Asylum Seekers are not Illegal

On this issue I think I must part company with the Australian Labor Party and align myself with the Greens. I do find it regrettable that the Prime Minister had spoken so intemperately and that he has chosen to speak with the same inaccurate language as the media and shrieking classes.

An Illegal Immigrant is a person who overstays or breaks the conditions of a visa with which they entered another country legally. Some people do this in order to gain the protection of the country in which they are illegally living, but most simply want to migrate without going through all the usual migration processes, often because they would not meet to conditions (skills or money) that are applied to migrants.

Some Asylum Seekers make their way to a third country legally, travelling on visitor or student visas, for example, but once they arrive make a claim for protection. Others make their way to a country from which they will seek protection by whatever means is at their disposal. Because Australia is an island, most commonly they come here by boat.

Under the United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, a refugee is a person who, owing to a well-founded fear of being persecuted on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political opinion, is outside the country of their nationality, and is unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to avail him/herself of the protection of that country.

As a signatory to that convention Australia has an obligation to test the claim being made by the Asylum Seeker, and should they meet the criteria in the definition, provide protection to the refugee.

While I totally abhor human trafficking, I find the customary castigation of "People Smugglers" while protesting that Asylum Seekers do not deserve the same disdain, bordering on hypocracy. It provides people with a sanitised way of saying Asylum Seekers should stay where they are.

The media has been running stories about the possibility of Tamil Tigers being "hidden" among legitimate Asylum Seekers, implying that we should therefore not allow any to make it to Australia. Two thoughts strike me in response to this. Firstly, such persons should be readily identified during the screening process all Asylum Seekers go through. Secondly, what would we do if such a person was found among a group of Asylum Seekers? As a "freedom fighter" on the losing side, they would certainly face the kind of threats to their life and well-being that usually qualify one for protection.

Australia, I know, is one of less than a dozen nations in the world that offers protection to those seeking asylum and it does so because it has bound itself to the UN Convention mentioned above. What this means is that we do not have the same "freedom" as Indonesia to treat Asylum Seekers in an arbitary manner. Nor should we make their treatment subject to political whim.

The commentary on this issue borders on racism. People find convenient nuances to avoid being directly racist, but at the heart of the shreiking is the view that "those people are different from us and should stay where they are."

I think Kevin Rudd has been badly advised on this matter. We all know he has a great heart for justice but the rhetoric he has been spouting on this seems to be directed at a political objective. By doing this he has politicised the issue in exactly the same abhorent way John Howard did during the Tampa Crisis.

Rather than trying to negotiate the off-shore detention of Asylum Seekers in Indonesia, I think what he should be seeking to achieve in Indonesia is some movement by that government towards accepting the UN Convention on Refugees and Asylum Seekers, thus enabling the UN to do its good work of supporting and processing Asylum Seekers there, too. This won't stop Asylum Seekers from arriving in our Territorial waters, seeking our protection, but it will provide another option.

Finally, it is my view that the only reason that the Christmas Island Immigration Reception Centre is struggling to cope with the current inflow of Asylum Seekrs is the forlorn attempt by the Rudd Government to maintain the same structural approach as its predecessors to Refugee policy. The excision of all off-shore islands from the Australian Migration Zone was a legal construct intended to deny Asylum Seekers their rights in seeking our protection. As a consequence one small island community has to bear the burden of this work. Government staff must be relocated to a remote community to carry out this work, and Asylum Seekers are held in isolated conditions that deny them access to proper support and advice.

I would like to see proper Immigration Reception Centres (not High Security Detention Centres) located in every Capital City for the purpose of porcessing Asylum Seekers claims for protection. In such places, government staff would not be isolated from all the services they need to support the work they do, and Asylum Seekers would be able to contact and be supported by people from their own communities who have come here ahead of them, and access proper legal and advocacy support.

Such centres would make the workload much more manageable and would create a level playing field for the Immigration Department's dealings with all persons seeking our protection, regardless of whether they arrived here with a visa or not.

Shared Parenting

The vast majority of couples, when their marriage falls apart, make sensible arrangements for the ongoing care of their children without any help from a judge in the Family Court. They then do their best to get on with the rest of their lives.

Sadly, some couples, perhaps too many, come to regard their children as possessions with which they can inflict as much pain and insult as possible on their former partners. Some do make mischievous claims about the conduct of the other, with the view to excluding them unfairly from contact with their own children.

When the Shared Parenting laws were introduced by the Howard Government I was of the view that they were a symbolic gesture to assuage the angst of Fathers' groups who were campaigning on an agrument that they were being unfairly dealt with by the courts. What the new laws seemed to do was take away the discretion judges previously had to weigh up all the evidence that was presented to them through competent counsel and make a decision that would protect the best interests of the chils so far as the circumstances permitted.

Shared Parenting was to be the default position and, it was argued, this should eliminate cases of fathers being unfairly deprived of access to their children. Sadly, despite these changes, there has been no reduction in the prevelance of restaining orders needed against angry men to protect their former wives. There has been no let up in the number of men who have injured or killed their own children in a final fling of pay-back to their former wives. The solution these laws offered, just created a whole new set of problems - such as the women ordered by the Family Court not to leave a remote mining town where she had no family or friends because if she went back to her family and friends in the city it would be too hard for her child to have equal access to both his parents.

It is about time, in my view, that we hand back discretion to our judges in the Family Courts so that they can be the external arbiter of what might be in the best interests of the child.

Those Letters Were Noticed

What I wrote to the West Australian:
Colin Barnett, who believes in the rule of law, has forgotten its fundamental principle of innocence until guilt is proven. He has also exhitied racism, or at least prejudice, to a whole group of people based on his pre-determined view of the possible actions of just one of them - assuming that the fire was not caused accidentally by a cigarette as fuel was being transferred from the motor fuel tank to the bilge pump fuel tank. Methinks his tough of crime stance has tumbled over into his views about refugees who are not criminals. Remember, the vast majority who seek protection among us, when their cases are investigated, are deserving of that protection because of the terrible situation in their homeland.

And what they published:
Colin Barnett, who believes in the rule of law, has forgotten its fundamental principle of innocence until proven guilty.
He has also exhibited prejudice to a whole group of people based on his presetermined view of the possible actions of just one of them - assuming that the fire was not caused accidentally by a cigarette as fuel was being transferred from the motor fuel tank to the bilge pump fuel tank.
Methinks his tough-on-crime stance has tumbled over into his views about refugees. Remember, the vast majority who seek protection among us are deserving of that protection.

What I wrote to the Australian:
I am perplexed by Kevin Rudd's desire, on your commentator's interpretation of things, to argue that his government is tougher on Border Control issues than the Howard government was. One of the significant reasons for the electoral backlash against the Howard government was, in my view, a conclusion by most of the Australian people that Howard's treatment of Asylum seekers and his "Pacific Solution" was unbelievably cruel in a free and democratic nation like ours. Phillip Ruddock was the architect of that policy and it appears that he has learned nothing from the electoral routing his party experienced.
And what they published:
I'm perplexed by Kevin Rudd's reported desire to argue that his government is tougher on border control issues than the Howard government was. One of the significant reasons for the electoral backlash against the Howard government was, in my view, a conclusion by most of the Australian people that it's treatment of asylum-seekers and his "Pacific Solution" was unbelievably cruel in a free and democratic nation like ours.
Phillip Ruddock was the architect of that policy and it appears that he has learned nothing from the electoral routing his party experienced.

Only slightly amended. Not bad - both papers on the one day.

Refugees

Had letters published in the West and the Oz this morning.

Each was bemoaning the public stance of our respective State and national Leaders on this issue.

I am sure Kevin Rudd has some advisors who think he has to be seen as TOUGH on refugees by styling their journey to seek asylum as ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION. If it is ILLEGAL then in the public mind they are criminal.

The reality of the Federal Government stance is that they respect the right of people to seek protection in our country if they are fleeing from persecution and worse, and they are determined to treat people, while they are having their claims assessed, in a much more humane manner than was the case under the regime established by the cadaverish Phillip Ruddock (this man does not deserve the honorific title I offered yesterday to the Police Minister in WA).

In this context SOFTENING our policies on Boarder Protection is not, in my view, a dirty word. It is simply taking policy back into the realm of decency.

Our local leader, Colin Barnett, was also bleating about refugees, this time the provision of Permenant Residency to all passengers on a boat that caught fire while the Navy was trying to redirect it to Christmas Island. A Coronial Inquest will investigate if anyone acted illegally to cause the fire to start but it is not due to begin its formal investigation until next year.

The Immigration Department has assessed everyone's claims and found them deserving of protection, and the NT police do not believe they should be held in detention until the inquest.

Barnett, on the other hand, wants to condemn them all to detention until we find out who (if anyone) acted illegally in starting the fire. Like his Liberal counterparts in the Federal Parliament he has no heart, and has forgotten the meaning of a fundamental principle of the rule of law - one is innocent under law until proven guilty.

The further this man gets from his precarious beginnings in goverment - almost a minority government - the uglier and more arrogant he gets. It is just a pity the LAbour party was in such a shambles before the election.

Law and Order

I heard the Western Australian Police Minister, the Hon Rob Johnson, on the radio as I drove to work this morning talking about how wonderful it is going to be when the police are given the power to search people for drugs or weapons without necessarily having had their suspicions about that person aroused by their behaviour or associates, as well as giving the Police Commissioner the power to designate specific areas and times as places where these powers can be exercised.

He wanted people to get the message that if they were going to go to these areas they should make sure they didn't carry drugs or weapons and then they wouldn't get into trouble. Some people like the line of arguement that if you had done nothing wrong then you had nothing to worry about.

It all sounded very reasonable until someone commented that this proposition cut right across one of the fundamental principles of a free and democratic society - "the presumption of innocence." Don't we, as citizens in a free society, have the right to expect that Police will not stop us and trouble us for a little of our time to investigate something, unless they have reasonable grounds to suspect we might be able to help them with their enquiries? Yet I could see the perceived benefit for public order that the new powers might bring.

In the same interview, the Police Minister also informed us of the repealing of laws that allowed possession of marijuana in small portions for personal use in a manner similar to driving offences - thus not incuring a criminal record. Back to the bad old days - just bang 'em up!

It occured to me that given the pressures on the State Budget it seemed odd to be creating a situation in which it would be imperative to spend perhaps a Billion Dollars building new prisons around the state to house all these newly convicted criminals humanely - not to mention the weekly cost of keeping them in such places.

Politicians seem to love the Law and Order band wagon. It is just a pity that people don't think beyond the words that tickle their ears to see the underlying meaning of propositions and the long-term consequences of them on us all.

Charter of Rights

I must admit to surprise at the recommendations from the National Human Rights Consultation headed by Fr Frank Brennan given his statement at the time he was appointed that he was yet to be convinced of the need for such a Charter.

I was not surprised, however, by the bleating of the likes of Bob Carr, protesting the possibility, in their words, that "unelected judges" would be able to turn down the laws that people were elected to make. He and many others of like mind seem to think that there is no position higher in society than those elected by the people to high office.

I would like to remind them of a couple of things.

It is normally the case that by the time a person gets to be a High Court Judge not only have they spent five to seven years getting their basic legal qualifications they will have spend many more years gaining both higher academic qualifications in the law, as well as professional qualifications, and they will have had many years in practicing law before sitting on various benches of inferior courts. Without these qualifications and experience they would not be able to exercise their high office. They are therefore exceedingly well qualified to look at law and interpret what it means.

Politicians, on the other hand, have no professional or academic pre-requisite qualifications for the job. While many bring experience and qualifications with them into the job, and the diversity of qualifications and experience that members of the various houses of parliament have greatly enriches those places, none has spent his or her whole professional career working cloesly with the law. Some may have been lawyers, even QC's, but I am unaware of any judges who have forsaken the bench for elected office.

Taking the current Western Australian government as a case in point, it is interesting to note that 7 of the 17 ministers of the Government have no tertiary qualifications at all, and only four have post-graduate qualifications, not necessarily in the field in which they are exercising their ministerial office.

The question I ask is: By whose or what standard are elected politicians regarded as the best qualified to deal with laws, particularly in comparison with High Court judges?

The most commonly touted reason is that if politicians make laws that people don't like, then they will pay an electoral price for their errors of judgement - people will vote them out. This logic only applies, however, in cases where the number of people adversely affected by such a bad law is greater than fifty percent.

A point made recently by a commentator on Radio National's Fora Radio was that Democracies protect the interests of the majority, Bills of Rights protect the interests of minorities and that free and democratic societies need both.

At the end of the day judges are generally and simply asked to interpet laws. If politicians don't like the interpretations they give then they have it in their power to change the laws so that the laws say and do what the politicians want them to do. Rather than bleating about the "unelected" status of judges as if it makes them inferior, politicians should accept that each has a vital role to play in our parliamentary and legal system - Parliament, the Executive and the Judiciary - none superior to any other but if one was eliminated the whole system would collapse.

I have signed the GetUp petition urging the establishment of a Bill of Rights. I am not sure I have a view about whether a Bill is preferable to a Charter, but I do believe that the rights of us all are best protected when we care about the rights of minorities.

Justice

A signature line from a friend's email quotes Cornel West in his book "From Call and Response"

Justice is what love looks like in public

I love it. What do you think?

You go first!

There was a great little cartoon on the Opinion Pages of the Oz yesterday. Leaders from all over the world were in a queue waiting to enter the Copehagen Summit. One of them says "We've been waiting to see what everyone else comes up with," to which there was a unanimous chorus "So are we!"

Is there any hope for this world?

Leaders and Leadership

Given my leftie, pinko socialist leanings it is surprising to some that my daily postion of print-news comes from the News Limited Stable - The Australian; well anything has got to be better than the West Australian, as it was before Kerry Stokes orchestrated his coup d'etat at the WA Newspapers Board.

However, it still offers some substantial critique of the leadership problems facing the current Federal Opposition. As an outsider of a different pursuasion I have to concede the view that Malcolm Turnbull was probably the natural and perhaps only viable choice for leader in the current circumstance.

But the thing that intrigues me is the contrast in party discipline during the period of John Howard's leadership and the current situation. I don't think it was just that they were in power then, because disunity is just as deadly in opposition as it is in government, but it is interesting that during the Howard years the dissenters were very tightly gagged. Not so, today. There are dissenters all over the place, especially with regard to the ETS and the CPRS.

So Malcolm is really in the Middle here. He wants to have a say in negotiating some of the dtails of the ETS and thus feel a bit relevant in the political process, even though he is unlikely to be given such a chance by the Government (at least he could say he tried). Many of his collegues however, are so implacably opposed to any form of ETS - I guess they see it as a TAX and of course they oppose anything that might be a TAX just the same as they oppose anything that might be a UNION such as University Student Guilds - that they feel compelled to simply oppose it and regard anyone seeking to negotiate as an enemy of the right.

This dissent will inevitably be deadly for Malcolm's leadership. The question that is begging for an answer is "Who would they really like to replace him with?"

News from the Anglican Synod in Perth

Synods come but once a year in each diocese and provide a forum for the discussion of rules and regulations that are intended to keep some people in and other people out of any and many aspects of life in the diocese, as well as the consideration of serious as well as motherhood issues about which every Tom Dick and Harry, (not to mention Theresa, Doreen and Hermione) whether from the House of Bishops, the House of Clergy or the House of the Laity have an opinion, one way or the other.

While I am unable to comment directly on any aspect of this particular Synod because I was encouraged by my parish not to be present - what were they afraid of? - I can report with some jubilation that Father David got his wish in respect of the elections at Synod this year. He reported to many of his colleagues that some clergy committed to maintaining and strengthening the generous catholicity of the Diocese of Perth within the traditional inclusivity and diversity of the Anglican Communion had allowed themselves to be nominated to important positions on the Diocesan Council, the Archbishop's Election Committee and as representatives of the Diocese to the General Synod. All said nominees were successful in their bids for these positions and are to be congratulated.

State of Calamity

What a wonderful term for the declaration by the Phillipines Prime Minsiter or President to describe the situation in her nation at the moment.

Indeed, the term aptly describes the situation for many places in our neighbourhood - Vietnam, Indonesia, Samoa and several other small Pacific nations.

Several things intrigue me when I consider the response of our nation and the media to such events. Firstly, the way in which level of the calamity seems to escalates exponentially according to the number of Australians that might have been injured or killed as a result of it. The recent plane crash in PNG near Kokoda got global news coverage while similar crashes involving locals happen almost every week.

Secondly, I will be intrigued to see just how many days we can sustain our focus on these events. We tire of them very quickly as we want to hear about the next calamity. I will also be intrigued to see how trivial will be the matter that actually knocks it off the front page. My guess is that by Wednesday at the latest these news matters will be relegated to at least page five.

I wonder, too, what the doomsayers will do with these events - both religious and environmental. First a typhoon across South East Asia, then an earthquake and tsunami across the South Pacific and finally a massive earthquake in Indonesia.

I can imagine the religious seeing these as portents for the end of life as we know it, or even signs or divine judgement against whatever evil catches there eye in these regions.

And I can imagine the envirnmentalists blaming it all on global warming. well, at least they are closer to having a point. More extreme meteorlogical events are evidence that the science is cottoning on to what is actually happening. The low-lying islands of the Pacific are saying that they are already experiencing more serious erosion that they have ever had to contend with - one day a tsunami will just wash right over such an island.

The next real calamity will be when the people decide they have to move. Where will they go, and how will the places they seek to go to respond - in a welcoming fashion or with xenophobia and patrol boats of fences.

We will have to wait and see.

Everything has a beginning

Well, Hello!

DW has been blogging for sometime now and has been nagging me to get with it. She has her little passsions that keep her blog pages filled with interesting stuff. I am so eclectic that I didn't think I could sustain a single topic blog, so in light of the frequent publication of my correspondence in local and national newspapers, and the even more frquent non-publication of my correspondence I thought that a blogspot would mean I could get my thoughts out there anyway.

I wonder how long this passion will last?