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, wrote the following late last year about the situation on Manus, and it says everything:

The Australian Immigration Minister boasts that no one has died at sea on his watch, but he has masterminded policies that have broken the lives and spirits of hundreds of people who are instead dying a slow death on land—as some have described it. Their experience is marked by physical insecurity, ill-health, trauma and mental illness, as well as separation from wives and children whom they are told can never reunite with them. This is not only inhumane, but contrary to international law—obligations that Australia has voluntarily accepted. These men are stuck in limbo, even though the majority have been recognised as refugees in need of protection. It is the same for the men, women and children held on Nauru.

The Kaldor Centre exists because of the generosity of its benefactors, philanthropists Andrew and Renata Kaldor, who themselves came to Australia as refugees. In a Sydney Morning Herald interview about the opening of the centre in 2013, Mr Kaldor said the attitude that greeted his family in postwar Australia was 'a welcoming one and an accepting one'. He further said that Australians back then acknowledged that refugees:

… were making a contribution to society. They were not a burden. Today, these people are seen as threats and a cost to society.

What's changed? Not the refugees, who are as desperate for a new life and new opportunity as they've ever been. It is the government rhetoric that has changed.

Ever since Australia tried to reject the asylum seekers rescued by the MV Tampa in 2001 and the 'children overboard affair' in which no children were actually thrown overboard, asylum seekers have been painted as the bad guys. Australians have been encouraged not to feel any sympathy for them because they are queue-jumpers, because they are illegals and because terrorists might sneak in amongst their ranks. The worst is when self-satisfied departmental and governmental officials accuse asylum seekers of self-harming for publicity or because a refugee advocate told them to. It's a disgusting attitude. To me, that says a lot about how much they have distanced themselves from the very real and human impact of Australia's border protection policies.

The government is quite content for Australians to feel suspicious and even fearful towards asylum seekers because it then means the public might not care too much about how these people are ultimately treated. This feeds a perfect loop. Authorities can push increasingly draconian policies, and uncritical supporters can feel justified in applauding something that once they may not have tolerated. On top of this, the government minimises the reality of how asylum seekers are treated by talking about offshore processing. It makes it sound as though claims for protection are being dealt with efficiently and cleanly. Far from it. In reality, there are genuine refugees who have been trapped in offshore camps on Manus and Nauru for up to five years. Many of them have been further traumatised by their indefinite and arbitrary confinement and by living conditions and inadequate health care which would simply be found by all of us here to be unacceptable.

Since Australia dumped its White Australia policy, you would think that we would only progress steadily in the right direction, but we are, instead, sliding backwards. It is the people smugglers who deserve our contempt, not the asylum seekers being demonised as queue-jumpers. Recent governments have thrown around terms like 'illegal arrivals' and 'queue-jumpers' because it is dog whistling at its finest. It appeals to the Australian public's sense of fairness. God knows Australians hate it when people jump a queue! But, as I said earlier, there is no queue. What does that term even mean? Are they less deserving of protection? Are their claims less valid? Are they any less desperate than those who sit in refugee camps?

This government always sounds as though it has forgotten it is dealing with fellow humans when it speaks about asylum seekers, or what the department now terms 'unauthorised maritime arrivals'. It is my hope that, despite this, Australians remember their humanity when they listen to the government's rhetoric on asylum seekers. We should all remember that it is only due to the fortunate circumstances of our birth that we enjoy the rights and privileges Australia has to offer. We are blessed to have been born into a peaceful, democratic and stable society. As a people, we have not had to fight oppressive governments and military regimes. We are not starved of our basic human rights. Our homes are not shelled, our children do not live in terror, our wives, sisters and daughters sleep safely at night, and our men are not routinely rounded up and buried in mass graves. We can protest and express our political beliefs without being jailed or killed. We are truly the lucky country. Is it any wonder that people take desperate actions to flee the terrors of oppression and civil strife of their homelands and try to make their way here? They deserve sympathy and understanding, not the further trauma that Australia has imposed on them in offshore detention.

There is a lot we can do to improve their plight. The most urgent would be to listen to doctors and act immediately on medical transfer requests. Even when patients, including newborn babies, have been classed as 'at risk of dying', it still takes an average of four days to get them to Australia for urgent treatment—four days! Right now we have a crazy situation where it requires a court order or the threat of a court order before any medical transfers are permitted from Nauru. Thirty-five children have so far been brought to Australia this way. Personally, I think the best thing we could do would be to get children and the families off Nauru immediately and resettle them either here or in another stable, prosperous and democratic nation.

In the meantime, one other small yet profound change can make a big difference. We need to change our rhetoric. Words matter. Words hurt and words change perceptions. We must, as a nation, be kinder in how we speak about asylum seekers, and that must be led by government. Maybe that too is a vain hope, but, generally, I'm an optimistic guy.