Have a heart

Asylum seekers at Lombrum Naval Base, Manus Island. Shipping containers surrounded by cladding and fitted with air-conditioners are their accommodation. Photo: Angela Wylie via Sydney Morning Herald

I find it hard to reconcile the determination of the Gillard Labor Government to be as harsh on boat-arrival asylum-seekers as the Howard Coalition Government ever was. They have spoken words of differentiation between their policies and the previous regime, but their actions are entirely consistent with the barbaric practices that Phillip Ruddock as Immigration Minister normalized.

Chris Bowen has now put in place off-shore processing options for anyone arriving by boat in two separate countries that are not signatories to the UN Convention on Refugees and if Nauru eventually comes on stream, which I think is most likely, that will be a third country. He thinks that by putting people in hopeless situations they will stop taking the boat-pathway to gain entry to our country. So long as he does nothing to speed up the exit-pathways from the miserable camps, especially for the Afghanis in Malaysia, they will continue to choose this option. As an aside I remain convinced that the use of the term "people smugglers" is intended to imply that there are border-security issues at stake and that refugees are being mercilessly exploited, but it is simply a ploy to side-step a racist concern that says we don't want people "like that" coming here.

Last week, the Head of the Immigration Department invited Senators to seriously consider that option of community-based on-shore processing of claimants, not for humanitarian reasons, even though these are many, but for economic reasons. The cost to his Department of managing the situation last year was $750m compared with $150m three years ago, and a large part of the cost is related to trying to do departmental work in remote areas. It would be much cheaper and in no way compromise our security concerns to have people in community-based detention in the cities where departmental services are easily accessed.

Sadly, the senators will not investigate this question, I fear. This new committee is simply a platform for the opposition to score points and to politicize the issue rather than inject considered policy proposals. I wish it were otherwise.

What do you think?