tag:theconversation.com,2011:/africa/topics/nauru-3414/articlesNauru – The Conversation2024-02-21T04:06:34Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2239572024-02-21T04:06:34Z2024-02-21T04:06:34ZBy boat or by plane? If you’re seeking asylum in Australia, the outcome is similarly bleak<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576913/original/file-20240221-18-tl88st.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=18%2C0%2C4071%2C2299&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.shutterstock.com/image-illustration/refugees-boat-floating-on-sea-341539700">Shutterstock</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-18/asylum-seekers-moved-to-nauru-mid-political-row/103481494">39 foreign nationals</a> arrived in a remote part of Western Australia by boat. This revived dormant debates about border security.</p>
<p>People without visas come to Australia by air and sea, though we only ever seem to hear about the latter. Unlike unauthorised air arrivals, unauthorised maritime arrivals (people without visas that arrive by boat without permission) are given high media visibility. This feeds a narrative that the country has lost control of its borders, which in turn creates a political problem for the government of the day. </p>
<p>But behind the headlines, what actually happens when people arrive in Australia without permission, whether by boat or by plane?</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/boat-arrivals-sent-to-nauru-and-sovereign-borders-commander-warns-against-politicising-the-issue-223822">Boat arrivals sent to Nauru, and Sovereign Borders commander warns against politicising the issue</a>
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<h2>What is Australia obligated to do?</h2>
<p>Anyone who’s not an Australian citizen is required to have authorisation in the form of a visa to enter and remain in the country. </p>
<p>What Australia can do to deal with unauthorised arrivals is limited by its international treaty obligations. The United Nations Refugee <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/au/about-unhcr/who-we-are/1951-refugee-convention">Convention</a> and <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/protocol-relating-status-refugees">Protocol</a> oblige Australia to refrain from sending “refugees” (as defined in those treaties) to places where they will face a real chance of persecution. </p>
<p>Under other treaties to which it is a party, Australia is also obliged to refrain from sending anyone, not just refugees, to places where they will face a real risk of certain serious human rights violations. </p>
<p>These treaty obligations are referred to as “non-refoulement” or protection obligations. People who claim the benefit of such protection obligations are called asylum seekers.</p>
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<h2>What happens to asylum seekers when they arrive?</h2>
<p>The processes for people arriving by boat or plane have similarities, but are slightly different.</p>
<p>Australian policy is for unauthorised air arrivals to be given a screening interview to ascertain whether they could be entitled to Australia’s protection under international law. If not, they are returned to their most recent country of departure. Those who are found to have a possible case are given access to the protection visa application process. </p>
<p>The protection visa is Australia’s main domestic mechanism for implementing its international protection obligations. People who initially entered Australia on a valid visa can also apply for a protection visa. Most applicants fall into this group. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/who-counts-as-a-refugee-four-questions-to-understand-current-migration-debates-219735">Who counts as a refugee? Four questions to understand current migration debates</a>
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<p>Australia imposes penalties on airlines that bring non-citizens without valid visas here. It also posts its officials at overseas airports to help airlines identify people without visas so they can be refused boarding. As a result, there are <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/foi/files/2022/fa-220600105-document-released-part-3.PDF">very few</a> unauthorised air arrivals to Australia.</p>
<p>Like people who come by plane, unauthorised maritime arrivals go through a screening process. </p>
<p>Those who are deemed not to be asylum seekers are returned to their most recent country of departure. This is usually, but not always, Indonesia. </p>
<p>Unless the responsible minister grants an exemption, unauthorised maritime arrivals who are found to have a possible asylum claim must be transferred to a regional processing country to have their asylum claims determined there. </p>
<h2>How has regional processing worked?</h2>
<p>Regional processing has a complicated history.</p>
<p>In late 2001, the Coalition government under John Howard entered arrangements with Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG) to take unauthorised maritime arrivals to those countries to process their asylum claims. Those arrangements were ended by Labor shortly after it won government in November 2007. </p>
<p>However, a resurgence of unauthorised maritime arrivals led the Gillard Labor government to enter a new set of arrangements with Nauru and PNG in late 2012. These allowed Australia to transfer unauthorised maritime arrivals to processing centres in those countries to have their asylum claims considered by their governments. </p>
<p>The 2012 arrangements left open the possibility that transferees who were found to be refugees might be resettled in Australia. However, when boats kept arriving, the Rudd Labor government decided to get even tougher. In 2013, it <a href="https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20130730234007/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/79983/20130731-0937/www.pm.gov.au/press-office/transcript-joint-press-conference-2.html">announced</a> future unauthorised maritime arrivals would never be resettled in Australia.</p>
<p>After its election in September 2013, the Coalition government implemented Operation Sovereign Borders, which has been continued by the current Labor government. Many activities come under the Operation Sovereign Borders banner, including the interception of unauthorised maritime arrivals at sea by the Australian navy. Regional processing is now also characterised as being part of the program.</p>
<p>The regional processing arrangement with PNG <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20220105030919/https:/minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/KarenAndrews/Pages/finalisation-of-the-regional-resettlement-arrangement.aspx">ceased</a> at the end of 2021. As of November 16 2023, there were still <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/2/">64 transferees</a> remaining in PNG. However, the Australian government’s position is that responsibility for these people lies entirely with PNG and not with Australia.</p>
<p>Nauru is still a <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2023L00093">regional processing country</a> but under a new agreement. At the time it was signed in late 2021, there hadn’t been any transfers for years. However, it was <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20211218062006/https:/www.dfat.gov.au/geo/nauru/memorandum-understanding-between-republic-nauru-and-australia-enduring-regional-processing-capability-republic-nauru">considered important</a> to maintain an “enduring regional processing capacity” on Nauru as a deterrent to people smugglers. </p>
<p>As previously, the Nauruan government is responsible for processing the asylum claims of transferees and managing them until they depart Nauru or are permanently settled there. However, Australia has contracted and is <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/foi/files/2023/fa-221201134-document-released.PDF">paying</a> the processing centre’s service providers.</p>
<p>On June 25 2023, it was reported there were <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/jun/25/last-refugee-on-nauru-evacuated-as-australian-government-says-offshore-processing-policy-remains">no transferees</a> remaining in Nauru. This did not mean that a durable solution had been found for everyone who had been transferred to Nauru up until that time. While some people had been resettled in third countries, others had simply been brought to Australia with the legal status of “transitory persons”. This status prevents them from applying for a visa to remain in Australia unless granted ministerial permission to do so. </p>
<p>Australia’s options for resettling this cohort are limited. It has at its disposal the remainder of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/01/white-house-australian-refugees-deal-resettle-extreme-vetting">1,250 refugee places</a> promised by the United States in November 2016 and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/24/australia-agrees-450-refugees-can-be-resettled-in-new-zealand-nine-years-after-deal-first-offered">450 refugee places</a> over three years promised by New Zealand in 2022. Even if all these places are used, hundreds of people will remain in limbo.</p>
<h2>What happens to last week’s arrivals?</h2>
<p>Since Operation Sovereign Borders began, boats have either been intercepted at sea or have managed to make landfall in Australia <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/api/qon/downloadattachment?attachmentId=dc14c17a-6ca6-4082-8f77-c15a72b19314">every year</a> except 2021. </p>
<p>However, between the start of Operation Sovereign Borders and the end of August 2023, <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/api/qon/downloadattachment?attachmentId=dc14c17a-6ca6-4082-8f77-c15a72b19314">only two</a> out of the 1,123 boat passengers involved to that point had ever been accepted for regional processing. Both cases were in 2014. </p>
<p>This statistic raised serious concerns about the reliability of the screening process as the people screened included many from known refugee producing countries. </p>
<p>Given this history, it was a little surprising when the Australian government transferred <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-27/nauru-new-group-detained-processing-centre/103014910">11 unauthorised maritime arrivals</a> to Nauru in September 2023. A further 12 were transferred to Nauru in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2023/nov/23/wa-border-force-custody-12-asylum-seekers-nauru">November 2023</a>. The 39 people found in Western Australia have just been transferred there too. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/aus-nz-refugee-deal-is-a-bandage-on-a-failed-policy-its-time-to-end-offshore-processing-180241">Aus-NZ refugee deal is a bandage on a failed policy. It's time to end offshore processing</a>
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<p>It seems the screening process has been abandoned or has been vastly improved. While the most reliable way for Australia to meet its international protection obligations would be to give all unauthorised maritime arrivals access to its protection visa application process, giving them all access to regional processing is certainly better than sending them back to their country of departure. </p>
<p>However, resettlement in Nauru of those found to be refugees is not realistic. The country, which has a population of approximately 13,000 people, is only <a href="https://www.adaptation-undp.org/explore/asia-and-pacific/nauru#:%7E:text=Nauru%20is%20an%20isolated%2C%20uplifted,120%20and%20300%20metres%20wide.">2,200 hectares</a> in land area. To put this in context, Melbourne airport <a href="https://www.melbourneairport.com.au/corporate/master-plan">is larger</a> than Nauru. </p>
<p>There is no reason to believe it will be any easier to find third country resettlement for transferees in the future than it has been up to now. For most, the only way out of limbo will be to return home, as eight of those transferred to Nauru in September have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/jan/22/australia-asylum-seekers-nauru-returned-home-country">already done</a>. Regional processing continues to be a policy failure for which vulnerable people will pay the price.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223957/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Savitri Taylor has received funding from the Australian Research Council in the past. She is a member of the Committee of Management of Refugee Legal and a member of the Kim for Canberra party. Views expressed in this article are her own and not attributable to any organisations with she is associated.</span></em></p>With the arrival of 39 foreign nationals in Western Australia, debate around boat arrivals has been re-ignited. What happens if you come by plane instead?Savitri Taylor, Associate Professor, Law School, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2238222024-02-18T06:16:22Z2024-02-18T06:16:22ZBoat arrivals sent to Nauru, and Sovereign Borders commander warns against politicising the issue<p>The 39 men who arrived illegally on the coast of north Western Australia last week were flown to Nauru on Sunday. </p>
<p>The men came in one boat, although they were found on Friday in two or three groups. There is no official information on where they are originally from, but reports have named Pakistan, Bangladesh and India. They travelled from Indonesia. </p>
<p>The boat’s arrival immediately reactivated the political debate over border security, with the opposition claiming the government has lost control of the border. </p>
<p>But Rear Admiral Brett Sonter, Commander of the Joint Agency Task Force Operation Sovereign Borders, had a thinly-veiled slap at the opposition, warning against statements that undermine the border policy and encourage people smugglers. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576306/original/file-20240218-18-luck9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/576306/original/file-20240218-18-luck9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576306/original/file-20240218-18-luck9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576306/original/file-20240218-18-luck9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=849&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576306/original/file-20240218-18-luck9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576306/original/file-20240218-18-luck9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/576306/original/file-20240218-18-luck9g.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1066&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Rear Admiral Brett Sonter.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Australian Border Force</span></span>
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<p>He said in a statement: “The mission of Operation Sovereign Borders remains the same today as it was when it was established in 2013: protect Australia’s borders, combat people smuggling in our region, and importantly, prevent people from risking their lives at sea.</p>
<p>"Any alternate narrative will be exploited by criminal people smugglers to deceive potential irregular immigrants and convince them to risk their lives and travel to Australia by boat.”</p>
<p>But opposition leader Peter Dutton insisted Anthony Albanese “can’t look the Australian people in the eye and honestly tell them that Operation Sovereign Borders is operating as it did under a Coalition government”.</p>
<p>Dutton said the Coalition would seek a briefing on the incident “in due course”. </p>
<p>The Prime Minister highlighted Sonter’s “very strong comments about the need for […] politicians to not politicise national security”. </p>
<p>Albanese accused Dutton of “showing, with his overblown rhetoric and with his overreach on this issue […] that he’s not interested in outcomes or in the Australian national interest. As usual, he’s just interested in politics.”</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/223822/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Brett Sonter, Commander of the Joint Agency Task Force Operation Sovereign Borders has had a thinly-veiled slap at the opposition as the the political debate is reactivated over border security.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2221052024-02-09T16:50:28Z2024-02-09T16:50:28ZChina’s increasing political influence in the south Pacific has sparked an international response<p>Taiwan elected <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/13/taiwan-ruling-partys-lai-ching-te-wins-presidential-election">Lai Ching-te</a>, also known as William Lai, to be its next president on January 13. His election marks the continuation of a government that promotes an independent Taiwan. </p>
<p>Just two days later, the Pacific nation of Nauru <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/nauru-severs-ties-with-taiwan-switches-diplomatic-allegiance-to-china-20240115-p5exh1.html">severed ties</a> with Taiwan and transferred its diplomatic allegiance to Beijing. </p>
<p>More recently, on January 27, Tuvalu’s pro-Taiwan prime minister, Kausea Natano, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/jan/27/tuvalus-pro-taiwan-prime-minister-kausea-natano-loses-seat-in-partial-election-results?ref=upstract.com">lost his seat</a> in the nation’s general election. Natano’s finance minister, Seve Paeniu, who is aiming for the prime ministership himself, was returned to his seat. In his campaign, Paeniu pledged to <a href="https://devpolicy.org/2024-tuvalu-general-election-a-changing-political-landscape-20240130/#:%7E:text=In%20Tuvalu%20elections%2C%20candidates%20run,both%20incumbents%20won%20re%2Delection.">review</a> Tuvalu’s relationships with China and Taiwan.</p>
<p>These examples indicate China’s growing influence in the south Pacific, a region that the world’s major powers are competing for influence over. But why is the region significant? And how are these major powers exerting their influence there?</p>
<h2>Preventing recognition of Taiwan</h2>
<p>Taiwan has been governed independently since 1949. But Beijing believes it should be reunited with the rest of China. It is not an option for states to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/apr/04/not-about-the-highest-bidder-the-countries-defying-china-to-stick-with-taiwan">diplomatically recognise</a> both China and Taiwan – China forces them to choose. </p>
<p>For decades, the Chinese government has used a combination of carrots and sticks to pressure such states into transferring diplomatic recognition from Taiwan to China. </p>
<p>China has, for example, imposed significant political, diplomatic and economic sanctions on countries that continue to formally recognise Taiwan. In 2022, China curbed imports from Lithuania to <a href="https://ecfr.eu/publication/tough-trade-the-hidden-costs-of-economic-coercion/">punish the country</a> for allowing Taiwan to open a de facto embassy in the country.</p>
<p>But China also offers states – and their governing elites – economic and political incentives for <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11366-020-09682-8">withdrawing diplomatic recognition</a> of Taiwan. It has, in the past, used its influence in the UN and other international organisations to block assistance or elect specific people to international positions.</p>
<p>Nauru’s change of diplomatic position, and the political debate unfolding in Tuvulu, should be understood as part of China’s longstanding effort to prevent and reduce recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign state. </p>
<p>But they are a significant step forward for China. Nauru has a leading position in the Pacific Islands Forum – the main political decision-making body for the region – so the country’s change of stance could lead to wider formal diplomatic changes in the south Pacific. </p>
<p>China, of course, has legitimate economic and political interests in the south Pacific too. It is a vital export market for natural resources from Pacific island states and is a key source of incoming tourism. According to <a href="https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/eng/wjdt_665385/2649_665393/202205/t20220524_10691917.html">Chinese statistics</a>, total trade volume between China and Pacific island states grew from US$153 million (£121 million) to US$5.3 billion (£4.2 billion) between 1992 and 2021.</p>
<h2>Competing for influence</h2>
<p>Nauru’s decision is another diplomatic setback for Taiwan, which is now formally recognised by just 11 countries. However, this is not in itself a serious concern for the US, Australia and their allies. </p>
<p>They all formally recognise China, while at the same time maintaining close, informal links with Taiwan. Their focus is on trying to limit the depth of Chinese political and economic influence over Pacific island states and elsewhere in the Asia-Pacific region. The US is concerned that growing Chinese political influence may ultimately result in it enjoying significant military presence in the region.</p>
<p>The Pacific region encompasses the US state of Hawaii, multiple US territories, and is also home to several crucial US military bases. So, the US has made an effort to <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11208">enhance its diplomatic relations</a> in the region by providing financial support for initiatives around climate change adaption, sustainable fishing and economic growth. </p>
<p>However, increased tension between China and the west over the past decade has made it increasingly challenging to reign in Chinese influence. China has been asserting its primacy in and around Taiwan in the South China Sea, and has increasingly <a href="https://2017-2021.state.gov/chinas-military-aggression-in-the-indo-pacific-region/">exerted military pressure</a>. </p>
<p>China’s struggle for influence in the region now also includes taking opportunities to challenge previously undisputed western security dominance in the south Pacific. In 2022, China put forward a proposal for a diplomatic, economic and security agreement with the region. The agreement was, however, later <a href="https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11208">abandoned</a> due to resistance from some Pacific island nations at the urging of the US and Australia.</p>
<h2>US strategy in the south Pacific</h2>
<p>When president, Donald Trump launched a number of deals with Pacific islands including Nauru, Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Palau and Micronesia. However, Trump’s <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-trump-administration-and-the-free-and-open-indo-pacific/#:%7E:text=The%20administration%20has%20rolled%20out,programs%2C%20which%20support%20these%20goals">strategy</a> for a “free and open Indo-Pacific” had limited success. This was not only due to his confrontational posture towards China, but also to his threatening and protectionist “America first” rhetoric. </p>
<p>Joe Biden’s comparatively measured diplomacy has seen more success. In 2022, the Biden administration <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Pacific-Partnership-Strategy.pdf">announced</a> its “Pacific partnership strategy”.</p>
<p>The initiative included a commitment of US$810 million in development aid across the Pacific island region. And in May 2023, the US secretary of state, Antony Blinken, <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/09/25/fact-sheet-enhancing-the-u-s-pacific-islands-partnership/#:%7E:text=Last%20year%2C%20the%20Biden%2DHarris,%24810%20million%20in%20new%20assistance">stated</a> that he would work with Congress to provide over US$7.2 billion to support the region. </p>
<p>Since then, the US has <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/09/25/statement-by-president-biden-on-the-recognition-of-the-cook-islands-and-the-establishment-of-diplomatic-relations/">recognised</a> the Cook Islands and Niue as independent, sovereign nations, increased its diplomatic footprint in the region and has committed strongly to work with the Pacific Islands Forum to promote a “democratic, resilient and prosperous Pacific islands region”.</p>
<p>The shift of diplomatic ties from Taiwan to China does not mean that Pacific island nations want to reduce their ties with the west. But the US, Australia and their allies will need to invest a lot more in diplomatic, economic and security assistance if they want to counter China’s growing influence there.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/222105/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>China is asserting itself in the South Pacific, prompting efforts from the US and its allies to contain its influence.Owen Greene, Professor of International Security and Development, University of BradfordChristoph Bluth, Professor of International Relations and Security, University of BradfordLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2017832023-03-29T19:03:59Z2023-03-29T19:03:59ZWe provided health care for children in immigration detention. This is what we found<p>Australia’s immigration policies allow for indefinite locked detention, including for children and families. Detention is mandatory for people arriving without a valid visa – all those who arrived by boat between 2009 and 2013 were held in Immigration Detention Centres in Australia, or in Australian-contracted detention in Nauru or Papua New Guinea (PNG).</p>
<p>Australian detention numbers peaked in mid-2013, with 2,000 children detained at this time. By mid-2014, the average duration of detention exceeded 400 days. </p>
<p>While the last children were released from locked detention at the end of 2018, Australian law and policy still mandate detention for children arriving without visas. While the government refers to “held” or “locked” “detention”, to be plain, these children were imprisoned for seeking asylum.</p>
<p>We have just published a study describing the health of asylum-seeker children who experienced detention attending our Refugee Health Clinic over the <a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0282798">past ten years</a>. </p>
<p>Our team has been seeing refugee children for more than 20 years. We have extensive experience in refugee health, forensic medicine and child development, but nothing prepared us for the complexity of looking after these children.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-moves-to-copy-australias-cruel-asylum-seeker-policy-and-it-will-have-the-same-heavy-human-toll-201390">UK moves to copy Australia's cruel asylum-seeker policy – and it will have the same heavy human toll</a>
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<h2>Trauma, mental illness, lack of protection</h2>
<p>Our cohort of 277 patients comprised 239 children who had been detained, including 31 infants born in detention, and another 38 children born after release to families who experienced detention. </p>
<p>There were 79 children from families who had been detained on Nauru/PNG, 47 children had been detained offshore. Most children had spent time in at least three different Australian detention facilities.</p>
<p>The duration of locked detention ranged from a few months to more than five years. Children sent to Nauru/PNG were detained for longer (typically three to five years) than those held in Australia (typically around one year), and many of this group remain in community detention.</p>
<p>The experience of these children was traumatic. They arrived with trauma – 62% had experienced major trauma before or during their journey to Australia, 8% had experienced the death of an immediate family member. They then experienced trauma in detention. They were exposed to self-harm, suicide attempts and violence – in unrelated adults and within their own families. </p>
<p>One in five children were separated from a parent in detention, often for weeks or months, and young children were left alone in detention while their parents were hospitalised. More than half the cohort had parents with mental illness, this reached 86% in the Nauru/PNG cohort, and 21% of these children had parents requiring psychiatric admission.</p>
<p>The trauma and deprivation of immigration detention had profound impact on children’s health. Two-thirds had a mental health problem (most commonly anxiety, depression and/or post-traumatic stress disorder) and 75% presented with developmental concerns. Child protection issues were common – 19% required child protection notification and 8% were referred for sexual assault concerns in detention.</p>
<p>Protective systems were limited or absent. Almost half the children had interrupted education in detention. Schooling was unavailable or extremely limited for most children on Christmas Island for long periods. In Melbourne, within 20km of our hospital, school-aged children were not enrolled in school, often for months.</p>
<h2>No health screening or follow-ups</h2>
<p>While basic medical services were provided in detention, health screening was effectively absent – both in detention, and in the community in Victoria. </p>
<p>Only 1% of children had a recommended health screen before being seen in our service and only 29% of children had received routine childhood immunisation. We saw children with severe mental health, developmental and medical diagnoses that had not been recognised in detention.</p>
<p>In the early stages, there were some children seen once, who were transferred to another detention centre before their review appointment and never seen again. Families attended clinic with multiple guards, and were often late, completely missing their appointment time, despite the detention centre being notified well in advance. </p>
<p>Parents were frequently incapacitated by their own mental illness. We saw parents with severe depression, catatonic and psychotic features, and witnessed profoundly disordered attachment. Often it was difficult for them to even tell us what had happened to them and their children and what symptoms they were experiencing. In some cases, we admitted children directly to hospital, for immediate safety or medical concerns. </p>
<p>Documentation was unavailable, and we spent hours chasing paperwork, painstakingly piecing together health records for families, and notifying the detention health providers and the Department of Home Affairs of the issues.</p>
<h2>Precarious migration status is traumatising too</h2>
<p>We had not anticipated detention could, or would, last for years, or that we would still be seeing these children in 2023. </p>
<p>After release from detention, most children experienced improvements in family function, wellbeing and mental health. However, short-term bridging visas precluded parents working for years, and in many families, financial stress has impacted housing and food security. </p>
<p>The impact of detention, years of precarious migration status and trauma is ongoing, and many individuals in families in the Nauru cohort remain extremely unwell. These children have now been here nearly ten years – meaning some have entered and almost completed schooling. </p>
<p>The transition to permanent residency will be life-changing for the families detained in Australia, but deeply distressing for those sent offshore, who do not have access to this pathway.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/are-doctors-ethically-obliged-to-keep-at-risk-children-out-of-detention-49047">Are doctors ethically obliged to keep at-risk children out of detention?</a>
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</em>
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<h2>What has to happen</h2>
<p>Our research provides clinical evidence for the harm to children from Australian immigration detention, migration law, and related policies. </p>
<p>Governments must avoid detaining children and families – in Australia, and in other countries. It is unsafe and harms children. </p>
<p>We urge a compassionate approach to resolving the immigration status of these children and families, including those sent offshore to Nauru or PNG, that also recognises the impact of time.</p>
<p>These children have grown up in Australia, their identity is now Australian, and we should support them as children and young people in Australia.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/3-types-of-denial-that-allow-australians-to-feel-ok-about-how-we-treat-refugees-186294">3 types of denial that allow Australians to feel OK about how we treat refugees</a>
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</em>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Shidan Tosif is a paediatrician and researcher at the Murdoch Childrens Research Institute, University of Melbourne and Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Georgia Paxton has provided independent advice to the Department of Home Affairs from 2013.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Hamish Graham is a paediatrician-researcher at the University of Melbourne, MCRI, and Royal Children's Hospital Melbourne.</span></em></p>Our new study describes the health effects of detention on children, and the clinical results are alarming.Shidan Tosif, Honorary Clinical Associate Professor, The University of MelbourneGeorgia Paxton, Associate Professor of Paediatrics , Murdoch Children's Research InstituteHamish Graham, Associate professor International Child Health; Paediatrician, Murdoch Children's Research InstituteLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2017902023-03-24T13:11:46Z2023-03-24T13:11:46Z‘A toxic policy with little returns’ – lessons for the UK-Rwanda deal from Australia and the US<p>One afternoon in mid-June, I sat with Ethan*, a local islander, at Nauru’s boat harbour. He was speaking about how life had changed in the country since the asylum deal with Australia was agreed. Just a few years before my arrival in 2016, the small Pacific island had once again been financed to process the asylum claims of migrants attempting to reach Australia. If successful, refugees would be resettled locally around the island. Successive Australian governments had taken a tough zero-tolerance approach, making sure that anyone making their way by boat without documentation would <a href="https://osb.homeaffairs.gov.au/">“never settle in Australia”</a>.</p>
<p>Not far from where we sat, placards covered the fence of a refugee resettlement compound, reading: “We’re refugees not criminals,” and “Freedom is a Right Not a Crime, We Want Justice.”</p>
<p>“The thing is none of them want to be here,” Ethan explained, “and we don’t know who these people are, they could be dangerous. Why else does Australia not want them?” These fears were echoed to me numerous times in Nauru. “I’m so worried about having the refugee children in our school,” Sandra, a teacher at Nauru’s only secondary school, said on another occasion. “We don’t want to touch or go too close in case they say we hit refugees. And natural things like kids pushing each other on the playground. The next day it’s in the Australian news”. This teacher’s fears were confirmed several months later, with <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-03-09/nauru-govt-denies-abuse-of-refugee-school-children/7234772">headlines</a> like: “Nauru Government Denies Refugee Children Are Abused in Schools.”</p>
<p>Such accusations of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-2000-leaked-reports-reveal-scale-of-abuse-of-children-in-australian-offshore-detention">savagery against refugees</a> draw on colonial tropes of Pacific islanders as cannibals. Major global media outlets alleged that Nauru was a veritable heart of darkness, an <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/documents/asa12/4934/2016/en/">“island of despair”</a>, where refugees are <a href="https://www.npr.org/2016/08/11/489584342/claims-probed-of-brutal-conditions-for-refugees-on-island-of-nauru">“hacked with machetes”</a> by the local population.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">A video released by the Australian government explaining its “zero chance” asylum and immigration policy.</span></figcaption>
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<p>These sorts of representations created a fractious context locally: one produced by sending asylum seekers, many with devastating pasts, to a vastly different region of the world from their intended destination.</p>
<h2>The UK Rwanda policy</h2>
<p>In January 2023, the UK’s High Court <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-64024461">ruled on</a> the lawfulness of the British government’s plan to deport asylum seekers to Rwanda. Under this £140 million agreement, undocumented migrants could find themselves sent to the East African country – 4,000 miles south-east of where they lodged their asylum applications. Once in Rwanda, they will have their asylum claims processed, and will be eligible for residency, not in the UK – their original destination – but in Rwanda.</p>
<p>The European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) in Strasbourg is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/law/2022/jun/15/what-is-the-echr-and-how-did-it-intervene-in-uk-rwanda-flight-plans">expected to rule</a> on the controversial policy by the end of the year. This proposed “outsourced” asylum policy directly mimics Australia’s so-called “Pacific Solution”, the impacts of which I have examined in <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765841/asylum-and-extraction-in-the-republic-of-nauru/#bookTabs=1">my research</a>. Since Australia’s Liberal prime minister, John Howard, at the turn of the century, boat arrivals have been the basis for copious media attention and resultant public anxiety in Australia. Controversial offshore policies in small Pacific islands like Nauru, combined with high-profile military and naval operations, are intended to reduce the number of people crossing the Indian Ocean.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/288776/original/file-20190820-170910-8bv1s7.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<p><strong><em>This article is part of Conversation Insights</em></strong>
<br><em>The Insights team generates <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218">long-form journalism</a> derived from interdisciplinary research. The team is working with academics from different backgrounds who have been engaged in projects aimed at tackling societal and scientific challenges.</em></p>
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<p>Now, like successive Australian politicians, UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is promoting the UK-Rwanda policy as a means of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/mar/08/stop-the-boats-sunaks-anti-asylum-slogan-echoes-australia-harsh-policy?mc_cid=045ba1c77c&mc_eid=7906bcbf06">“stopping the boats”</a>, but this time those crossing the English Channel from northern France. Just as Australian politicians stoked public anxiety, pursuing media attention and electoral gains, Suella Braverman, the UK home secretary, has called migrant boats from Calais <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NEt8FVXIgvQ">“an invasion on our southern coast”</a>. She also <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/dec/19/rwanda-dream-could-still-become-a-nightmare-for-suella-braverman">said</a>: “I would love to have a front page of the Telegraph with a plane taking off to Rwanda, that’s my dream, it’s my obsession.”</p>
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<p>I conducted <a href="https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501765841/asylum-and-extraction-in-the-republic-of-nauru/">long-term fieldwork</a> in Nauru into the effects of the Australian government’s near <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/6/">AU$10 billion</a> (about £5 billion) arrangement. I have also led anthropological fieldwork projects into similar outsourced asylum measures in regions as diverse as Guatemala, Jordan and Lebanon. What falls outside the global media headlines, from all sides of the political spectrum, is how these policies are realised in practice and whether or not they actually work.</p>
<p>I have interviewed migrants claiming asylum, as well as local residents, private security contractors and government officials. I found that these outsourcing schemes create a refugee industry economy that local populations become dependant on. For the asylum seekers and refugees, most with devastating pasts and equally hazy futures, being castigated to far off places not of their choosing <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/NauruandManusRPCs/Report">all too often</a> led to tragic instances of self-harm and suicide. In Nauru, the friction between different populations were apparent on a daily basis.</p>
<h2>Australia’s ‘Nauru experiment’</h2>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515326/original/file-20230314-16-if4urd.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Republic of Nauru.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julia Morris, 2016.</span></span>
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<p>The boat harbour is a popular spot for Nauruans and refugees alike. It is one of the few places where you can swim safely without the threats of currents or the jagged limestone pinnacles that pierce through the island’s coastal waters. It is also a place where I have long conversations with asylum seekers down from the island’s Regional Processing Centres (RPCs). The RPCs are tucked deep in the heart of coral atoll’s jungle. Many asylum seekers take advantage of the afternoon open centre hours at the RPCs to catch a bus down to the boat harbour.</p>
<p>“No, I can’t swim, but I just like to come here because it’s cooler than at the centres. The heat sticks to you up there,” Khadija, an Iranian asylum seeker says to me. “In Iran, we never have this kind of heat.”</p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=800&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515327/original/file-20230314-20-m7jw3f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1005&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Refugees in Nauru.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julia Morris, 2016.</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Like the majority of Nauru’s new refugee population, Khadija stands out. She’s 20 and most of her life has been spent in Tehran then Jakarta: cosmopolitan, urban hubs at odds with small Pacific island climes. She, as with so many other asylum seekers I speak with in Nauru, took a boat from Indonesia in the hopes of reaching Australia to claim asylum. The financial cost and possible dangers were enormous. It cost AU$10,000 (just over £5,000) for the boat alone, she tells me. But she and her sister were escaping extreme domestic abuse.</p>
<p>Not far from us, on the concrete walls of the boat harbour, sit a group of Nauruan Community Liaison Officers, also dressed in distinctive fluorescent vests. They are tasked with dealing with conflicts that arise between refugees and locals now that refugees are being resettled on Nauruan visas around the island. Our conversation moves to some of these conflicts. Khadija tells me:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have Nauruan friends, but no, I don’t want to be here. I’d never heard of Nauru before I came here. I was scared, I didn’t know where they were taking me.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Abdul, a friend of hers, catches wind of our conversation as he dries himself off with a towel nearby. “I don’t think anyone had heard of this place! I mean, why would we want to come here? It’s a dump!”</p>
<p>“Well, a lot of Nauruans have been kind, but there are no jobs here for us here. How can we set up lives? No one wants to be here,” Khadija says, worry lines coursing her face.</p>
<p>We speak about the latest Guardian Australia <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/mar/19/even-god-cant-help-you-here-nauru-refugees-describe-a-life-devoid-of-hope">media report</a> of Nauruans beating up a refugee. Abdul has a lot to say on the matter: “You never know. Sometimes it’s true, there are fights that happen. Sometimes it’s desperation. Refugees trying to bring media attention to their situation. This is all expected. Send people to a very different part of the world where they don’t want to be and see what happens.”</p>
<p>Khadija interjects: “And refugees here will also do anything to get to Australia. You can’t send people somewhere so different and not expect them to protest. It’s not nice for the Nauruans, but a lot of refugees don’t care about that.”</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515328/original/file-20230314-3609-5owco.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Community Liaison Officers in Nauru.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julia Morris, 2016.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I think of the placards covering the fence of a nearby refugee resettlement compound and the doors of the Australian-funded refugee businesses (largely beauty salons and takeaways) that are all firmly closed in protest. I had been in conversation earlier that week with a group of Nauruans working at the RPCs, who had told me of “shit smeared on the walls” and “taps left on” from asylum seekers in desperate protest. Only a few years before I arrived in Nauru, one of the RPC buildings had been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/jul/20/nauru-detention-centre-burns-down">burned to the ground</a>.</p>
<p>“It’s not just between locals and refugees,” points out Khadija. “It’s also between refugees, of course. I’m Shia. My sister and I were put together with someone who’s Sunni. They made life difficult for us. They had to move us to a different section.” Abdul nods, adding: “There was one guy who had to be moved to separate hotel accommodation because it got so bad.”</p>
<h2>Secrecy, violence and segregation</h2>
<p>The kind of secrecy, violence and segregation that Khadija and Abdul speak of underpins daily life in Nauru. Around the island, <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2214790X19300784">the destructive realities</a> of outsourcing asylum are palpable.</p>
<p>Aziz, an Iraqi refugee, living in resettlement accommodation, tells me of the cries when he goes to sleep at night:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I hear my neighbour through the walls, I don’t know what he saw before he came to Nauru.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Marie, an Australian torture and trauma counsellor, told me “you can’t begin to help people work through trauma when it’s exacerbated by being in Nauru”. She says Nauru has never had the capacity or the infrastructure to effectively support asylum seekers and refugees.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515329/original/file-20230314-3872-o0riwe.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Protests outside a refugee resettlement compound.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julia Morris, 2016.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Marie’s latter point is one I’ve heard several times. Prior to the Australian arrangement, Nauru had no history of refugee processing or resettlement. To make this outsourced arrangement a reality, the Australian government funded fly-in-fly-out Australian counsellors in addition to asylum legal support, interpreters, refugee adjudication and appeals tribunals, education and medics. However, counsellors like Marie were largely ineffective – palliative at best. Asylum seekers I spoke with described experiencing overwhelming powerlessness, depression, and identity crises because of the offshore arrangement.</p>
<p>Industry contractors I spoke with recounted similar stories of human suffering. Sarah, a facility manager from the Australian corporate management firm, told me of her recurring nightmares, having witnessed asylum seekers sewing their lips together in her work at the RPCs. </p>
<p>Vivian, a mental health counsellor to the Australian Immigration Department, made the damaging toll of working in Nauru explicit in our interview. She said: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The compromises that people are in, and every day going to work to do bad things to others is making them feel ill. I had a client who had breast cancer who said to me, ‘I believe that I will be punished for what I’m doing by getting my breast cancer back.’ It’s a toxic environment and it sends people mad.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Trevor, a security guard at the RPCs, described the hunger strikes he tried to resolve: “But it’s not just hunger strikes,” he added, visibly upset.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Self-immolation, self-harm, riots, arson, suicide, jumps from roofs, sewing lips. Asylum seekers are desperate not to be here and so many of them have been through all kinds of traumatic experiences I can’t even imagine before being sent here.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Sarah and Trevor are just some of the many industry contractors I spoke with who bear the scars of witnessing these devastating situations. In fact, lawsuits from past contracted Australian workers to Nauru <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/immigration-department-pays-1-million-compensation-to-save-the-children-workers-fired-from-nauru-20170131-gu27nm.html">still plague</a> the Australian government. </p>
<p>Many locals were initially sympathetic to the plight of refugees. However, over the years, this sympathy turned to anger as Nauruans contended being represented as savages and human rights abusers in parts of the media and by certain refugee solidarity activists. “Look at this stuff they write … They haven’t even been here,” says Oliana, a Nauruan government worker. </p>
<h2>A growing trend</h2>
<p>The kind of outsourcing arrangement between Australia and Nauru seems outlandish, but it is not unique. It is part of a model of wealthier western countries funding poorer countries to carry out border enforcement. Australia is often cited as a case study of outsourcing asylum, but this system has historical precedents.</p>
<p>Asylum as a formal international legal procedure was <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jrs/article/34/3/2676/6084556?guestAccessKey=54f5325e-c578-4470-a950-b6ce80728611&login=false">institutionalised</a> across the early 20th century. European governments sought increased control over the demographic makeup and political structure of their nation states. Some feared disproportionate numbers of undocumented migrant arrivals. It was in this climate that the international refugee agencies pioneered systems of so-called burden-sharing. </p>
<p>In the early 20th century, the Nansen Office and Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees spearheaded moving refugees (largely Russians, Armenians, and Greeks) between countries. Just a few decades later, huge numbers of Jewish refugees sought to escape the atrocities of the second world war. Many European countries refused to provide sanctuary to Jewish refugees, referring to the <a href="https://www-jstor-org.liblink.uncw.edu/stable/pdf/3020054.pdf?refreqid=fastly-default%3A1c89ab334e4c9c5715f1ccc22e816413&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search_gsv2%2Fcontrol&origin=&initiator=search-results">“Jewish problem”</a>. </p>
<p>Instead, countries as far flung as the Dominican Republic and Ecuador promoted themselves as destinations for Jewish refugees to attract political and economic support. The International Refugee Organization - a precursor to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) active between 1946-1952 - took this system of burden-sharing to new heights, relocating more than <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jrs/article-abstract/34/3/2676/6084556">a million refugees</a> from Europe to the Americas, Israel, South Africa and Oceania between 1947 and 1951.</p>
<p>As asylum seekers changed from eastern Europeans to Africans and Asians from the 1970s, the term “asylum seeker” attracted <a href="https://canvas.harvard.edu/files/4148518/download?download_frd=1">negative connotations</a> in western political and media discourse. It became shorthand for economic opportunism, mass movements and threats to security. Tough measures on asylum, including intercepting migrants before arrival, soon become a touchstone for left and right-leaning governments alike. </p>
<p>Outsourced <a href="https://www.migrationpolicy.org/research/external-processing-asylum?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=cff1d97f-cca0-47f3-9dda-69235156f741">asylum models</a> have since been adopted across the EU. There are agreements with eastern Europe, Turkey, north and East Africa, and Central Asia. The US has experimented with several of what are termed extra-territorial asylum processing schemes, including processing Haitian asylum seekers in <a href="https://www.ucpress.edu/book/9780520255401/guantanamo">Guantanamo</a> in the 1990s, establishing facilities to assess asylum claims across Central America, funding local advertisements to dissuade migrants, as well as financing border enforcement and national asylum systems across Mexico and Central America.</p>
<p>Many Asian countries, including China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan have implemented restrictive detention and temporary visa practices for African migrants, in particular. So-called transit regions, such as South Asia, eastern Europe and North Africa have also seen significant levels of funding and resources going into policing, detention, and other forms of immigration control.</p>
<p>The UK has toyed with different externalised border enforcement measures over the years. The Rwanda deal is one such arrangement. Sunak <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/tv/news/rishi-sunak-tory-rwanda-migrants-b2150863.html">has said</a> that he will do “whatever it takes to make the Rwanda plan work”, describing “illegal migration” as an “emergency”. In June 2022, the first flight of four asylum seekers from the UK to Rwanda was blocked after an injunction from the ECHR alleged it was a violation of civil and political rights. </p>
<p>Others question the efficacy of the £140 million <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/uk-and-rwanda-strengthen-agreement-to-deal-with-global-migration-issues">Illegal Migration Bill</a> that is designed for only a small number of asylum seekers: the Rwandan government has agreed to receive 200 asylum seekers a year across a five-year trial period. Meanwhile, Braverman has <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2022-12-19/debates/B5009C67-E69A-4248-8F16-77439DE48472/MigrationAndEconomicDevelopment">declared</a> that relocating people to Rwanda is a “ground-breaking migration and economic development partnership” and “an innovative way of addressing a major problem” of <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/suella-braverman-small-boats-b2298187.html">“billions of”</a> people coming [to the UK].</p>
<p><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/knowsley-asylum-seeker-hotel-riot-b2281367.html">Anti-migrant protests</a> outside asylum seeker housing in Knowsley and Dover in the UK have also led to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/feb/13/attack-migrants-knowsley-ministers-violence-asylum-seekers">concerns</a> that the Conservative government is capitalising on xenophobic sentiments. As legal debates continue around the legitimacy of the arrangement, Sunak has put together legislation that would disallow anyone reaching the UK to claim asylum without prior clearance. </p>
<p>The legislation would extend the government’s ability to detain them beyond the current permissible 28 days. It would also enable their deportation to a third country, such as Rwanda – the only country that has agreed to such a strategy. The former home secretary, Priti Patel, <a href="https://www.theafricareport.com/168415/ghana-government-denies-uks-operation-dead-meat-scheme/">attempted deals</a> with countries including Ghana and Kenya, which were rejected locally.</p>
<p>But Rwanda has yet to experience the implications of the deal. Rwanda does have a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-61882542">recent failed history</a> of taking asylum seekers through a similar arrangement. In agreement with Israel’s Netanyahu government, Rwanda received some 4,000 Eritreans and Sudanese between 2014 and 2017. At the time, Netanyahu marshalled a similar narrative steeped in racial bias around the country’s mistanenim or <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2018/02/09/middleeast/israel-african-migrants-intl/index.html">“infiltrators”</a>. Israel paid the Rwandan government US$5,000 for every asylum seeker, each of whom received US$3,500 and their airfare. Almost all are thought to have left the country immediately. Yet, unlike the proposed UK-Rwanda deal, this coerced voluntary deportation scheme did not involve a long-term asylum processing and resettlement arrangement. Such a proposition presents far greater concerns: ones raised not just in Nauru but also across my other fieldwork sites.</p>
<h2>US and Guatemala: conflicting refugee histories</h2>
<p>Flores is a picturesque island village in Guatemala’s northernmost Petén region. Located deep in the jungle in Lake Peten Itza, it is a place where the concept of claiming asylum to – not from – was little heard of prior to 2010. I am sitting in Flores’ main church square for World Refugee Day in June 2022. It is a new event for the island, put together by UNHCR’s new Petén field office, to socialise Guatemalan residents in refugee protection. Under the slogan “Reborn in Guate”, UNHCR has devised a day-long programme of art, folklore, dance, music and poetry.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515330/original/file-20230314-18-w6375t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">World Refugee Day in the Petén.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julia Morris, 2022.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>“We have to be careful with using the word refugees,” whispers Alessandra, a UNHCR official, as a group of young Honduran rappers take the stage. “Many people, particularly Indigenous Maya, still have such vivid memories of when they were refugees. We don’t want it to seem like anyone’s getting preferential treatment or that they accuse our new refugee arrivals of gaming the system”.</p>
<p>This goes back to Guatemala’s four decade-long civil war. From the 1950s to the 1990s, genocidal policies <a href="https://www.dukeupress.edu/the-blood-of-guatemala">claimed the lives</a> of hundreds of thousands of Indigenous Maya, or Maya Q’eqchi’. During this period, the US provided counter-insurgency training and military supplies to Guatemalan military and police, which heightened the escalation of violence.</p>
<p>In Santa Elena, just across the causeway from Flores, I have a long conversation with a local fruit market vendor, Estella, about this time. She was a young girl when the civil war broke out. Caught in the gunfire between guerrilla forces, she and her family, like so many Maya Q’eqchi’, eventually crossed the border to Mexico in the 1980s in hopes of survival. After nearly a decade living in different refugee camps in southern Mexico, she eventually returned to the Petén as a middle-aged woman in 1995, not long after the peace process negotiations.</p>
<p>“Most of my life, I was in fear of the military finding my family,” she says. “We moved between refugee camps in Mexico, almost every year it felt like. Chiapas, Campeche, Quintana Roo,” she slowly counts the different states on her fingers, adding:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>We never knew if the Mexican government was on our side or if we might be handed over to the Guatemalan army. The Guatemalan army was always coming into Mexico, looking for guerrilla soldiers in the camps. We knew that if they found us, we would be killed without any mercy, we’d seen this happen to others.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>All those years spent living in exile in refugee camps before returning to the Petén, gives Estella pause when discussing the new refugee programmes. “It confuses me. These people aren’t refugees. They haven’t been through the kind of suffering we have,” she says. “Many Maya never got their land back and still live as refugees in Guatemala. They have all these programmes for the new refugees, and make such a big deal about them, they even get a month of accommodation, but we Maya experience so much inequality that has never been resolved.”</p>
<p>Guatemala still has one of the most unequal systems of land tenure in the world. The violence of the civil war resulted in the loss of livelihoods for many Maya, including huge unemployment that lingers to this day. Oil palm plantations, taking over great swaths of north-eastern Guatemala that are home to Q’eqchi’ communities, are continuing to <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/2/6/palm-oil-industry-expansion-spurs-guatemala-indigenous-migration">fuel displacement</a>. Substantial numbers of Guatemalans are also deported back from the US and Mexico each year (almost <a href="https://www.laprensalatina.com/last-guatemalan-deportees-from-us-in-2022-arrive-home-amid-broken-dreams/">100,000 migrants</a> in 2022 alone), compounding these tensions. </p>
<p>It is for this reason that the Guatemalan government avoids calling resettled regional migrants refugees. Officials I speak with at Guatemala City’s Migration Institute emphasise avoiding the term. Not only does it evoke traumatic memories for many, but the government fears public perceptions of preferential treatment of US-funded, regional refugees.</p>
<p>Yet, Guatemala is visibly promoting itself as an asylum destination, as the World Refugee Day celebrations make clear. In our conversation, Estella references the posters that cover Santa Elena’s central bus station. At her recommendation, I go to look at the almost tourist-style advertisements that stretch dramatically across the façade of the arrivals hall. One is fringed with stick figures of people running for safety and the logos of UNHCR and El Refugio de la Niñez, Guatemala’s national refugee support agency. At its centre, it features a family holding hands as they clamber over train tracks. In large blue font, with the words “danger”, “protection”, and “refugee” highlighted, it reads:</p>
<p>“If your life is in danger, and you cannot return to your country, you can ask for protection as a refugee in Guatemala. We can help you!”</p>
<p>Around another corner in the terminal, signs point towards a small office, the Attention Centre for Migrants and Refugees. Inside, I see a small team of Guatemalan social workers with leaflets explaining the process of claiming asylum in Guatemala.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/515331/original/file-20230314-3889-40c215.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Promoting Asylum in the Petén.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Julia Morris, 2022.</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>These efforts constitute the US’ latest outsourced asylum strategy. As part of a regional approach begun in 2017, known as the Regional Comprehensive Protection and Solutions Framework (or its Spanish acronym <a href="https://mirps-platform.org/en/">MIRPS</a>). Guatemala, together with Mexico and other Central American countries (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Honduras and Panama) is steadily developing the capacity to receive and support asylum claims in the country. Santa Elena is a way station for Honduran migrants making the long journey up to the US. Heightened US-funded border enforcement further south along Guatemala’s main land borders has also pushed more people to pass through the northern Petén border, where I conducted my research. </p>
<p>Migrants are encouraged to claim asylum for Mexico or Central America, rather than making their claims to the US. Limitations at the US-Mexico border, combined with the exorbitant costs and danger of making the crossing undocumented, are pushing more migrants to applying for asylum regionally.
Claiming asylum in Guatemala or other third countries might soon be a legal requirement. In 2023, the US Supreme Court issued a <a href="https://www.aila.org/advo-media/aila-policy-briefs/practice-alert-the-proposed-asylum-transit-ban">hotly contested</a> proposed rule known as the <a href="https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2023/02/23/2023-03718/circumvention-of-lawful-pathways">“transit ban”</a> – asylum seekers who pass through a third country en route to the US-Mexico border must claim asylum there first.</p>
<p>But very few migrants are interested in claiming asylum locally. Like the UK-Rwanda deal, the US plan also functions largely as spectacle. Although the numbers of asylum claims filed to Guatemala’s new National Commission for Refugees is increasing, only 634 refugee visa holders and 1,410 asylum-seekers <a href="https://reporting.unhcr.org/guatemala">reside in Guatemala</a>.</p>
<h2>Memories of exile</h2>
<p>Estella’s confusion at the visible effects of outsourcing asylum in Guatemala foreshadows additional dynamics that the UK-Rwanda deal might produce. Like Guatemala, Rwanda is also a country with a tragic history of producing refugees. The 1994 Rwandan genocide led to the massacre of next to a million people. Horrific numbers of women were sexually assaulted. Over two million Rwandans fled to neighbouring countries in Africa’s Great Lakes region including Tanzania, Uganda, Burundi, and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Following the end of the civil war, an estimated <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/news/latest/2003/1/3e15a6397/eight-year-rwandan-refugee-saga-tanzania-comes-end.html#:%7E:text=An%20estimated%201.3%20million%20Rwandans,in%20the%20summer%20of%201994.">1.3 million Rwandan refugees</a> returned after over two years in exile. As with Guatemala, memories of exile and return are ever-present in Rwanda. Outsourcing asylum to regions with pre-existing local refugee populations can incite the tensions voiced by Estella and others I spoke with.</p>
<p>Unlike Guatemala, Rwanda does have a history of formal refugee protection outside of the return of its own citizens. Almost <a href="https://reporting.unhcr.org/rwanda">164,000 refugees</a> live in refugee camps or urban areas in Rwanda. However, these refugees are from surrounding East African regions, such as the DRC and Burundi. Those asylum seekers who have received notices of intent from the UK Home Office (making them at risk of being sent to Rwanda) are largely from the same countries as those I met in Nauru: Afghanistan, Iran and Syria. These are countries that are ethnically and linguistically distinct to Rwanda.</p>
<p>Even in the US asylum arrangement with Guatemala, most refugees given residency there are from surrounding Spanish-speaking countries. Here, the emphasis is on developing a viable regional resettlement framework. That the UK is considering sending asylum seekers from far different regions to a country still raw from its own refugee dynamics does not bode well. It was the cultivation of ethnic hierarchies between Tutsis and Hutus under Belgian colonial rule that resulted in the 1994 Rwandan genocide in the first place. </p>
<h2>A toxic policy with little returns</h2>
<p>My fieldwork findings from Nauru and Guatemala paint a bleak picture of the impacts of outsourcing asylum, relevant to the UK-Rwanda arrangement. The British government is setting up for similar entrapment in a costly operation, totals that in Australia financially spiralled to an <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/6/">estimated</a> AU$9.65 billion (over £5 billion) since July 2013.</p>
<p>Rwanda is a country that, unlike the UK, does not have a substantial Middle Eastern diaspora. The Rwandan government will require enormous investment to support new populations from well outside the East African region. The British government – and ultimately taxpayer – will end up shouldering these costs. Sustaining the operations in the face of ongoing activism and High Court pushbacks will require evermore Rwandan investments to ensure its international legal compliance. Rwanda, like Nauru, will have major challenges to contend with too, including education, social integration, housing capacity, and mental health and trauma-related concerns. </p>
<p>As a migration governance strategy, the UK-Rwanda deal makes little sense. It will cost the British taxpayer <a href="https://www.rescue.org/uk/article/why-uk-government-should-rethink-its-plan-send-asylum-seekers-uk-rwanda">far more</a> than the economic and social benefits of integrating the small number of migrants into the British workforce.</p>
<p>Since the post-war era, international migration worldwide has remained stable, as a percentage of the global population it stands at <a href="https://worldmigrationreport.iom.int/wmr-2022-interactive/">3.6%</a>. This is a fraction of the world’s population, meaning that most people migrate within countries, rather than across borders. The majority of irregular migrants to the UK are <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-home-office-is-now-publishing-stats-on-irregular-migration-heres-what-they-do-and-dont-tell-us-177955">visa over-stayers</a> and not those who take a boat across the English Channel. Typically, it is also not the poorest people who migrate. Taking a boat is an expensive endeavour and migrants require considerable resources to migrate, particularly across international borders. </p>
<h2>‘A laboratory experiment gone wrong’</h2>
<p>A new deal was finally struck for Nauru after almost a decade of indecision as to how to end the arrangement. It came amid a backdrop of deepening civil unrest, a series of tragic self-immolations, and a Guardian <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2016/aug/10/the-nauru-files-the-lives-of-asylum-seekers-in-detention-detailed-in-a-unique-database-interactive">Nauru Files</a> campaign that made global headlines. The Australian government arranged with the Obama administration a deal in which 1,250 refugees from Nauru and Manus Island would be resettled in the US.</p>
<p>These resettlement places were still honoured when Donald Trump entered office in 2016, as part of what Trump notoriously described as the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/feb/02/trump-told-turnbull-refugee-agreement-was-the-worst-deal-ever-report">“dumb, dumb deal”</a>. Hamid, an Afghani refugee acquaintance in Nauru, sent me an email at the time. He expressed his excitement about his upcoming move to the US, but also his fear at the racism he might encounter. Like Hamid, most refugees have since been resettled across the US, Canada, and eventually through the long-standing <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/479403/first-nauru-refugees-arrive-in-new-zealand-under-resettlement-deal">New Zealand offer</a>. But 60 refugees remain in Nauru, with the country still marred in refugee protests locally.</p>
<p>Heated debates continue in Australia. In March, the Albanese Labor government, the Liberal Party and the One Nation Party voted against the Green Party’s <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_Legislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=s1362">Migration Amendment Evacuation to Safety Bill 2023</a>. This bill called for those refugees held in Nauru to be moved to Australia, while the Australian government pursued further resettlement options. </p>
<p>Nauru remains funded by the Australian government with the possibility that these operations might be restarted in the future. In October 2022, the Australian government <a href="https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8064165/obscene-amount-for-nauru-contract/">awarded</a> an AU$422 million (roughly £230 million) contract with the US-based private prison contractor, Management and Training Corporation, until September 2025 to hold refugees in Nauru.</p>
<p>Instead of debating the legitimacy of asylum, countries could benefit from providing work rights to migrant populations. The UK is well prepared for meeting these integration needs. Because of centuries of migration (much wrought through colonialism) the UK has already invested significant resources into supporting newcomers keen to integrate into the labour market. The Oxford Migration Observatory <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-fiscal-impact-of-immigration-in-the-uk/">recently found</a> that higher net migration reduces pressure on government debt over time. Incoming migrants are generally younger and of working age than the wider population. This means that they are more likely to work and contribute to public finances. </p>
<p>Not only is this <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/the-labour-market-effects-of-immigration/">shown to</a> support migrant livelihoods, but it can also benefit the economies of sending and receiving countries in the long-term. These kinds of boosts to the economy and the labour market are much-needed in the post-<a href="https://www.oecd.org/coronavirus/policy-responses/covid-19-and-key-workers-what-role-do-migrants-play-in-your-region-42847cb9/">COVID-19</a> and <a href="https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/reports/how-is-the-end-of-free-movement-affecting-the-low-wage-labour-force-in-the-uk/">post-Brexit labour environment</a>.</p>
<p>Back to 2016 and I am sitting in a senior Australian bureaucrat’s office in Canberra, discussing the standstill underway with the Nauru arrangement. I ask what the future holds for the offshoring policy. “Most politicians want it to end, but they’re unsure how to do it without losing face,” he replies. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Protests, many refugees on suicide watch, hunger strike, people sewing their lips together, no one interested in integrating locally in Nauru, it frankly just isn’t sustainable. It was never meant to be.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>He pauses, adding: “Not to mention, ethically. It’s a laboratory experiment gone wrong.”</p>
<hr>
<p><em>All names have been changed to protect the identities of those involved.</em></p>
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<figure class="align-center ">
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<p><em>For you: more from our <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/insights-series-71218?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK">Insights series</a>:</em></p>
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<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/the-artist-formerly-known-as-camille-princes-lost-album-comes-out-189486">The artist formerly known as Camille – Prince’s lost album ‘comes out’</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/its-like-being-in-a-warzone-aande-nurses-open-up-about-the-emotional-cost-of-working-on-the-nhs-frontline-194197">‘It’s like being in a warzone’ – A&E nurses open up about the emotional cost of working on the NHS frontline</a></em></p></li>
<li><p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/living-with-mnd-how-a-form-of-acceptance-therapy-is-helping-me-make-one-difficult-choice-at-a-time-184973">Living with MND: how a form of ‘acceptance therapy’ is helping me make one difficult choice at a time</a></em></p></li>
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<p><em>To hear about new Insights articles, join the hundreds of thousands of people who value The Conversation’s evidence-based news. <a href="https://theconversation.com/uk/newsletters/the-daily-newsletter-2?utm_source=TCUK&utm_medium=linkback&utm_campaign=TCUKengagement&utm_content=InsightsUK"><strong>Subscribe to our newsletter</strong></a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/201790/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julia Morris does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Anthropological fieldwork into ‘outsourced’ asylum measures in Nauru and Guatemala reveal how they actually work - and don’t work - in practice.Julia Morris, Assistant Professor of International Studies, University of North Carolina WilmingtonLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1997632023-02-13T07:24:41Z2023-02-13T07:24:41ZChanges to temporary protection visas are a welcome development – and they won’t encourage people smugglers<p>Refugees in Australia on temporary protection visas (TPVs) and Safe Haven Enterprise Visas (SHEVs) now have a pathway to permanent protection, the <a href="https://twitter.com/andrewjgiles/status/1624882623708553216">federal government has confirmed today</a>.</p>
<p>The long-awaited <a href="https://theconversation.com/boat-arrivals-on-temporary-protection-visas-have-access-to-permanent-residency-199751">changes</a> will bring much-needed certainty to around 20,000 people who arrived in Australia before January 1 2014, and who were found to be refugees or at risk of serious human rights violations.</p>
<p>These people have endured years in limbo under a policy that <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/Research%20Brief_Fast%20track_final.pdf">research</a> has shown to be unfair, expensive, impractical, and inconsistent with our international obligations. </p>
<p>Temporary protection not only inflicts significant mental harm on asylum seekers, but also created a costly bureaucratic burden for the government. It’s also out of step with the practice of other countries, where temporary protection is reserved for exceptional circumstances.</p>
<p>The changes are a welcome development for people who have lived with uncertainty for a decade, providing them with an opportunity to rebuild their lives with a sense of security. The decision is also highly unlikely to encourage asylum seekers to try to reach Australia by boat. </p>
<p>Yet, the fate of thousands of other refugees and asylum seekers in limbo in Australia remains uncertain.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1624877877630992388"}"></div></p>
<h2>How did we get here?</h2>
<p>The Coalition announced in 2013 that the temporary protection regime would be <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22media%2Fpressrel%2F3414548%22;src1=sm1">reintroduced</a> as part of Operation Sovereign Borders.</p>
<p>It was deployed alongside <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/turning-back-boats">boat pushbacks at sea</a> and offshore processing, with the goal of deterring asylum seekers from travelling by boat to Australia.</p>
<p>The temporary nature of such visas meant refugees had to have their protection claims reassessed every few years. This left refugees in a state of constant fear and anxiety, unsure if they would be allowed to remain in the country or be forced to leave.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-trauma-of-life-in-limbo-for-refugees-and-asylum-seekers-in-immigration-detention-podcast-178942">The trauma of life in limbo for refugees and asylum seekers in immigration detention – podcast</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Those on SHEVs who met certain requirements relating to work and study in regional areas were – at least on paper – potentially eligible for other visas. But in practice, those requirements were beyond reach, with <a href="https://theconversation.com/boat-arrivals-on-temporary-protection-visas-have-access-to-permanent-residency-199751?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=bylinetwitterbutton">only one person ever qualifying</a>.</p>
<p>The changes announced overnight mark a welcome development. But they don’t resolve the precarious fate of all those in the so-called “legacy caseload”. There’s more to do to bring fairness to thousands of other refugees and asylum seekers who remain tangled in Australia’s complex “fast-track” process. </p>
<h2>Permanent protection</h2>
<p>While the changes fall short of formally abolishing TPV and SHEV visas, people who currently hold such visas will now be able to apply for a “Resolution of Status Visa”. This will allow them to remain permanently in Australia, subject to character, health and security checks. </p>
<p>Permanent residency will provide access to a wide range of rights and benefits that have been out of reach. This includes a pathway to citizenship, access to social security and other benefits, the ability to travel abroad, and access to <a href="https://theconversation.com/education-is-a-human-right-but-for-most-asylum-seekers-in-australia-university-is-an-impossible-dream-174881">government subsidised higher education</a>.</p>
<p>After a decade of being separated from their families, such visa holders will now be able to sponsor family members to join them in Australia.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1494413821091450885"}"></div></p>
<p>The changes implement a promise the Albanese government took to the 2022 election, widely backed by the Australian public. <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/news/overwhelming-majority-australians-back-pathway-permanency-refugees-tpvs">Polling</a> by the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, the Behavioural Insights Team, and Macquarie University showed three out of four Australian voters supported this pathway to permanency.</p>
<p>The Albanese government’s announcement of <a href="https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/AndrewGiles/Pages/permanent-pathway-for-tpv-holders.aspx">A$9.4 million of funding</a> for specialist legal service providers is also welcome. This will allow TPV and SHEV holders to access free legal assistance as they go through the visa application process.</p>
<h2>Who misses out?</h2>
<p>Regrettably, the changes fall short of an <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/policy-brief-13-temporary-protection-visas-australia-reform-proposal">across-the-board solution</a> for all 31,000 people subject to the TPV and SHEV regime, called for by refugees, refugee-led organisations and other experts. </p>
<p>This means the approximately 12,000 people who hadn’t yet been issued a TPV or SHEV will continue to live in limbo.</p>
<p>This includes around 6,000 people who had their initial visa application refused, and who are seeking merits or judicial review of that decision. That process is set to continue, and the good news is that those who succeed at review and are granted a TPV or SHEV will now automatically be able to apply for a permanent visa.</p>
<p>However, a further 2,500 people who had their TPV or SHEV cancelled or refused are left out and expected to leave Australia. Anyone with a new credible claim may be able to request ministerial intervention. But this is a highly discretionary process and remains to be seen how willing the minister may be to exercise this power.</p>
<p>It’s concerning these people are left without a better process, given the <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/Research%20Brief_Fast%20track_final.pdf">well-documented</a> flaws in the so called “fast-track” process that was used to assess these claims. This means there’s a real risk that many people who had their initial claims refused may in fact have valid protection claims.</p>
<p>The changes also don’t apply to anyone who tried to reach Australia by boat after January 1 2014, including the <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/medevac-law-medical-transfers-offshore-detention-australia">more than 1,000 people</a> transferred from offshore processing facilities to Australia for medical treatment.</p>
<p>The government’s position remains that these people will never be allowed to settle in Australia, and should pursue resettlement options abroad, including through Australia’s <a href="https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/KarenAndrews/Pages/australia-new-zealand-resettlement-arrangement.aspx">arrangements with New Zealand</a>.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/aus-nz-refugee-deal-is-a-bandage-on-a-failed-policy-its-time-to-end-offshore-processing-180241">Aus-NZ refugee deal is a bandage on a failed policy. It's time to end offshore processing</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>It won’t encourage people smugglers</h2>
<p>The changes also don’t affect asylum seekers who may attempt to reach Australia by boat in the future. Boat pushbacks at sea and offshore processing arrangements with Nauru remain in place, as does the bar on such arrivals applying for protection visas in Australia.</p>
<p>What this means is that TPVs and SHEVs remain on the books for future arrivals and would be available if the minister were to decide to lift that bar in any given case.</p>
<p>This makes <a href="https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/labor-faces-backlash-from-coalition-as-it-ends-temporary-protection-visas-and-offers-residency-to-19000-refugees/news-story/d0d52420511c87ed121884a7a83331c1">claims</a> that the changes could encourage asylum seekers to travel to Australia by boat completely baseless.</p>
<p>Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has expressed a <a href="https://twitter.com/AlboMP/status/1202020877103054848">commitment</a> to being strong on borders without being weak on humanity. Today’s announcement is a welcome first step in that direction, but there’s still a great deal left to be done to return a sense of humanity to Australia’s refugee policies. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Refugees affected by the changes can access information about legal assistance <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/information-about-end-of-tpvs-shevs/">here</a> and <a href="https://www.racs.org.au/tpv-shev-processing">here</a>.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/199763/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Daniel Ghezelbash receives funding from Australian Research Council. He is a member of the management committee of Refugee Advice and Casework Services and a Special Counsel at the National Justice Project. </span></em></p>But the fate of thousands of other refugees and asylum seekers in limbo in Australia remains uncertain.Daniel Ghezelbash, Associate Professor and Deputy Director, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW Law & Justice, UNSW Sydney, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1899622022-09-14T20:03:21Z2022-09-14T20:03:21ZBravery, insight and simmering fury: Australian female correspondents on speaking truth to power<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/483942/original/file-20220912-18-so06fl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C32%2C4351%2C2894&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Emma Alberici writes about the Fourth Estate with a combination of despondency, scorn and hope.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Wainwright/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>A confession: I am an academic and a journalist, but the name at the top of an article means little to me – whether my own, or anyone else’s. It never has. I am always far more interested in elegantly rendered content. Whether it’s written by a man or a woman is irrelevant. </p>
<p>This gender disregard may seem counterintuitive. But being a woman does not change the craft of journalism. I know it changes almost everything else, but to survive as a woman in many (if not most) industries needs a sense of bloody-mindedness about our right to be there, and a weary robustness born of battle. </p>
<hr>
<p><em>Review: Through Her Eyes, edited by Melissa Roberts and Trevor Watson (Hardie Grant)</em></p>
<hr>
<h2>Does gender matter in journalism?</h2>
<p>In their preface, the co-editors of <a href="https://www.hardiegrant.com/au/publishing/bookfinder/book/through-her-eyes-by-trevor-watson/9781743798898">Through Her Eyes</a>, Melissa Roberts and Trevor Watson, touch on the sexism experienced by all female journalists. </p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=914&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/482665/original/file-20220905-21-xvl1vl.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1149&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<p>Like me, they think and write: “The gender of a correspondent shouldn’t matter.” They qualify: “But the reality is that until very recently, gender determined all in journalism, particularly opportunity.” This is also true.</p>
<p>Several of the correspondents in this book hurdled gendered obstructions to their career and set out alone to foreign lands, funding themselves by freelancing. So, in many ways, reading Through Her Eyes is humbling. Not because it collects the stories of 29 Australian <em>female</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/axing-the-walkley-for-international-reporting-another-nail-in-the-coffin-80467">foreign correspondents</a> who fought hard for their place, but because it collects the stories of foreign correspondents. </p>
<p>Most of these stories are deeply reflective. These chapters are the ones that resonate most – and will, I hope, make readers truly think. They reflect not on being an Australian woman in the field, but on the job and the skills of journalism. On speaking truth to power through written words.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/abc-has-for-too-long-been-unwilling-to-push-back-against-interference-at-its-journalists-expense-143999">ABC has for too long been unwilling to push back against interference – at its journalists' expense</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Emma Alberici’s personal perspective</h2>
<p>Emma Alberici’s chapter, “What’s news?”, is the one that really stands out. It’s not so much a running mission of gathering news in war-torn, dangerous and corrupt countries, but more an essay on the state of play of news-gathering culture. <a href="https://theconversation.com/abc-has-for-too-long-been-unwilling-to-push-back-against-interference-at-its-journalists-expense-143999">Alberici</a> writes with a simmering, recognisable fury. </p>
<p>She begins with the fiasco that was <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-mv-tampa-and-the-transformation-of-asylum-seeker-policy-74078">the Tampa incident</a> in August 2001 – “one of the most shameful periods in our political history” – and the subsequent spiking of the scoop she and Terry Ross gathered for Channel 9’s A Current Affair on <a href="https://theconversation.com/aus-nz-refugee-deal-is-a-bandage-on-a-failed-policy-its-time-to-end-offshore-processing-180241">Nauru</a>, where Australia dumped 434 traumatised people, most of them Afghan refugees. </p>
<p>A Current Affair replaced the shattering and shameful story of Australian government callousness Alberici and Ross had filed with an interview with an inventor who claimed to have created a cure for sweating. After 30 hours of getting to Nauru and manically interviewing, writing, filming and filing there, Alberici tells Ross that back in Sydney, their work has been shelved. Ross vomits at the news. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Emma Alberici called her move from Channel 9 to the ABC, where she became their European correspondent, ‘serendipity’.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>She writes of “serendipity” launching her from the commercial Channel 9 to the ABC later that year. Seven years later, she became the ABC’s European correspondent. And then there are several eviscerating pages on <a href="https://theconversation.com/is-news-corp-following-through-on-its-climate-change-backflip-my-analysis-of-its-flood-coverage-suggests-not-179468">the Murdoch press</a>, particularly in the United Kingdom, circling the phone hacking scandal and subsequent <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/leveson-inquiry-report-into-the-culture-practices-and-ethics-of-the-press">Leveson Inquiry</a>. It is a verifiable and considered unpacking. </p>
<p>She writes a tad despondently about the Fourth Estate and <a href="https://theconversation.com/funding-public-interest-journalism-requires-creative-solutions-a-tax-rebate-for-news-media-could-work-146563">public interest notions of journalism</a>, and scathingly about how “media houses continue to undermine the trust bestowed on them”. But she ends hopefully, invoking multi-platform news outlets, writing that “younger audiences and readers are voting with their feet, taking advertisers and philanthropic money with them”. This chapter is a personal perspective from inside an industry still desperately reshaping and reforming itself. It’s cogently argued, with a succinct rhythm.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/honouring-the-journalists-who-bring-us-stories-from-the-frontline-48087">Honouring the journalists who bring us stories from the frontline</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Writing women correspondents back into history</h2>
<p>We all know women are written out of much historical narrative – they have been for centuries. The book redresses this, retrofitting stories of past female foreign correspondents between those of contemporary journalists. </p>
<p>These historical chapters – on <a href="https://www.far-eastern-heroes.org.uk/Keeping_The_Faith/html/lorraine_stumm.htm">Lorraine Stumm</a>, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-07-13/diane-willman-describes-reporting-from-a-warzone/13947556">Diane Willman</a>, <a href="https://halloffame.melbournepressclub.com/article/kate-webb">Kate Webb</a> and <a href="https://halloffame.melbournepressclub.com/article/margaret-jones">Margaret Jones</a> – are compiled by editors Watson and Roberts. They are shorter by comparison and told in the third person, so give the text a slight imbalance. But they aptly place these women in the vanguard of Australian foreign correspondent work, alongside their contemporary counterparts. </p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Kate Webb covered the Vietnam war and ‘broke the khaki ceiling’, from 1967.</span></figcaption>
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<p>The arc of this text performs an important function, honouring this work between the covers of a book, patching up and correcting the historical imprint of Australian foreign correspondents. The editors write: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Women correspondents are the equal of their male counterparts. They are among the bravest and most insightful journalists we have at a time when the hot zone is more dangerous than it has ever been. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>They argue that the type of journalism historically covered by female journalists, what they call the “soft” stories, are now the “big” stories. This leap, infused with the argument that women report with more empathy than men, is polemical. By making it, the editors inadvertently differentiate between the product that male and female journalists produce. This is less than helpful in chasing equality for women – but I understand it, in this context, as counterbalance.</p>
<p>Each of the 29 stories in Through Her Eyes has the impact of a blockbuster film.
There is some powerful writing. Every chapter is an eye-opening glimpse into a world gone crazy – continuously, for the past 80 years. This is my biggest take-away: the ubiquitous corruption, greed, inequality and hatred we perpetrate on each other. </p>
<p>The granular lens through which most of these chapters are written is scintillatingly thought-provoking: the current <a href="https://theconversation.com/with-his-army-on-the-back-foot-is-escalation-over-ukraine-vladimir-putins-only-real-option-190046">Ukrainian plight</a>; the <a href="https://theconversation.com/protests-biznez-and-a-failed-coup-journalist-monica-attard-on-covering-the-empire-gorbachev-allowed-to-collapse-188469">fall of the Soviet Union</a>; the <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-china-combined-authoritarianism-with-capitalism-to-create-a-new-communism-167586">highly surveilled China</a>; coming face to face with the <a href="https://theconversation.com/one-year-into-taliban-control-afghans-face-poverty-and-repression-australia-cannot-turn-a-blind-eye-188727">Taliban</a>; being in Pakistan when a US elite squad executed Osama bin Laden. Beirut, Syria, Gaza, India, Central Africa, the Pacific and more. The stories are as riveting as they are horrifying. </p>
<p>When practitioners lean into their craft and write personally about what they see and feel, it invokes Dan Wakefield’s 1966 foundational text <a href="https://www.commentary.org/articles/joseph-epstein/between-the-lines-by-dan-wakefield/">Between the Lines: A reporter’s personal journey through public events</a>. Clearly a thinker before his time, Wakefield was one of the first to discuss the story behind the story – the story between the lines on the public record. </p>
<p>This is what Through Her Eyes gives us: the rest of the story, imbued with each writer’s personal experience and perspective, separate and additional to what was published or broadcast. It’s the journalist’s experience of gathering the story: what else she saw and felt.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/protests-biznez-and-a-failed-coup-journalist-monica-attard-on-covering-the-empire-gorbachev-allowed-to-collapse-188469">Protests, 'biznez' and a failed coup: journalist Monica Attard on covering the empire Gorbachev allowed to collapse</a>
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</em>
</p>
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<h2>Strong and authoritative</h2>
<p>All the book’s chapters are strong and authoritative: Barbara Miller on the Russian invasion of Ukraine; Cate Cadell on technological surveillance in China; Anna Coren in <a href="https://theconversation.com/from-future-lawyer-to-betrothed-to-a-taliban-fighter-august-in-kabul-shows-how-life-changed-overnight-for-so-many-in-afghanistan-188352">Kabul</a>; Kirsty Needham’s expulsion from Beijing; Tracey Holmes in China and the Middle East; Ruth Pollard in <a href="https://theconversation.com/children-are-being-used-as-human-shields-in-syria-what-is-the-world-doing-about-it-175655">Syria</a>; Gwen Robinson in Manila; Sue Williams in Caledonia. </p>
<p>It is a stellar cast of gifted reporters: some dodging bullets, some dodging predatory men (including, for <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janine_Perrett">Janine Perrett</a>, former prime minister Malcolm Fraser), some getting deported, some running towards the World Trade Center on <a href="https://theconversation.com/9-11-survivors-exposure-to-toxic-dust-and-the-chronic-health-conditions-that-followed-offer-lessons-that-are-still-too-often-unheeded-166537">9/11</a> when everyone else was running away. Yes, they are as brave, courageous and insightful as their male counterparts – but that is not surprising to any thinking woman. And it should not surprise any thinking man.</p>
<p>Women historically – and still – are blocked, excluded and obstructed in their careers, personal lives and education (more in some parts of the world than others). Just because they are women. Through Her Eyes offers a significant rebalancing act, for what was once deemed a male province. </p>
<p>But what is my real dream? To wrap my hands around a text written by Australian foreign correspondents of diverse identities and genders, within the pages of one book. A balanced, thoughtful and considered compilation of a cross-section of excellent Australian reporting from afar, continuing to speak truth to power through writing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/189962/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sue Joseph does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Does a journalist’s gender matter if their job is to speak truth to power? It shouldn’t but until recently did. A new book, Through Her Eyes, tells the stories of our women foreign correspondents.Sue Joseph, Associate Professor; Senior Research Fellow, University of South AustraliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1802412022-04-07T03:50:45Z2022-04-07T03:50:45ZAus-NZ refugee deal is a bandage on a failed policy. It’s time to end offshore processing<p>Australia has finally accepted New Zealand’s offer to settle some of the refugees from the <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/factsheet_offshore_processing_overview.pdf">offshore processing</a> regime – about nine years after it was first made in 2013.</p>
<p>The NZ deal will provide certainty for <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/mar/24/australia-agrees-450-refugees-can-be-resettled-in-new-zealand-nine-years-after-deal-first-offered">450 people</a> who have been in limbo, many for more than a decade.</p>
<p>But in the March 24 <a href="https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/KarenAndrews/Pages/australia-new-zealand-resettlement-arrangement.aspx">announcement</a>, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews made clear the deal does not change Australia’s <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/australia-and-new-zealand-reach-refugee-resettlement-agreement/20vyv2d8w">hard-line approach</a>.</p>
<p>This makes the deal a bandage on a <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/Policy_Brief_11_Offshore_Processing.pdf">failed policy</a> that continues to haemorrhage cash, destroy lives and erode the international system for refugee protection.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/morrison-government-finally-accepts-deal-with-new-zealand-to-resettle-refugees-179949">Morrison government finally accepts deal with New Zealand to resettle refugees</a>
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<h2>Who is – and isn’t – included in the NZ deal?</h2>
<p>The original offer, made by the then NZ Prime Minister John Key in 2013, was refused by the Australian government until now. The Coalition government claimed the deal could be a “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/01/decision-to-bring-children-from-nauru-an-admission-of-failure-by-government">pull factor</a>” for asylum seekers coming by boat to Australia. </p>
<p>Under the agreement, NZ will settle up to 150 of Australia’s “offshore processing” refugees per year for three years. These refugees arrived in Australia by sea between 2012 and 2014 and were sent to Nauru or Manus Island “offshore processing” detention centres. </p>
<p>The deal can include the <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us-subsite/files/population-and-number-of-people-resettled.pdf">112 people</a> who are in Nauru or those temporarily in Australia under offshore processing arrangements.</p>
<p>Some <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/news/press/2022/3/623a66584/unhcr-news-comment-on-the-australia-new-zealand-refugee-deal.html">1,100</a> people have been returned temporarily to Australia, mostly for medical treatment. They mostly live in the community with <a href="https://www.amnesty.org.au/potential-return-of-refugees-and-people-seeking-asylum-to-nauru-and-png-proof-of-policy-failure/">no support and insecure visa status</a> but some remain in detention.</p>
<p>Those already being considered for settlement to another country, such as the United States or Canada, aren’t eligible for the NZ program. </p>
<p>More than 100 men who remain in Papua New Guinea aren’t included in this deal.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1508944829509926915"}"></div></p>
<p>Under current known arrangements, people remaining in PNG could be <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/25/australia-new-zealand-refugee-deal-everything-we-know">referred</a> by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to NZ through its regular refugee programme. </p>
<p>Even after the NZ and US options are exhausted, it’s estimated at least <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/australians-welcome-nzs-generosity-to-refugees-in-offshore-processing/">500 refugees will be without a solution</a>.</p>
<p>And they’re not the only ones. There are some <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/Factsheet_Legacy%20Caseload_final.pdf">30,000 people</a> in what’s called the “legacy caseload” who arrived by sea between 2012 and 2014 and weren’t transferred to Nauru and PNG. They remain in Australia subject to harmful measures. They’re stuck in limbo on temporary visas, unable to reunify with family members, and receive <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/about/news/urgent-call-government-protect-asylum-seekers-and-refugees">inadequate support</a> to secure housing or health care.</p>
<h2>Australia distorts the global refugee system</h2>
<p><a href="https://www.refworld.org/docid/51af82794.html">Australia has primary responsibility</a> for refugees who seek its protection. The Australian government has repeatedly tried and failed to find countries willing to settle refugees it refuses to protect. It reportedly offered multiple countries, from the Philippines to Kyrgyzstan, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/may/08/australias-refugee-deal-a-farce-after-us-rejects-all-iranian-and-somali-asylum-seekers">millions of dollars</a> to settle refugees from Australia’s offshore camps – without success.</p>
<p>Resettlement to a third country is an important solution, available to less than 1% of refugees globally whose lives, liberty, safety, health or other fundamental rights are at risk <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/46f7c0ee2.html">in the country where they have sought refuge</a>. This isn’t the case for refugees seeking asylum in Australia, where there’s a well-established asylum system.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1485683266590060548"}"></div></p>
<p>It’s difficult to think of the NZ solution as “resettlement” in its true meaning.</p>
<p>Resettlement places are important to <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/news/press/2021/6/60d32ba44/un-refugee-agency-releases-2022-resettlement-needs.html">relieve pressure on developing countries</a> that host almost 90% of the world’s refugees. Conflicts in Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, South Sudan, Afghanistan, plus now Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, have created a need for resettlement in a third country for almost <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/news/press/2021/6/60d32ba44/un-refugee-agency-releases-2022-resettlement-needs.html">1.5 million</a> refugees worldwide. Resettlement has been disrupted over the last two years due to COVID, leaving even more people in urgent need.</p>
<p>Under these extraordinary “refugee deals” with the US and NZ, the Australian government is trying to solve a political problem of its own making at the expense of people in desperate need. </p>
<p>Like Australia, the US and NZ offer only a limited number of resettlement spots each year. When these spots go to Australia’s refugees, who are Australia’s responsibility, someone else misses out.</p>
<h2>Continuing damage</h2>
<p>This is Australia’s second go at offshore processing. Its first iteration, the “Pacific Solution”, lasted from 2001 until 2008. The second commenced in 2012 and continues.</p>
<p>Offshore processing remains costly. Australian taxpayers have spent, on average, around <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/Policy_Brief_11_Offshore_Processing.pdf#page=14&zoom=auto,-135,786">A$1 billion per year</a> to maintain offshore processing since 2014.</p>
<p>This is despite a dramatic drop in the number of people held in Nauru and PNG. At the peak in April 2014, Australia detained a total of 2,450 people. By December 2021, there were <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/2/">219 people remaining offshore in Nauru and PNG</a>.</p>
<p>People transferred to Manus Island and Nauru suffered mandatory and indefinite detention in harsh conditions. Their treatment has been called out by the United Nations repeatedly as <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/united-nations-observations.htm">cruel and inhuman</a> and described by Amnesty International as <a href="https://www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/checkpoint/audio/2018835563/amnesty-international-celebrates-deal-for-nz-to-take-refugees">torture</a>.</p>
<p>The abuse of men, women and children in offshore processing centres has been thoroughly documented in a <a href="https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/b743d9_e4413cb72e1646d8bd3e8a8c9a466950.pdf">communiqué</a> to the International Criminal Court, <a href="https://bills.parliament.uk/publications/43063/documents/791#page=27&zoom=auto,-134,1">parliamentary inquiries</a> and domestic legal challenges.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1468346008090382337"}"></div></p>
<p>Australia’s offshore processing sets a bad regional precedent for <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/sites/default/files/20160913_Pathways_to_Protection.pdf#page=20&zoom=page-fit,-625,841">refugee protection in Southeast Asia</a> and beyond.</p>
<p>The policy objective of using cruelty as a deterrent to “stop the boats” and “save lives at sea” didn’t work. If boats didn’t arrive, this was due to Australia’s <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/Policy_Brief_11_Offshore_Processing.pdf">interception and turnback of boats at sea</a>.</p>
<h2>What needs to change?</h2>
<p>Refugee policy can be <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/principles-australian-refugee-policy">principled</a> and driven by compassion while protecting borders and respecting international law.</p>
<p>Australia should formally end offshore processing. The small number of people still held offshore in Nauru and PNG should be transferred back to Australia. </p>
<p>Everyone who has been subject to the policy since 2012 who doesn’t have a permanent solution could be offered settlement in Australia. This <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/pubs/bn/2012-2013/pacificsolution">occurred</a> in the first iteration of offshore processing and could happen again.</p>
<p>Money and lives can be saved.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/180241/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasha Yacoub is an international refugee law scholar and practitioner, having worked on refugee protection for two decades with the United Nations in conflict and peacetime settings. She is presently a researcher and doctoral candidate at UNSW. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.</span></em></p>Offshore processing is a failed policy that continues to haemorrhage cash, destroy lives and erode the international system for refugee protection.Natasha Yacoub, International refugee lawyer and scholar, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1721412021-12-07T07:43:42Z2021-12-07T07:43:42ZAustralia’s asylum policy has been a disaster. It’s deeply disturbing the UK wants to adopt it<p>Late last month, at least <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/24/world/europe/migrants-boat-capsize-calais.html">27 people drowned</a> after their inflatable dinghy capsized while trying to cross the English Channel to the UK. The International Organization for Migration <a href="https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/11/1106562">has called it</a> the biggest single loss of life in the channel since data collection began in 2014. </p>
<p>While British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was “<a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uks-johnson-shocked-appalled-by-deaths-migrants-channel-2021-11-24/">shocked and appalled and deeply saddened</a>” by the tragedy, it will no doubt spur on efforts to rush through the country’s much-maligned <a href="https://bills.parliament.uk/bills/3023">Nationality and Borders Bill</a>. </p>
<p>This bill, which is being debated in the UK parliament again this week, seeks among other things to “<a href="https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/bills/cbill/58-02/0141/en/210141en.pdf">deter illegal entry into the United Kingdom</a>”.</p>
<p>The sense of urgency mounting around this issue does not sweep aside the need for reasoned and rational policymaking. In Australia, we have seen the damage caused by hurried and ill-conceived asylum policies. It is deeply disturbing to see the UK barrel down the same path. </p>
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<img alt="Protesters outside Downing Street" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435775/original/file-20211206-27-1a4icg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435775/original/file-20211206-27-1a4icg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435775/original/file-20211206-27-1a4icg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435775/original/file-20211206-27-1a4icg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435775/original/file-20211206-27-1a4icg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435775/original/file-20211206-27-1a4icg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435775/original/file-20211206-27-1a4icg0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Protesters outside Downing Street in London calling on the government to scrap the Nationalities and Borders Bill.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Aaron Chown/PA</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Flawed assumptions about Australia’s system</h2>
<p>Much of the UK’s proposed “solution” to channel crossings <a href="https://rli.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2021/10/20/the-nationality-and-borders-bill-lessons-from-australia-on-the-reinterpretation-of-persecution-and-protection/">borrows from Australia’s efforts</a> to “stop the boats” and deter people in need of protection from seeking (or finding) it here. </p>
<p>The UK proposal to “offshore” asylum seekers by <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/priti-patel-albania-migrants-raab-b1959891.html">sending them to Albania</a> or some other country is modelled on Australia’s experience sending asylum seekers to the Pacific nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. </p>
<p>Given all we now know about the ramifications of offshore processing, it is astonishing the UK is seeking to replicate it. Offshore processing has been an <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/news/cruel-costly-and-ineffective-failure-offshore-processing-australia">unmitigated policy failure</a> here.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/uk-nationality-and-borders-bill-qanda-how-will-it-affect-migration-across-the-english-channel-164808">UK Nationality and Borders Bill Q&A: how will it affect migration across the English Channel?</a>
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<p>A group of Conservative MPs, including David Davis, have rightly challenged the humanity, feasibility and cost of the UK adopting Australian-style offshore processing. They have <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/nov/16/offshore-asylum-seekers-david-davis-scrap-plans">tabled an amendment</a> which would see offshore processing struck from the bill.</p>
<p>However, some other MPs have been led to believe the Australian model of offshore processing is “<a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-11-22/debates/69973F3C-2383-4C12-AB0D-6BA1EBEDB7F8/ChannelCrossingsInSmallBoats">the best way to control illegal immigration</a>” and “<a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-11-22/debates/11550422-37F6-497C-BCAF-2531ED2F012F/OralAnswersToQuestions">the single most important step any sovereign nation can take in protecting its own borders against illegal immigration</a>”. </p>
<p>One MP claimed that when offshore processing was introduced in Australia, the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat “<a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-11-22/debates/11550422-37F6-497C-BCAF-2531ED2F012F/OralAnswersToQuestions">fell off a cliff straightaway</a>”. </p>
<p>Many of us watch these developments from afar with bewilderment. The UK government appears to be taking at face value claims by the Australian government that offshore processing was a success in stopping boat arrivals. </p>
<p>These claims do not stack up to scrutiny. They belie the government’s own data and are not supported by any independent source. </p>
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<img alt="A makeshift migrant camp in Calais, France." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435777/original/file-20211206-104971-417rqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/435777/original/file-20211206-104971-417rqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435777/original/file-20211206-104971-417rqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435777/original/file-20211206-104971-417rqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435777/original/file-20211206-104971-417rqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435777/original/file-20211206-104971-417rqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/435777/original/file-20211206-104971-417rqb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">A makeshift migrant camp in Calais, France, across the English Channel from the UK.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Rafael Yaghobzadeh/AP</span></span>
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<h2>Misleading evidence about Australia’s program</h2>
<p>In September, George Brandis, the Australian high commissioner to the UK, gave what we believe to be <a href="https://hansard.parliament.uk/commons/2021-09-23/debates/7ca593db-c83d-48c0-98ff-300ed88e15ce/NationalityAndBordersBill(ThirdSitting)">inaccurate and misleading evidence</a> about offshore processing to the UK parliamentary committee tasked with considering the bill. </p>
<p>My colleagues at the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law and I submitted to parliament <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/House_Commons_Nationality_Borders_%20Bill_October_2021.pdf">a point-by-point rebuttal</a> to this evidence, addressing just some of the errors and misrepresentations. </p>
<p>One of the most serious issues was the conflation of two very different policies – boat turnbacks and the offshore processing system. </p>
<p>“Offshore processing” involved sending asylum seekers from Australia to Nauru and PNG to have their claims processed there. Australia stopped transferring new arrivals offshore in 2014.</p>
<p>By contrast, the policy of boat turnbacks is ongoing, and has largely achieved its goal of deterring the arrival of people by sea. Since late 2013, the policy has involved intercepting asylum seekers at sea and sending them straight back to their countries of departure, without allowing them to apply for asylum. The <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/UN-SR-Pushback-practices-and-their-impact-on-the-human-rights-of-migrants.pdf">humanitarian consequences of the turnback policy</a> can be dire, especially for those returned to persecution and serious human rights abuses. It is also contrary to international law.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1467552593618608130"}"></div></p>
<p>Brandis wrongly claimed that offshore processing and boat turnbacks were introduced at the same time. This gave the false impression that they are inseparable elements of a single approach to boat arrivals, the effectiveness of which can only be assessed holistically. </p>
<p>In fact, offshore processing was introduced in August 2012, a full year <em>before</em> boat turnbacks. During that year, boat arrivals continued to increase. In fact, <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/pubs/rp/rp1314/QG/BoatArrivals">more asylum seekers arrived in Australia by sea</a> than at any other time in history. </p>
<p>Indeed, just three months after the offshore processing policy was announced, the government was <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/media/pressrel/2060961/upload_binary/2060961.pdf">already forced to admit</a> that more people had arrived by boat than could ever be accommodated offshore. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/multibillion-dollar-strategy-with-no-end-in-sight-australias-enduring-offshore-processing-deal-with-nauru-168941">Multibillion-dollar strategy with no end in sight: Australia's 'enduring' offshore processing deal with Nauru</a>
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<h2>Exporting a cruel, inhumane and costly system</h2>
<p>The fact that offshore processing did not stop people travelling by boat to Australia should be sufficient to put an end to debate in the UK. But there are other reasons this Australian “model” should not be adopted elsewhere. </p>
<p>First, extreme cruelty is an inherent and unavoidable part of the system. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/publications/legal/58362da34/submission-to-the-senate-legal-and-constitutional-affairs-committee-serious.html">UN High Commissioner for Refugees</a> and <a href="https://msf.org.au/sites/default/files/attachments/indefinite_despair_3.pdf">Médecins Sans Frontières</a> have found the rates of mental illness of asylum seekers and refugees in Nauru and PNG to be among the highest recorded in any surveyed population, and some of the worst they had ever encountered. </p>
<p>Paediatricians <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/asylum-seekers-and-refugees/publications/health-and-well-being-children-immigration">reported</a> children transferred to Nauru were among the most traumatised they had ever seen. </p>
<p>In fact, the Australian government was eventually forced to evacuate all families back to Australia when previously healthy children developed a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-22/resignation-syndrome-and-why-is-it-affecting-refugee-children/10152444">rare psychiatric condition</a> known as traumatic withdrawal syndrome, or “resignation syndrome”. In the most serious stage of this condition, children enter an unconscious or comatose state. </p>
<p>No liberal democracy should entertain the possibility of inflicting such cruelty and suffering on human beings, let alone do it. </p>
<p>The Australian experience also shows that it is <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/Policy_Brief_11_Offshore_Processing.pdf">extraordinarily expensive</a> to implement offshore processing. </p>
<p>Costs continue to mount with each passing year, with the policy <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/reports-and-pubs/budgets/2021-22-home-affairs-pbs-full.pdf">expected to cost more than A$800 million (£424 million) in the financial year 2021-22</a>, despite there being <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us-subsite/files/population-and-number-of-people-resettled.pdf">less than 230 people left offshore</a>. The cost to hold a single person offshore on Nauru is now <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/nov/07/cost-of-australia-holding-each-refugee-on-nauru-balloons-to-43m-a-year">believed to have risen to A$4.3 million (£2.28 million) each year</a>.</p>
<p>The UK government will need to account to taxpayers for billions of pounds spent on a policy that likely will not achieve its stated aims. </p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/debunking-key-myths-about-britains-broken-asylum-system-172794">Debunking key myths about Britain's 'broken asylum system'</a>
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<p>The UK is also hanging its hat on a policy which may be ruled unlawful and never get off the ground. </p>
<p>In Australia, offshore processing has faced a constant barrage of legal challenges, many of which have forced the government to alter its policies or pay out <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-09-06/manus-island-detainees-settlement-with-commonwealth/8876934">large sums in damages</a>. </p>
<p>In the UK, where human rights law limits government power, the legal obstacles will be even bigger.</p>
<p>The prospect of sending asylum seekers “offshore” might sound like a convenient solution in theory. But the reality of this policy in Australia has proven it to be difficult, ineffective, expensive, cruel and controversial.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/172141/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madeline has previously provided oral and written evidence to the UK House of Commons on the proposal to introduce offshore processing. </span></em></p>The mounting urgency about asylum seekers trying to reach the UK by boat does not sweep aside the need for reasoned and rational policymaking.Madeline Gleeson, Senior Research Fellow, Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1689412021-10-03T19:00:07Z2021-10-03T19:00:07ZMultibillion-dollar strategy with no end in sight: Australia’s ‘enduring’ offshore processing deal with Nauru<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424138/original/file-20211001-13-1e0vw0w.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=366%2C12%2C3645%2C2249&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Late last month, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews and the president of Nauru, Lionel Aingimea, quietly <a href="https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/KarenAndrews/Pages/maritime-people-smuggling.aspx">announced</a> they had signed a new agreement to establish an “enduring form” of offshore processing for asylum seekers taken to the Pacific island.</p>
<p>The text of the new agreement has not been made public. This is unsurprising. </p>
<p>All the publicly available information indicates Australia’s offshore processing strategy is an ongoing human rights — not to mention financial — <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/news/press/2021/7/60f558274/unhcr-statement-on-8-years-of-offshore-asylum-policy.html">disaster</a>. </p>
<p>The deliberate opaqueness is intended to make it difficult to hold the government to account for these human and other costs. This is, of course, all the more reason to subject the new deal with Nauru to intense scrutiny.</p>
<h2>Policies 20 years in the making</h2>
<p>In order to fully understand the new deal — and the ramifications of it — it is necessary to briefly recount 20 years of history. </p>
<p>In late August 2001, the Howard government impulsively refused to allow asylum seekers <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/tampa-affair">rescued at sea by the Tampa freighter</a> to disembark on Australian soil. This began policy-making on the run and led to the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Solution#:%7E:text=The%20Pacific%20Solution%20is%20the,land%20on%20the%20Australian%20mainland.">Pacific Solution Mark I</a>. </p>
<p>The governments of Nauru and Papua New Guinea were persuaded to enter into agreements allowing people attempting to reach Australia by boat to be detained in facilities on their territory while their protection claims were considered by Australian officials. </p>
<p>By the 2007 election, boat arrivals to Australia had dwindled substantially.</p>
<p>In February 2008, the newly elected Labor government closed down the facilities in Nauru and PNG. Within a year, boat arrivals had increased dramatically, causing the government to rethink its policy. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424144/original/file-20211001-15-4u7zxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/424144/original/file-20211001-15-4u7zxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424144/original/file-20211001-15-4u7zxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424144/original/file-20211001-15-4u7zxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=382&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424144/original/file-20211001-15-4u7zxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424144/original/file-20211001-15-4u7zxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/424144/original/file-20211001-15-4u7zxu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Sri Lankan migrants bound for Australia after they were intercepted by the Indonesian navy in 2009.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Irwin Fedriansyah/AP</span></span>
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<p>After a <a href="http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n7824/pdf/ch09.pdf">couple of false starts</a>, it signed new deals with Nauru and PNG in late 2012. An expert panel had <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/expert-panel-report.pdf">described</a> the new arrangements as a “necessary circuit breaker to the current surge in irregular migration to Australia”. </p>
<p>This was the <a href="http://www.refugeeaction.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/Pacific-Solution-II-fact-sheet.pdf">Pacific Solution Mark II</a>. In contrast to the first iteration, it provided for boat arrivals taken to Nauru and PNG to have protection claims considered under the laws and procedures of the host country. </p>
<p>Moreover, the processing facilities were supposedly run by the host countries, though in reality, the Australian government outsourced this to private companies.</p>
<p>Despite the new arrangements, the boat arrivals continued. And on July 19, 2013, the Rudd government took a hardline stance, <a href="https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20130730234007/http:/pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/79983/20130731-0937/www.pm.gov.au/press-office/transcript-joint-press-conference-2.html">announcing</a> any boat arrivals after that date would have “have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees”. </p>
<h2>New draconian changes to the system</h2>
<p>The <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/api/qon/downloadestimatesquestions/EstimatesQuestion-CommitteeId6-EstimatesRoundId11-PortfolioId20-QuestionNumber545">1,056</a> individuals who had been transferred to Nauru or PNG before July 19, 2013 were brought to Australia to be processed. </p>
<p>PNG <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/papua-new-guinea/memorandum-of-understanding-between-the-government-of-the-independent-state-of-papua-new-guinea-and-the-government-of-austr">agreed</a> that asylum seekers arriving after this date could resettle there, if they were recognised as refugees.</p>
<p>Nauru made a more equivocal <a href="https://www.dfat.gov.au/geo/nauru/memorandum-of-understanding-between-the-republic-of-nauru-and-the-commonwealth-of-australia-relating-to-the-transfer-to-and">commitment</a> and has thus far only granted 20-year visas to those it recognises as refugees.</p>
<p>The Coalition then won the September 2013 federal election and implemented the military-led Operation Sovereign Borders policy. This involves turning back boat arrivals to transit countries (like Indonesia), or to their countries of origin. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/foi/files/2021/fa-210100105-fa210100899-document-released-pt1.PDF">cumulative count</a> of interceptions since then stands at 38 boats carrying 873 people. The most recent interception was in January 2020. </p>
<p>It should be noted these figures do not include the large number of interceptions undertaken at Australia’s request by transit countries and countries of origin. </p>
<p>What this means is the mere existence of the offshore processing system — even in the more draconian form in place after July 2013 — has not deterred people from attempting to reach Australia by boat. </p>
<p>Rather, the attempts have continued, but the interception activities of Australia and other countries have prevented them from succeeding.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1443712420891947010"}"></div></p>
<h2>No new asylum seekers in Nauru or PNG since 2014</h2>
<p>Australia acknowledges it has obligations under the <a href="http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/dfat/treaties/1954/5.html">UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees</a> — and other human rights treaties — to refrain from returning people to places where they face the risk of serious harm. </p>
<p>As a result, those intercepted at sea are given <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/api/qon/downloadestimatesquestions/EstimatesQuestion-CommitteeId6-EstimatesRoundId10-PortfolioId20-QuestionNumber311">on-water screening interviews</a> for the purpose of identifying those with <em>prima facie</em> protection claims. </p>
<p>Those individuals are supposed to be taken to Nauru or PNG instead of being turned back or handed back. <a href="https://www.asyluminsight.com/savitri-taylor#.YVUDX5pBwtI">Concerningly</a>, of the 873 people intercepted since 2013, only two have passed these screenings: both in 2014. </p>
<p>This means no asylum seekers have been taken to either Nauru or PNG since 2014. Since then, Australia has spent years trying to find resettlement options in third countries for recognised refugees in Nauru and PNG, such as in <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/api/qon/downloadestimatesquestions/EstimatesQuestion-CommitteeId6-EstimatesRoundId4-PortfolioId20-QuestionNumber152">Cambodia</a> and <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/api/qon/downloadestimatesquestions/EstimatesQuestion-CommitteeId6-EstimatesRoundId11-PortfolioId20-QuestionNumber549">the US</a>.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/api/qon/downloadestimatesquestions/EstimatesQuestion-CommitteeId6-EstimatesRoundId11-PortfolioId20-QuestionNumber544">As of April 30</a>, 131 asylum seekers were still in PNG and 109 were in Nauru. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-the-medevac-repeal-and-what-it-means-for-asylum-seekers-on-manus-island-and-nauru-128118">Explainer: the medevac repeal and what it means for asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru</a>
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<h2>A boon to the Nauruan government</h2>
<p>Australia has spent <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/api/qon/downloadestimatesquestions/EstimatesQuestion-CommitteeId6-EstimatesRoundId11-PortfolioId20-QuestionNumber427">billions</a> on Pacific Solution Mark II with no end in sight.</p>
<p>As well as underwriting all the infrastructure and operational costs of the processing facilities, Australia made it worthwhile for Nauru and PNG to participate in the arrangements. </p>
<p>For one thing, it promised to ensure spillover benefits for the local economies by, for example, requiring contractors to hire local staff. In fact, in 2019–20, the processing facility in Nauru employed <a href="https://devpolicy.org/nauru-riches-to-rags-to-riches-20210412/">15% of the country’s entire workforce</a>.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1360001314172727297"}"></div></p>
<p>And from the beginning, Nauru has <a href="http://www.paclii.org/nr/legis/sub_leg/ia2014ir2014385.pdf">required</a> every transferee to hold a regional processing centre visa. This is a temporary visa which must be renewed every three months by the Australian government. </p>
<p>The visa fee each time is A$3,000, so that’s A$12,000 per transferee per year that Australia is required to pay the Nauruan government. </p>
<p>Where a transferee is found to be a person in need of protection, that visa <a href="http://www.paclii.org/nr/legis/sub_leg/ia2014irn4o2014511/">converts automatically</a> into a temporary settlement visa, which must be renewed every six months. The temporary settlement visa fee is A$3,000 per month — again paid by the Australian government. </p>
<p>In 2019-20, direct and indirect revenue from the processing facility made up <a href="https://devpolicy.org/nauru-riches-to-rags-to-riches-20210412/">58% of total Nauruan government revenue</a>. It is no wonder Nauru is on board with making an “enduring form” of offshore processing available to Australia.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cruel-costly-and-ineffective-australias-offshore-processing-asylum-seeker-policy-turns-9-166014">Cruel, costly and ineffective: Australia's offshore processing asylum seeker policy turns 9</a>
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<h2>‘Not to use it, but to be willing to use it’</h2>
<p>In 2016, the PNG Supreme Court <a href="http://www.paclii.org/pg/cases/PGSC/2016/13.pdf">ruled</a> the detention of asylum seekers in the offshore processing facility was unconstitutional. Australia and PNG then <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/estimate/3a32f9b8-b53d-4251-a739-7e12e1fc506e/toc_pdf/Legal%20and%20Constitutional%20Affairs%20Legislation%20Committee_2017_10_23_5658_Official.pdf;fileType=application/pdf#search=%22committees/estimate/3a32f9b8-b53d-4251-a739-7e12e1fc506e/0001%22">agreed</a> to close the PNG facility in late 2017 and residents were moved to alternative accommodation. Australia is <a href="https://uploads.guim.co.uk/2017/10/29/Media_Release-Minister_Thomas_on_Closure_of_Manus_RPC.pdf">underwriting the costs</a>.</p>
<p>Australia decided, however, to maintain a processing facility in Nauru. Senator Jim Molan <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id:%22committees/estimate/2c68087e-f913-401c-88da-f76e4cc7f2fc/0002%22">asked</a> Home Affairs Secretary Michael Pezzullo about this in Senate Estimates in February 2018, saying:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>So it’s more appropriate to say that we are not maintaining Nauru as an offshore processing centre; we are maintaining a relationship with the Nauru government.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Pezzullo responded,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the whole purpose is, as you would well recall, in fact not to have to use those facilities. But, as in all deterrents, you need to have an asset that is credible so that you are deterring future eventualities. So the whole point of it is actually not to use it but to be willing to use it. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>This is how we ended up where we are now, with a new deal with the Nauru government for an “enduring” — that is indefinitely maintained — offshore processing capability, at great cost to the Australian people.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/could-the-biden-administration-pressure-australia-to-adopt-more-humane-refugee-policies-153718">Could the Biden administration pressure Australia to adopt more humane refugee policies?</a>
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<p>Little has been made public about this new arrangement. We do know in December 2020, the incoming minister for immigration, Alex Hawke, was <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/foi/files/2021/fa-210100105-fa210100899-document-released-pt1.PDF">told</a> the government was undertaking “a major procurement” for “enduring capability services”. </p>
<p>We also know a <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/api/qon/downloadestimatesquestions/EstimatesQuestion-CommitteeId6-EstimatesRoundId11-PortfolioId20-QuestionNumber423">budget of A$731.2 million</a> has been appropriated for regional processing in 2021-22. </p>
<p>Of this, $187 million is for service provider fees and host government costs in PNG. Almost all of the remainder goes to Nauru, to ensure that, beyond hosting its current population of 109 transferees, it “stands ready to receive new arrivals”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/168941/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Savitri Taylor receives funding from the Australian Research Council.
She is a member of the Committee of Management of Refugee Legal.
She is a member of the Kim for Canberra Party.
The views expressed in this article are her own.</span></em></p>Nauru is receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from Australia annually to house 109 asylum seekers. The real purpose, though, is to ‘stand ready to receive new arrivals’.Savitri Taylor, Associate Professor, Law School, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1660142021-08-12T01:04:39Z2021-08-12T01:04:39ZCruel, costly and ineffective: Australia’s offshore processing asylum seeker policy turns 9<p>This week marks nine years since Australia re-introduced a policy of offshore processing for asylum seekers arriving by boat. Nine long years of a cruel, costly and ineffective policy sustained by successive governments of both major parties, despite <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/Policy_Brief_11_Offshore_Processing.pdf">consistently failing to meet</a> any of its stated aims.</p>
<p>As we outline in a new Kaldor Centre policy brief, <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/Policy_Brief_11_Offshore_Processing.pdf">Cruel, costly and ineffective: the failure of offshore processing in Australia</a>, offshore processing does not “save lives”, “stop the boats” or “break the business model of people smugglers”. Nor is it a benign failure. </p>
<p>Beyond simply not doing what it sets out to do, offshore processing carries enormous costs. There are human costs, for the men, women and children subject to immense suffering, and even to some of the people tasked with implementing it.</p>
<p>It also carries diplomatic costs, as Australia’s international reputation is tarnished. Its relationship with Pacific neighbours in Nauru and Papua New Guinea grows increasingly strained with each passing year. Then there’s the ballooning economic costs for taxpayers, as <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/12/australia-will-spend-almost-34m-for-each-person-in-offshore-detention-budget-shows">billions are sunk in vain</a> into a disastrous policy failure. </p>
<p>That no Australian government in almost a decade has successfully brought this policy to a formal close is astonishing, and it demands interrogation.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-billions-more-allocated-to-immigration-detention-its-another-bleak-year-for-refugees-160783">With billions more allocated to immigration detention, it's another bleak year for refugees</a>
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<h2>Failing to meet its stated policy aims</h2>
<p>The government’s own data on the impact of offshore processing on boat arrivals is the starkest revelation of this policy’s failure. During its first year, <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1617/Quick_Guides/BoatTurnbacks">more people sought asylum in Australia by boat</a> than at any other time since boat arrivals were first recorded in the 1970s. Deaths at sea also <a href="https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0018/2523141/BOB-Research-Brief-18-_border-deaths-annual-report-2020_Final.pdf">continued at broadly comparable rates</a> to previous years. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1425563946153562119"}"></div></p>
<p>People continued to seek safety in Australia via maritime routes until they physically could not do so anymore. The 2013 launch of Operation Sovereign Borders, and the Abbott government’s commitment to intercepting and returning people trying to reach Australia by boat — no matter the legal and humanitarian consequences — effectively rendered it futile to try and reach Australia by sea.</p>
<p>Despite early suggestions offshore processing was a vital complement to this turning back of boats, there is no evidence that this is so.</p>
<p>In fact, while offshore processing has formally remained on foot, and popular rhetoric gives the impression that it is still a key part of the matrix of border security measures necessary to keep the boats “stopped”, Australia <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/library/prspub/4129606/upload_binary/4129606.pdf">ceased transferring new arrivals offshore in 2014</a>.</p>
<p>Instead, Australian officials have gone to extraordinary lengths to intercept at sea and return <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/api/qon/downloadestimatesquestions/EstimatesQuestion-CommitteeId6-EstimatesRoundId8-PortfolioId20-QuestionNumber203">hundreds of asylum seekers</a> in recent years. </p>
<p>What this means is that transfers offshore occurred for less than two years. The following seven years have been spent in a prolonged and costly policy bind, as successive Labor and Coalition governments have tried to find solutions outside Australia for people who should have been settled here long ago.</p>
<p>Meanwhile almost everyone still subject to this policy is back in Australia, having been either returned following a <a href="https://webarchive.nla.gov.au/awa/20130730234007/http://pandora.nla.gov.au/pan/79983/20130731-0937/www.pm.gov.au/press-office/transcript-joint-press-conference-2.html">policy change in July 2013</a> or medically evacuated amid <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/sites/kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/files/supplementarysubmission_medevac.pdf">spiralling health crises offshore</a> from 2017. </p>
<p>According to <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/about-us-subsite/files/population-and-number-of-people-resettled.pdf">latest figures</a>, there are barely more than 100 asylum seekers left in each of Nauru and Papua New Guinea. The men and women in Nauru are living in the community. The men in Papua New Guinea are in the capital, Port Moresby, having been transferred there following the closure of the Manus Island detention centre in 2017. </p>
<h2>So why does this policy drag on?</h2>
<p>The reason given publicly for continuation of this policy — that offshore processing is necessary to prevent a resurgence of boat arrivals — has no demonstrated evidentiary basis. </p>
<p>When Australia previously sent asylum seekers offshore, under the Howard government, the majority of people processed offshore and found to be refugees were <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/about_parliament/parliamentary_departments/parliamentary_library/pubs/bn/2012-2013/pacificsolution">settled in Australia</a>. </p>
<p>This fact did not prompt an increase in boat arrivals. More recently, there was no spike in boat arrivals when Australia announced that people offshore would be eligible for <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/australia%E2%80%93united-states-resettlement-arrangement">resettlement in the United States</a>, or when almost everyone was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/ng-interactive/2020/dec/10/timeline-australia-offshore-immigration-detention-system-program-census-of-asylum-seekers-refugees">moved back to Australia</a>.</p>
<p>We have just over a thousand asylum seekers here in Australia, and a small number offshore, who have been put through significant trauma in a failed attempt to send a harsh deterrence message to others who might consider trying to reach Australia by boat. </p>
<p>They have been waiting years for a solution, when a simple one is available right now. </p>
<p>All should be permitted to settle permanently in Australia or another appropriate country, provided that alternative is voluntary. Serious consideration should be given to what reparation and rehabilitation Australia may owe the victims of offshore processing.</p>
<p>This deeply flawed policy must not be permitted to reach its ten-year mark.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/could-the-biden-administration-pressure-australia-to-adopt-more-humane-refugee-policies-153718">Could the Biden administration pressure Australia to adopt more humane refugee policies?</a>
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<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/166014/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Madeline is the author of 'Offshore: Behind the wire on Manus and Nauru' (NewSouth, 2016). She does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has not disclosed any relevant affiliations beyond her academic appointment.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Natasha Yacoub is an international refugee law scholar and practitioner, having worked on refugee protection for two decades with the United Nations in conflict and peacetime settings. She is presently a researcher and doctoral candidate at UNSW. The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the United Nations.</span></em></p>That no Australian government in almost a decade has successfully brought this policy to a formal close is astonishing. In fact, Australia ceased transferring new arrivals offshore in 2014.Madeline Gleeson, Senior Research Fellow, Andrew & Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW SydneyNatasha Yacoub, International refugee lawyer and scholar, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1607832021-05-13T06:12:55Z2021-05-13T06:12:55ZWith billions more allocated to immigration detention, it’s another bleak year for refugees<p>Refugees and asylum seekers will take little comfort from the 2021–22 budget. Resettlement places remain capped, while spending on offshore processing, immigration detention and deterrence measures remains high. </p>
<p>For those still held offshore in Papua New Guinea or Nauru, in detention here in Australia, or on <a href="https://temporary.kaldorcentre.net/introduction">temporary</a> visas in our community, the budget compounds the human cost of Australia’s hardline asylum policy.</p>
<h2>Cap remains the same on refugee placements</h2>
<p>Before COVID-19, Australia’s humanitarian program provided for the resettlement of up to 18,750 refugees and others in need each year. The program <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/resettlement-briefing-on-covid-19/">fell short</a> of this number early last year when international travel was restricted due to the COVID-19 outbreak. </p>
<p>It was then cut by 5,000 places for 2020, and these places <a href="https://amp.sbs.com.au/eds/news/live-blog/federal-budget-2021-11-may-2021/c0c756d3-b98f-4f9d-b7fe-910b24d2d170">have not been restored</a> under the latest budget. </p>
<p>This is despite <a href="https://www.amnesty.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/20210129-International-Australia-Submission_Pre-Budget-Priorities.pdf">calls</a> from advocacy groups for Australia to do more in response to global displacement — particularly with the <a href="https://www.thenewhumanitarian.org/opinion/2021/01/25/afghanistan-refugee-resettlement-coronavirus-conflict-australia-canada">pressures</a> COVID has placed on countries hosting large numbers of forced migrants — and to restore the humanitarian program to its pre-pandemic level.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-our-borders-shut-this-is-the-ideal-time-to-overhaul-our-asylum-seeker-policies-146016">With our borders shut, this is the ideal time to overhaul our asylum seeker policies</a>
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<h2>Little help for those in Nauru or PNG</h2>
<p>Offshore processing is once again a big budget item for Home Affairs, set at close to <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/reports-and-pubs/budgets/2021-22-home-affairs-pbs.pdf">A$812 million</a> for 2021-22. </p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/federal-budget-what-it-means-for-refugees-and-people-seeking-humanitarian-protection/">109 people currently being held on Nauru and 130 in Papua New Guinea</a>, this equates to almost <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/may/12/australia-will-spend-almost-34m-for-each-person-in-offshore-detention-budget-shows">$3.4 million</a> per person for 2021. </p>
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<p>For the next three years (2022–24), spending on offshore processing is projected at just over $300 million annually, although experience shows annual costs have exceeded those provided in the forward estimates since at least <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/news/2015-2016-budget">2015</a>.</p>
<p>This excessive spending raises serious questions about the government’s planning for these refugees stuck in limbo. </p>
<p>Keeping people in Nauru and PNG cannot be the only option, and the UN refugee agency has long made <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/news/briefing/2017/12/5a3cce224/australia-must-secure-solutions-refugees-abandoned-manus-island.html">clear</a> Australia must “live up to its responsibilities” to find long-term and humane solutions for those held offshore. </p>
<p>The budget includes continued support for Nauru and PNG to provide “durable migration options” in the way of resettlement, voluntarily return to individuals’ home countries or removal for those found not to be refugees. </p>
<p>But in addition to Australia’s <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/offshore-processing-australia%E2%80%99s-responsibility-asylum-seekers-and-refugees-nauru-and">obligations</a> on this front, experts have raised real <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/RCOA-Seven-Years-On.pdf">concerns</a> that some asylum seekers have been pressured to agree to return home, despite the risks this may pose to their safety. </p>
<p>Among those still held offshore, only a <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/estimate/567ff01c-d590-41e8-ab09-bd5d4e996f13/toc_pdf/Legal%20and%20Constitutional%20Affairs%20Legislation%20Committee_2021_03_22_8611.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22committees/estimate/567ff01c-d590-41e8-ab09-bd5d4e996f13/0001%22">small</a> number have received provisional approval as of March for resettlement in the United States. The UN refugee agency, meanwhile, is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/dec/17/canada-europe-resettling-australia-refugees">working</a> to find resettlement places in Canada and Europe, without help from Australia. </p>
<h2>Vast sums for detention</h2>
<p>The budget also sees big spending on immigration detention, with more than <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/reports-and-pubs/budgets/2021-22-home-affairs-pbs.pdf">$1.2 billion</a> allocated to Home Affairs for onshore detention and compliance in 2021-22. This includes packages to assist individuals to voluntarily return to their countries of origin. </p>
<p>An extra <a href="https://minister.homeaffairs.gov.au/AlexHawke/Pages/securing-our-future.aspx">$464.7 million</a> has also been allocated to increase capacity in detention centres on the Australian mainland and on Christmas Island, due to the <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/estimate/567ff01c-d590-41e8-ab09-bd5d4e996f13/toc_pdf/Legal%20and%20Constitutional%20Affairs%20Legislation%20Committee_2021_03_22_8611.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22committees/estimate/567ff01c-d590-41e8-ab09-bd5d4e996f13/0001%22">challenges</a> of deporting people during COVID-19 travel restrictions. </p>
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<p>The Christmas Island facility was “reactivated” under last year’s budget to the tune of <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/news/how-australia%E2%80%99s-federal-budget-2020-21-impacts-refugees-and-asylum-seekers">$55.6m</a>, and currently holds more than <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/estimate/567ff01c-d590-41e8-ab09-bd5d4e996f13/toc_pdf/Legal%20and%20Constitutional%20Affairs%20Legislation%20Committee_2021_03_22_8611.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22committees/estimate/567ff01c-d590-41e8-ab09-bd5d4e996f13/0001%22">200</a> people. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/its-time-to-give-visas-to-the-biloela-tamil-family-and-other-asylum-seekers-stuck-in-the-system-155354">Murugappan</a> family from Biloela, Queensland, lives in a <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/detention-australia-statistics/3/">separate</a> section of the facility. They have been detained there since August 2019 — and for a long time they were the only occupants — at a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2021/jan/07/keeping-biloela-family-locked-up-on-christmas-island-cost-australia-14m-last-year#:%7E:text=The%20department%20said%20in%20October,Island%20has%20cost%20%241.4m.&text=The%20legal%20costs%20incurred%20by,the%20past%20year%20to%20%24402%2C100.">substantial cost</a>.</p>
<p>Farther afield, Home Affairs will spend $104 million to continue working with regional governments and international organisations (such as the International Organisation for Migration) as part of ongoing efforts to prevent human trafficking and people smuggling. </p>
<p>And an additional <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/reports-and-pubs/budgets/2021-22-home-affairs-pbs.pdf">$38.1 million</a> is going to Indonesia to continue funding basic services for asylum seekers and information campaigns designed to deter people from seeking asylum in Australia. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/for-muslim-refugees-in-immigration-detention-another-sombre-isolated-eid-holiday-159994">For Muslim refugees in immigration detention, another sombre, isolated Eid holiday</a>
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<h2>Mixed support for asylum seekers in the community</h2>
<p>There are thousands of asylum seekers in Australia still <a href="https://temporary.kaldorcentre.net/introduction">waiting</a> for their claims for protection to be assessed. </p>
<p>The Department of Home Affairs has recently launched a “<a href="https://www.racs.org.au/news-old/human-rights-legal-community-appeals-to-government-against-a-new-blitz-of-fast-track-interviews-as-processing-for-boat-arrivals-comes-to-a-close">blitz</a>” in calling people in for their first interviews, which <a href="https://www.racs.org.au/news-old/human-rights-legal-community-appeals-to-government-against-a-new-blitz-of-fast-track-interviews-as-processing-for-boat-arrivals-comes-to-a-close">refugee lawyers</a> say has left some applicants with just two weeks to prepare. </p>
<p>Perhaps unsurprisingly, the budget continues a downward <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/federal-budget-what-it-means-for-refugees-and-people-seeking-humanitarian-protection/">trend</a> in the amount of funding for support services for asylum seekers at just <a href="https://www.dss.gov.au/sites/default/files/documents/05_2021/budget-2021-22_portfolio_budget_statements_11052021_1000.pdf">$33 million</a> for 2021–22, down from $39 million two years ago. </p>
<p>Advocates <a href="https://asrc.org.au/2021/05/12/budget-21-continues-the-governments-detention-cost-blow-out-and-exclusion-of-people-seeking-asylum-refugees-and-migrants-in-time-of-crisis/">say</a> this funding will only cover “a tiny percentage” of the needs of asylum seekers in the community while their protection claims are being assessed. </p>
<p>Elsewhere, however, the budget did hit some positive notes for refugees in the measures aimed at improving women’s safety. </p>
<p>Alongside economic and social support initiatives for refugee and migrant women, there is a <a href="https://budget.gov.au/2021-22/content/womens-statement/download/womens_budget_statement_2021-22.pdf">pilot program</a> to enable women on temporary visas who are experiencing family violence to explore visa options not reliant on their partner.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/scores-of-medevac-refugees-have-been-released-from-detention-their-freedom-though-remains-tenuous-156952">Scores of medevac refugees have been released from detention. Their freedom, though, remains tenuous</a>
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<h2>A missed opportunity</h2>
<p>With Australia’s borders predicted to remain closed until mid-2022, the needs of refugees and asylum seekers may not be grabbing headlines in this budget cycle. </p>
<p>But as the Refugee Council of Australia has recently <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/priorities-covid-19/">documented</a>, there are <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/new-data-reveals-children-of-people-seeking-asylum-left-hungry-as-impact-of-covid-19-crisis-deepens/">many ways</a> the government can help displaced people during the pandemic.</p>
<p>This includes bringing people from Nauru and PNG to Australia and ensuring procedural fairness in the assessment of their protection claims. </p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/cost-australias-asylum-policy">studies</a> repeatedly showing the settlement of displaced people can help to address demographic and labour shortages and substantially boost Australia’s economy, this budget’s emphasis on detention, deterrence and removal is disappointing. </p>
<p>It’s a missed opportunity for refugees and for the nation’s post-pandemic future.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/160783/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Higgins receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>This excessive spending raises serious raise questions about the government’s long-term planning for refugees stuck in limbo.Claire Higgins, Senior Research Fellow, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1537182021-01-26T18:52:28Z2021-01-26T18:52:28ZCould the Biden administration pressure Australia to adopt more humane refugee policies?<p>As a presidential candidate, Joe Biden <a href="https://joebiden.com/immigration/">promised</a> the US would demonstrate “global leadership on refugees”. Once elected, he <a href="https://www.jrsusa.org/news/jesuit-refugee-service-welcomes-announcement-from-president-elect-joe-biden-on-increase-of-refugee-admissions-to-125000/">pledged</a> to vastly increase refugee resettlement in the US. </p>
<p>If history is any guide, the new president’s forward-thinking approach could help drive Australia’s commitments to refugee protection, as well.</p>
<p>Over the past four decades, the United States and Australia have contributed to international refugee resettlement through planned annual admission programs. </p>
<p>The annual US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) has traditionally operated on a much larger scale than any other country, with tens of thousands of places per year. Since 1980, the program has enabled more than <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/2331502418787787">3 million</a> people to find safety and build new lives in the US.</p>
<p>Under former President Donald Trump, however, the program was cut to historic lows of just <a href="https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/FY21-USRAP-Report-to-Congress-FINAL-for-WEBSITE-102220-508.pdf">15,000</a> places for the year beginning in October 2020. </p>
<p>Less dramatically, Australia’s quota for the admission of refugees and others in humanitarian need was similarly reduced from <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/resettlement-briefing-on-covid-19/#:%7E:text=Australia%20had%20been%20planning%20a,1650%20permanent%20onshore%20protection%20visas.">18,750</a> in 2019-20 to <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/news/how-australia%2525E2%252580%252599s-federal-budget-2020-21-impacts-refugees-and-asylum-seekers">13,750</a> in 2020-21, a cut <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/resettlement-briefing-on-covid-19/">attributed</a> to travel restrictions imposed due to COVID-19.</p>
<h2>Biden pledging to increase US refugee intake</h2>
<p>Revitalising the US refugee program is one of the many tasks facing the newly installed Biden administration, in addition to <a href="https://www.undispatch.com/how-the-biden-administration-can-reset-americas-approach-to-refugees-asylum-seekers-and-international-migration/">revising</a> US asylum policy for those seeking protection at the borders. </p>
<p>Biden has committed to an annual refugee intake of up to 125,000 people, echoing the goals of the <a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/28/presidential-determination-refugee-admissions-fiscal-year-2017">Obama administration in its final year</a>, when it set an intake of up to 110,000 refugees.</p>
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<p>At that time, resettlement was valued as a “<a href="https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2016/09/20/fact-sheet-leaders-summit-refugees">foreign policy priority</a>” for the US, with President Barack Obama joining UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon in hosting a <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/p/io/c71574.htm#:%7E:text=President%20Barack%20Obama%20hosted%20a,through%20resettlement%20or%20other%20legal">Leaders’ Summit on Refugees</a> in 2016 to address record levels of global displacement, including from Syria. </p>
<p>The Australian government participated in that initiative and <a href="https://www.malcolmturnbull.com.au/media/speech-at-president-obamas-leaders-summit-on-refugees">pledged</a> to increase its annual humanitarian intake to 19,000 by 2018. The summit demonstrated how leadership by the US can have direct impact and influence on the actions of other states.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/with-our-borders-shut-this-is-the-ideal-time-to-overhaul-our-asylum-seeker-policies-146016">With our borders shut, this is the ideal time to overhaul our asylum seeker policies</a>
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<h2>Australia has similarly tried to boost its reputation</h2>
<p>By increasing the US resettlement numbers now, Biden is looking to rebuild America’s image abroad. </p>
<p>This is a tried and tested tool, <a href="https://academic.oup.com/dh/article-abstract/39/2/223/468690?redirectedFrom=fulltext">evident</a> in the Ford and Carter administration’s large-scale admission of Vietnamese refugees in the aftermath of the disastrous war in Vietnam.</p>
<p>Previous Australian governments have also sought to improve the country’s image through the rosy glow of resettlement contributions. </p>
<p>In September 2015, for example, just five days after The New York Times published a scathing <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/03/opinion/australias-brutal-treatment-of-migrants.html?searchResultPosition=7">assessment</a> of Australia’s offshore detention system, the Abbott government announced Australia would resettle an additional 12,000 Iraqi and Syrian refugees. </p>
<p>Abbott <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/australias-foreign-policy-and-refugee-resettlement">claimed</a> Australia was demonstrating good international citizenry. </p>
<p>However, the optics did not prevent the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/NewsEvents/Pages/DisplayNews.aspx?NewsID=16414">decrying</a> a week later the lack of transparency around offshore detention in Australia and the inability of asylum seekers to access medical care and independent legal advice. </p>
<p>Most recently, the Australian government this month <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/UPR/Pages/AUindex.aspx">cited</a> the country’s “generous” humanitarian program in its formal response to <a href="https://documents-dds-ny.un.org/doc/UNDOC/GEN/G20/306/42/PDF/G2030642.pdf?OpenElement">UN concerns</a> about the treatment of asylum seekers here.</p>
<h2>US and Australia policies have long echoed one another</h2>
<p>Whether the Biden administration could influence Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers is hard to gauge. </p>
<p>The US has been a model for Australia’s harsh asylum policies over the years. The US Coast Guard, for instance, was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1981/09/30/us/reagan-orders-aliens-stopped-on-the-high-sea.html">interdicting</a> asylum seeker boats under the Reagan administration, years before the Howard government adopted the practice in 2001. </p>
<p>And in the early 1990s, the Bush and Clinton administrations <a href="https://theconversation.com/us-turned-away-thousands-of-haitian-asylum-seekers-and-detained-hundreds-more-in-the-90s-98611">authorised the detention</a> of Haitian refugees at the Guantanamo Bay naval base — a practice later adopted by Australia on Manus Island and Nauru.</p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/yes-the-us-border-policy-is-harsh-but-australias-treatment-of-refugee-children-has-also-been-deplorable-98706">Yes, the US border policy is harsh – but Australia's treatment of refugee children has also been deplorable</a>
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<p>And at times, Australia has influenced the US. In a phone call with Trump following his inauguration in January 2017, then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull expressed support for Trump’s promotion of hard-line immigration control, and <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/australia-mexico-transcripts/">claimed</a> that Australia had “inform[ed] your approach”. Turnbull said,</p>
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<p>We have, as you know, taken a very strong line on national security and border protection here […] We are very much of the same mind. </p>
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<h2>Could the Biden administration lean on Canberra now?</h2>
<p>If Biden follows through on his <a href="https://www.jrsusa.org/news/jesuit-refugee-service-welcomes-announcement-from-president-elect-joe-biden-on-increase-of-refugee-admissions-to-125000/">pledge</a> to reinstate America’s “historic role in protecting the vulnerable”, he may prove to be a very different kind of leader.</p>
<p>The Obama era could provide some clues to the Biden approach. In 2015, the head of the Department of State’s refugee bureau <a href="https://2009-2017.state.gov/j/prm/releases/remarks/2015/243186.htm">encouraged</a> Australia to </p>
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<p>be with us again in really being leaders in humanitarian response to migrants and refugees in the region. </p>
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<p>The Obama administration <a href="https://time.com/4894058/donald-trump-malcolm-turnbull-refugees-famine/">urged</a> the Australian government to change its hard-line insistence on detaining asylum seekers offshore. </p>
<p>Unsuccessful in this effort, the Obama administration did what it could, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2016/nov/13/australias-deal-to-resettle-refugees-in-the-us-what-we-know-so">signing a resettlement deal</a> with the Turnbull government in 2016 to get refugees off Manus and Nauru and grant them entry to the United States. </p>
<p>The deal was loudly criticised but <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/politics/australia-mexico-transcripts/">reluctantly upheld</a> by the Trump administration (even though Trump struggled to understand what he called Australia’s “thing with boats”). </p>
<p>Importantly, the deal was reportedly predicated on Australia “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-03-22/us-refugee-deal-architect-says-based-on-australia-doing-more/8375250">doing more</a>” for refugees elsewhere in the world. Signs of this effort were evident in Australia’s increased refugee admission quotas of recent years.</p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/hotels-are-no-luxury-place-to-detain-people-seeking-asylum-in-australia-134544">Hotels are no 'luxury' place to detain people seeking asylum in Australia</a>
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<p>If the Biden administration leans on Canberra in a similar way, we may see Australia return to a higher resettlement quota. </p>
<p>Perhaps we will also see humane solutions for those who came by boat seeking Australia’s protection and are still being detained in hotels and remote detention facilities — including <a href="https://ama.com.au/media/release-biloela-family-immigration-detention">young children</a>. </p>
<p>There are glimmers of hope. In recent days, for instance, the Australia government released <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-20/victoria-medevac-detainees-released-from-melbourne-park-hotel/13074722">dozens</a> of refugees and asylum seekers from detention. </p>
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<p>However, these men have been given short-term visas, which means they will continue to face an uncertain future — a product of current government policy that affects many <a href="https://temporary.kaldorcentre.net/">thousands</a> of refugees living in Australia today. </p>
<p>It is clear that leadership by the US, Australia’s major ally, is needed now more than ever.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/153718/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Higgins receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>If history is any guide, the new US president’s forward-thinking approach toward refugee resettlement could help drive Australia’s commitments to refugee protection, too.Claire Higgins, Senior Research Fellow, Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1452992020-09-01T05:58:03Z2020-09-01T05:58:03ZBanning mobile phones in immigration detention would make an inhumane system even crueler<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355663/original/file-20200831-24-1aqcnv7.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=420%2C24%2C3999%2C3579&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Dodge/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Mobile phones are <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/about/news/blanket-ban-mobile-phones-would-be-unacceptable">a lifeline</a> for those in immigration detention. But if the government has its way, this thread will soon be cut. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Bills_LEGislation/Bills_Search_Results/Result?bId=r6559">proposed bill</a> would allow the minister to deem mobile phones and other internet-capable devices “prohibited items”. It would also grant staff new powers to search detainees without a warrant and allow strip searches and detector dogs within the centres. </p>
<p>Detainees’ friends and family members would also be targeted via expanded powers to screen and search visitors. </p>
<p>The bill is expected to be voted on in parliament this week. The crucial vote will likely be in the Senate, where the government is <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2020/sep/01/australia-coronavirus-live-update-china-tensions-parliament-nsw-victoria-border-qld-covid-19-latest-news?CMP=share_btn_tw&page=with:block-5f4d93778f088598bc536925#block-5f4d93778f088598bc536925">trying to sway</a> key vote Jacqui Lambie to its side.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1300590049382133765"}"></div></p>
<p>The <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/legislation/ems/r6559_ems_b6612e12-dac0-411a-9055-a22c4d714941/upload_pdf/737794.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf">purported purpose</a> of the bill is </p>
<blockquote>
<p>to ensure that the department can provide a safe and secure environment for staff, detainees and visitors in an immigration detention facility. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The government <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22chamber%2Fhansardr%2Fdf9bb27b-ec32-4383-84c6-058df197388f%2F0017%22">claims</a> some detainees are using mobile devices to organise criminal activities, and intimidate staff and other detainees. </p>
<p>Yet, the greatest risk to detainees and their loved ones comes not from mobile phones, but from the isolation and trauma of our immigration detention system. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/asylum-seekers-and-refugees/publications/risk-management-immigration-detention-2019">2019 report</a> by the Australian Human Rights Commission found only a minority of detainees use mobile phones inappropriately. In contrast, rates of self-harm in Australia’s immigration detention system are <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-14/asylum-seekers-in-detention-200-more-likely-to-commit-self-harm/11600148">200 times higher</a> than in the Australian community. </p>
<p>This bill would only make things worse. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355664/original/file-20200831-14-4rb2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355664/original/file-20200831-14-4rb2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355664/original/file-20200831-14-4rb2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355664/original/file-20200831-14-4rb2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355664/original/file-20200831-14-4rb2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355664/original/file-20200831-14-4rb2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355664/original/file-20200831-14-4rb2np.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">For asylum seekers in indefinite detention in hotels like this one in Melbourne, mobile phones can be a lifeline.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Michael Dodge/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The current situation in detention</h2>
<p>In theory, immigration detention in Australia is <a href="https://www.abf.gov.au/about-us/what-we-do/border-protection/immigration-detention">not meant to be punitive</a>. Yet, <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1440783318796301">my research</a> shows the logic of “deterrence” infuses all aspects of detention centre life. </p>
<p>Detainees are subject to constant surveillance and frequent room checks. Dorm-style sleeping arrangements afford minimal privacy. Recreational activities are limited and regular changes to internal rules breed instability. </p>
<p>The excessive <a href="https://humanrights.gov.au/about/news/use-force-immigration-detention">use of force</a> is also a concern. Just this month, the Commonwealth ombudsman <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/aug/14/ombudsman-report-exposes-brutality-of-australias-immigration-detention-network-greens-say">cautioned</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>there appears to be an increasing tendency across the immigration detention network for force to be used to resolve conflict or non-compliant behaviour as the first rather than last choice.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Detainees are rarely permitted to leave their places of detention. Some detainees — including refugees brought to Australia from <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/offshore-processing-facts/">Papua New Guinea or Nauru</a> for <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/almost-200-asylum-seekers-and-refugees-are-being-held-in-australian-hotels-what-does-their-future-hold">emergency medical care</a> under the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/dec/04/medevac-repeal-bill-passes-after-jacqui-lambie-makes-secret-deal-with-coalition">now-repealed Medevac law</a> — have been in detention for over seven years. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-evidence-is-clear-the-medevac-law-saves-lives-but-even-this-isnt-enough-to-alleviate-refugee-suffering-125308">The evidence is clear: the medevac law saves lives. But even this isn't enough to alleviate refugee suffering</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Existing barriers to maintaining relationships</h2>
<p>In this context, connections with friends, family members, medical professionals and legal representatives are vital. But maintaining communications is far from easy. </p>
<p>Where spontaneous visits were once permitted, loved ones must now apply to <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/detention-visitors-report/">visit detention</a> at least one week in advance. Longer application times apply for group visits. The <a href="https://www.abf.gov.au/about-us/what-we-do/border-protection/immigration-detention/visit-detention">online application</a> is prohibitively complicated for those with poor digital literacy or limited English-language capabilities. </p>
<p>At times, visiting room capacity limits cause applications to be rejected, meaning detainees can go weeks without seeing loved ones. During COVID-19, visits have been <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/mar/24/we-are-sitting-ducks-for-covid-19-asylum-seekers-write-to-pm-after-detainee-tested-in-immigration-detention">cancelled</a> altogether.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/people-are-crying-and-begging-the-human-cost-of-forced-relocations-in-immigration-detention-132193">'People are crying and begging': the human cost of forced relocations in immigration detention</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>When applications are approved, visitors must submit to screening, x-rays and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/dec/13/the-farcical-drug-scanners-locking-out-melbourne-immigration-centre-visitors">drug scanning</a>. </p>
<p>There are also strict rules on the admission of food and gifts. Where visitors could once bring items like birthday cakes, fresh fruit, children’s toys and board games to their visits to create a warmer atmosphere, these items are now banned or require special approval. Guards supervise all interactions. </p>
<p>The <a href="https://theconversation.com/people-are-crying-and-begging-the-human-cost-of-forced-relocations-in-immigration-detention-132193">regular relocation of detainees between detention facilities</a> also compounds their feelings of isolation. Forced transfers — including those currently underway as part of <a href="https://overland.org.au/2020/08/the-true-cost-of-reopening-the-christmas-island-detention-centre/">the reopening of the Christmas Island immigration detention centre</a> — further separate detainees from their loved ones, with devastating consequences.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355665/original/file-20200831-24-5kauif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/355665/original/file-20200831-24-5kauif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355665/original/file-20200831-24-5kauif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355665/original/file-20200831-24-5kauif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355665/original/file-20200831-24-5kauif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355665/original/file-20200831-24-5kauif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/355665/original/file-20200831-24-5kauif.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The recently reopened immigration detention centre at Christmas Island.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Richard Wainwright/AAP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>The importance of mobile phones</h2>
<p>Mobile phones are an imperfect solution to these challenges. They help detainees maintain their relationships and mental health when other lines of communication are severed. </p>
<p>Sometimes, they are the only way detainees can <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/jul/19/my-only-desire-is-to-hold-my-son-the-grief-of-indefinite-detention">speak to their children</a> or families. </p>
<p>Mobile phones serve myriad functions for detainees, including allowing them to</p>
<ul>
<li><p>communicate with loved ones within and beyond Australia </p></li>
<li><p>coordinate visit times with local supporters</p></li>
<li><p>correspond with legal professionals, including via email</p></li>
<li><p>learn English and translate documents or conversations </p></li>
<li><p>access personal photographs</p></li>
<li><p>access medical advice </p></li>
<li><p>view entertainment, including movies and exercise videos </p></li>
<li><p>read news from Australia and abroad </p></li>
<li><p>document abuses or <a href="https://probonoaustralia.com.au/news/2020/08/immigration-detainees-scared-and-stressed-about-catching-covid-19/">safety concerns</a> within the centres and</p></li>
<li><p>have <a href="https://www.buzzfeed.com/hannahryan/refugees-phones-australia-whatsapp-interview">a voice and a face</a> in the public sphere. </p></li>
</ul>
<p>As the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-30/who-are-tamil-family-from-biloela-why-are-they-being-deported/11463276">case of the Tamil family from Biloela</a> exemplifies, mobile phones can be the difference between deportation and access to justice. </p>
<p>Last year, when the authorities attempted <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-29/tamil-asylum-seeker-family-from-biloela-facing-deportation/11463176">a late night deportation</a> of the family, they used their phone to contact supporters and journalists, who in turn alerted their lawyer. An emergency injunction was subsequently granted and their plane turned back mid-flight.</p>
<p>Banning mobile phones would rob detainees of many of the strategies they use to survive and access justice. It would also punish detainees’ children, partners, parents and friends.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1299586240384086016"}"></div></p>
<h2>The senselessness of the bill</h2>
<p>Beyond the mobile phone ban itself, granting new screening and search powers would add to the trauma of detention spaces. These are already environments in which excessive force is used. Allowing strip searches and the use of detector dogs would only increase the potential for abuse. </p>
<p>Australia’s immigration detention facilities are highly securitised places. Where there are reasonable grounds to suspect criminal activity, <a href="https://www.lawcouncil.asn.au/media/media-releases/proposed-legislation-tars-all-in-detention-centres-with-same-brush">the police already have power</a> to search the facilities. Granting centre staff power to perform invasive searches is neither necessary nor appropriate. </p>
<p>The proposed bill would not make detention centres safer. It would increase the cruelty of an already cruel system. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/refugees-need-protection-from-coronavirus-too-and-must-be-released-136961">Refugees need protection from coronavirus too, and must be released</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/145299/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>This research was funded by an Australian Government Research Training Program Stipend Scholarship and grants from the University of Queensland and the University of Sydney. Michelle Peterie has received funding from the Australian Research Council for other research projects.</span></em></p>The government claims the bill is needed to make detention centres safer. But it would strip away a vital lifeline for people already 200 times more likely to self-harm than the Australian community.Michelle Peterie, Research Fellow, University of WollongongLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1281182019-12-04T03:18:52Z2019-12-04T03:18:52ZExplainer: the medevac repeal and what it means for asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/305082/original/file-20191204-70116-bqkej9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Jacqui Lambie has made a secret deal with the Coalition government to secure the repeal of medevac.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>After much negotiation, the government has <a href="https://theconversation.com/medevac-repealed-after-government-comes-to-secret-arrangement-with-jacqui-lambie-128303">secured the repeal</a> of the medical evacuation law – known as “medevac” – after making a secret deal with Senate cross-bencher Jacqui Lambie.</p>
<p>So what does this mean for those held in offshore detention?</p>
<h2>Understanding the numbers</h2>
<p>The number of refugees and asylum seekers in Nauru and Manus Island peaked at <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1617/Quick_Guides/Offshore#_Total_number_of">2,450 in April 2014</a> (1,273 on Manus and 1,177 on Nauru) and has been dropping ever since. As of this week, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/most-people-transferred-under-medevac-law-now-living-in-community-detention-20191203-p53gjo.html">about 466 asylum-seekers</a> and refugees remain offshore – 208 on Papua New Guinea and 258 on Nauru.</p>
<p>Of the nearly 2,000 who are no longer in offshore detention, 632 have been transferred to the United States, <a href="https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1703636/BOb-Annual-Report-2018.pdf">17 died</a> in detention, mainly due to suicide, several hundred have been deported after their claims had been rejected, or after returning “voluntarily” with financial assistance from the <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/8/">Australian government</a>. Of these returnees, 33 have been reported <a href="https://www.monash.edu/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/1703636/BOb-Annual-Report-2018.pdf">dead</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-will-the-medevac-bill-actually-affect-ill-asylum-seekers-111645">Explainer: how will the 'medevac' bill actually affect ill asylum seekers?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>In addition, the majority of those who are no longer on Nauru and PNG have been transferred to Australia for medical treatment. Prior to the Medevac law, 1,246 people had been transferred to Australia for medical reasons, including accompanying family. “Less than a handful” of these were <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/estimate/48ea734a-e5f8-4bc6-813e-1f22b32a238a/toc_pdf/Legal%20and%20Constitutional%20Affairs%20Legislation%20Committee_2019_10_21_7290.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22committees/estimate/48ea734a-e5f8-4bc6-813e-1f22b32a238a/0000%22">returned</a> to Nauru or PNG. The most recent return was on April 15 2018. </p>
<p>The number of medical transfers jumped dramatically from 2017-18, when there were <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/2/">35 transfers</a>, to 461 from July 2018 to the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/12/scott-morrison-suffers-historic-defeat-as-labor-and-crossbench-pass-medevac-bill">passing of the medevac law</a> in February 2019. Since then, a further 288 were transferred under the earlier system of approvals. </p>
<p><a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/estimate/48ea734a-e5f8-4bc6-813e-1f22b32a238a/toc_pdf/Legal%20and%20Constitutional%20Affairs%20Legislation%20Committee_2019_10_21_7290.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf#search=%22committees/estimate/48ea734a-e5f8-4bc6-813e-1f22b32a238a/0000%22">According to Senates Estimates</a>, between March 2 2019 when Medevac became law, and October 21 2019, 135 refugees and asylum seekers from Nauru and PNG have been transferred for emergency medical treatment under this process. </p>
<h2>Why has there been such a focus on medevac?</h2>
<p>The primary failure of the policy of removing asylum seekers to Nauru and PNG for processing has been the inability to find permanent resettlement options for those who are found to be refugees under the UN Convention.</p>
<p>Having ruled out resettlement in Australia, the government has scrambled to find other countries to take in the asylum seekers. In 2016, then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull was fortunate to find President Barack Obama open to a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-11-13/australia-announces-refugee-resettlement-deal-with-us/8021120">resettlement arrangement</a>, which he subsequently convinced Donald Trump to honour.</p>
<p>But this has been the only option on the table. There was an aborted deal with Cambodia, and a small number have been <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/someone-has-to-do-it-australians-sponsor-refugees-into-canada-20191102-p536rn.html">resettled in Canada</a> through private sponsorship. The government inexplicably refused an offer from New Zealand to resettle <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/17/new-zealand-and-png-could-do-deal-on-refugees-peter-dutton-says">150 refugees</a> each year, concerned they could then enter Australia via New Zealand. </p>
<p>With limited prospects for resettlement, and the mental health of those on Nauru and PNG always vulnerable and quickly deteriorating, medical transfers have been an important strategy. The increasing number of people transferred for medical reasons is a result of the escalating medical emergency.</p>
<p>Prior to medevac, transfers were at the discretion of the minister. When the minister refused a medical transfer to Australia, people were forced to challenge the exercise of the minister’s discretion in the <a href="https://www.judgments.fedcourt.gov.au/judgments/Judgments/fca/single/2016/2016fca0483">courts</a>. </p>
<p>After protracted legal actions, Australian courts routinely ordered the minister to transfer people for urgent medical treatment to fulfil Australia’s duty of care to people in offshore places. Medevac replaced this cumbersome process with a medical assessment by two doctors that was reviewed by an independent health advice panel. The minister maintained the power to refuse a transfer on security grounds.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/grattan-on-friday-what-does-reopening-christmas-island-actually-mean-and-why-do-it-111866">Grattan on Friday: What does “reopening” Christmas Island actually mean and why do it?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>Now that the medevac law has been repealed, people will once again rely on ministerial discretion for a medical transfer. One would expect that most, if not all, of those remaining on Nauru and PNG will eventually make an application for a transfer. This is because spending up to six years in these places with limited facilities, and an indefinite timeframe for their detention, will eventually undermine the mental health of even the most robust of those who remain.</p>
<p>Recent figures released by the Department of Home Affairs suggest there are currently <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/most-people-transferred-under-medevac-law-now-living-in-community-detention-20191203-p53gjo.html">418 applications</a> for a transfer out of the remaining 466 people remaining offshore.</p>
<p>The tragedy is that these applications will not be assessed on purely medical grounds, and are likely to be long and protracted. </p>
<h2>Repeal of medevac and the end game for offshore detention</h2>
<p>The government’s repeal of the medevac law will do little more than delay transfers of the last remaining refugees held offshore. We may never know the conversations between the government and Jacqui Lambie, but perhaps she was persuaded that there was value in the government maintaining its uncompromising line on asylum seekers arriving by boat, while medical transfers continue unabated. </p>
<p>The majority of those now in Australia as a result of a medical transfer live in alternative places of detention while they access medical treatment. In time, the only realistic option is to grant these people a visa to stay in Australia. This should happen quietly, while the government maintains its firm but unrealistic line of no one ever being resettled in Australia.</p>
<p>These people can then become part of the Australian community, adults can find work, children can go to school. If this happens, there will be no <a href="https://theconversation.com/resettling-refugees-in-australia-would-not-resume-the-people-smuggling-trade-60253">resumption of boats</a> arriving from Indonesia, and we can be rid of the blight of offshore detention.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/128118/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Reilly receives funding from the Department of Social Security for a project investigating Refugee Women and Work in Australia.</span></em></p>Now that medevac has been repealed, people will once again rely on ministerial discretion for a medical transfer.Alex Reilly, Director of the Public Law and Policy Research Unit, Adelaide Law School, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1253082019-10-22T01:53:12Z2019-10-22T01:53:12ZThe evidence is clear: the medevac law saves lives. But even this isn’t enough to alleviate refugee suffering<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/298031/original/file-20191022-56224-75p8x6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=566%2C0%2C4992%2C2900&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Protesters holding a vigil last year for deceased asylum seeker Hamid Khazaei, who died in a Brisbane hospital due to an infection at the Manus Island detention centre in 2014.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Darren England/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Tasmanian Senator Jacqui Lambie has some sobering reading to do over the coming weeks: an 88-page Senate <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/RepairMedicaltransfers/Report">report</a> into the government-sponsored bill to repeal the medevac law that allow refugees and asylum seekers in Papua New Guinea and Nauru to seek medical care in Australia. The publication of the report last Friday paves the way for a Senate vote on the bill in mid-November. </p>
<p>As predicted, the Senate committee that issued the report split along party lines, with the Coalition majority calling for the medevac provisions to be repealed and the ALP, Greens and Centre Alliance senators releasing dissenting reports.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lambie-stays-mute-on-medevac-vote-after-senate-inquiry-splits-on-party-lines-125498">Lambie stays mute on medevac vote after Senate inquiry splits on party lines</a>
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<p>What is less predictable is how the report will influence Lambie’s deciding vote. She has indicated she will approach the bill as a conscience vote, <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/jacqui-lambie-rejects-horse-trading-with-humanity-over-vote-to-repeal-medevac-laws">saying</a> </p>
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<p>Tasmanians don’t want deals done over humanity. </p>
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<h2>An overwhelming health crisis in offshore detention</h2>
<p>The <a href="http://www5.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ma1958118/s198e.html">medevac law</a> allows a person to be transferred to Australia for medical treatment or assessment if two Australian-registered doctors recommend such care is necessary and unavailable in PNG or Nauru. There are limited exceptions for the minister of home affairs to reject a transfer on security and character grounds. </p>
<p>Since the law came into effect in March, <a href="https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/download/committees/reportsen/024304/toc_pdf/MigrationAmendment(RepairingMedicalTransfers)Bill2019%5bProvisions%5d.pdf;fileType=application%2Fpdf">over 130 people have been transferred for care</a>. </p>
<p>The Coalition government maintains the <a href="https://www.homeaffairs.gov.au/foi/files/2019/fa190100423-document-released.PDF">pre-medevac medical transfer policy</a> for refugees was adequate. This allowed transfers only in life-threatening cases in which the required specialist medical care could not be provided on PNG, Nauru or a third country like Taiwan. </p>
<p>However, evidence given to the Senate committee showed a drastic drop in medical transfers to Australia from 2015 to mid-2018, despite clear medical need. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStore.ashx?id=3a04719d-f5ea-4342-aeff-c25ab3a90c31">Statistics</a> given to the committee by the National Justice Project, a not-for-profit legal service that acts on behalf of refugees, documented how some patients had to wait more than four years for medical transfers to Australia. </p>
<p>Tony Bartone, the Australian Medical Association president, described the government’s pre-Medevac process as “torturous” and involving “long periods of delay,” without any appropriate oversight.</p>
<p>Court injunctions and prospective litigation from mid-2018 onwards did compel the government to bring around 350 people to Australia for urgent medical treatment or as an accompanying family member. But such court interventions can be costly, slow and resource-intensive for those in need of immediate medical attention.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/peter-dutton-is-whipping-up-fear-on-the-medevac-law-but-it-defies-logic-and-compassion-119297">Peter Dutton is whipping up fear on the medevac law, but it defies logic and compassion</a>
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<p>And that need is still extremely high for those refugees remaining in offshore detention. An <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/aug/26/asylum-seekers-held-in-papua-new-guinea-blocked-from-talking-to-lawyers-or-doctors">independent health assessment</a> in June found a staggering 97% of those in detention and processing facilities have been diagnosed with physical health conditions. A further 91% were experiencing mental health problems, including severe depression and PTSD. </p>
<p>All but two of the <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Legal_and_Constitutional_Affairs/RepairMedicaltransfers/Submissions">95 public submissions</a> received by the committee were strongly in favour of retaining the medevac law. </p>
<p>Tellingly, those two submissions were from the Department of Home Affairs and the International Health and Medical Service, a government-contracted health provider on Nauru.</p>
<h2>Overlooked refugee suffering in Australia</h2>
<p>What is missing from the Senate report is any mention of the intolerable situation that refugees and asylum seekers face even after they have been transferred to Australia. </p>
<p>Although people can access critical medical treatment here, most remain in community detention, facing economic insecurity and legal uncertainty about their future. Research <a href="https://academic.oup.com/rsq/article-abstract/36/4/45/4101639?redirectedFrom=fulltext">shows</a> such legal limbo can lead to feelings of despair and dehumanisation. </p>
<p>The day before the report’s release, 32-year-old Afghan doctor Sayed Mirwais Rohani <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/17/afghan-man-dies-in-brisbane-two-years-after-medical-transfer-from-manus-island">died in Brisbane</a>, the victim of an apparent suicide. Rohani had come to Australia for medical treatment two years ago, after spending four years in immigration detention on Manus Island. </p>
<p>After his death, his former roommate posted on Facebook:</p>
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<p>We shared same pain for long time, long enough to destroy someone’s life.</p>
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<p>Rohani’s death <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/17/afghan-man-dies-in-brisbane-two-years-after-medical-transfer-from-manus-island">was at least the 13th among refugees</a> held in offshore detention on Manus or Nauru.</p>
<h2>‘Trying to kill themselves because they’ve lost hope’</h2>
<p>No doubt the government will use the Senate report to convince Lambie to support its bill when the vote happens next month. </p>
<p>So far, Lambie has remained relatively reticent, even if she did <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/18/jacqui-lambie-rejects-duttons-claim-most-veterans-would-want-medevac-laws-abolished">rebuff</a> Dutton’s claim that the “vast majority of veterans” want her to vote to repeal medevac. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-will-the-medevac-bill-actually-affect-ill-asylum-seekers-111645">Explainer: how will the 'medevac' bill actually affect ill asylum seekers?</a>
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<p>Instead, Lambie indicated she would look to “national security” considerations in weighing up the report’s findings, including the dissenting reports. She has in the past <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2014/dec/05/ricky-muir-vote-reinstates-tpvs-and-hands-coalition-hollow-asylum-victory">called</a> for children not to be in immigration detention and voted against the Coalition government’s bill to introduce temporary refugee visas in 2014. </p>
<p>Even if the medevac provisions stay in place, the status quo of Australia’s offshore detention regime remains unsustainable and inhumane. </p>
<p>As former MP Kerryn Phelps, a key architect of the medevac law during her brief time in parliament, stated in her evidence to the Senate committee, refugees and asylum seekers are </p>
<blockquote>
<p>not trying to make a point; they’re trying to kill themselves because they’ve lost hope.</p>
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<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Dehm is a national co-convenor of Academics for Refugees.</span></em></p>A Senate report details the high need for refugees on Manus Island and Nauru to be able to seek medical care in Australia. The fate of the medevac law now rests in Jacqui Lambie’s hands.Sara Dehm, Lecturer, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1246392019-10-03T10:06:45Z2019-10-03T10:06:45ZGrattan on Friday: Jackie Lambie should not horse trade on medevac repeal bill<p>In this age of celebrity, Jacqui Lambie fits the narrative to a tee in the political sphere. She’s a rough-talking woman with a struggle-town back story who has landed centre stage because she has a lot of power – and sometimes the crucial vote – on contested issues in the Senate.</p>
<p>You get the impression Lambie loves both the drama and the influence. She revelled in getting the government to deliver big money to obtain her vote on the tax relief legislation. With chutzpah, she later lamented coming cheap.</p>
<p>But soon Lambie will face a decision with more complexities than tax cuts, affecting relatively few lives but those lives in a huge way. As things stand she’ll be the determining vote on the legislation to repeal medevac, the law that facilitates medical transfers from Papua New Guinea and Nauru.</p>
<p>Lambie, everyone says, is “keeping her cards close to her chest”.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, behind the scenes a race is on to get as many people as possible with medical needs to Australia ahead of the vote, in case the government wins Lambie’s support.</p>
<p>A Senate inquiry on the repeal legislation is due to report on October 18. The government could try to push through its bill in the week of November 11, the next available Senate sitting week.</p>
<p>Those pursuing transfers on behalf of applicants claim the government is attempting to “run down the clock”, dragging out the transfers where it can.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/peter-dutton-is-whipping-up-fear-on-the-medevac-law-but-it-defies-logic-and-compassion-119297">Peter Dutton is whipping up fear on the medevac law, but it defies logic and compassion</a>
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<p>The number of people offshore is now relatively small, after 632 have departed to the United States (with another 263 going through the approval process) and more than 1000 transfers, including accompany family members, to Australia over the years (these mostly not under the new legislation).</p>
<p>According to government figures as of Thursday, there are 281 people in Papua New Guinea (including refugees, non-refugees and some that are still being processed) and 279 in Nauru.</p>
<p>In relation to medevac, the government says there have been 283 notifications for medical transfer, with 127 transferred, 23 in the process of transfer and “numerous others” engaged at various levels. It says the minister has refused 54 cases for transfer and the Independent Health Advisory Panel (IHAP) agreed with the refusal.</p>
<p>The Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (which is a member of the Medical Evacuation Response Group set up to manage transfer requests under the medevac law), operating on slightly different figures - its numbers were as of September 29 - says the minister had given approval in 133 cases, while in 15 cases, the minister had been overridden by the IHAP. Refusals had numbered 39, ASRC says.</p>
<p>It says some 79% of all medevac applications that had been determined won approval. In 71% of cases decided, the minister approved the application in the first instance.</p>
<p>The medevac legislation passed when the Coalition was in minority at the end of the last parliamentary term. The government at the time warned of dire consequences, including that rapists and paedophiles would get to Australia.</p>
<p>It re-opened Christmas Island and said transferees would be sent there. No one has been. (Only the Tamil family is there. That family has lived in Australia for years but has failed in its bids for refugee status and will be deported if it loses its current court case.)</p>
<p>The government insisted medevac would trigger a reopening of the people smuggling trade. That hasn’t happened, and the several boats (not a flotilla) that have set out in recent months have been intercepted by the efficient turnback operation. Any “pull” factor is also offset by the medevac law only applying to people who came before it passed.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/lambies-vote-key-if-government-wants-to-have-medevac-repealed-118905">Lambie's vote key if government wants to have medevac repealed</a>
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<p>Is medevac a way of clearing everyone from PNG and Nauru by the backdoor? No and yes. Not directly, because people have to be demonstrably ill. But after so many years, most of these people are or will be sick, mainly though not entirely with mental illnesses. Which of us would not be, in their circumstances?</p>
<p>Given there is not evidence medevac has compromised border security since its passage early this year, the government’s quest to repeal the legislation seems driven by anger (that it was imposed on it by Labor and the crossbench), ideology and politics.</p>
<p>If it were looking at the matter strictly logically, surely it would reason that the remaining people offshore present, in policy terms, what the political scientists call a “wicked problem” which medevac is helping solve.</p>
<p>These people can’t stay where they are for ever (and should not have been there anything like this long). More have been transferred to Australia than are now offshore. People who’ve been brought here under medevac remain in detention facilities (various places can be designated a detention facility) at the discretion of the minister.</p>
<p>If the medevac law helps end the offshore issue, isn’t this an upside for Australia without a demonstrable downside? That’s just putting things in crude policy cost-benefit terms. Behind this, of course, lies the compelling humanitarian case.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-will-the-medevac-bill-actually-affect-ill-asylum-seekers-111645">Explainer: how will the 'medevac' bill actually affect ill asylum seekers?</a>
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<p>In the end, everyone waits on Lambie. The government is in her ear. So are those wanting medevac preserved. Her office says she is still taking “soundings”, although there has been a long time to get across the arguments, which aren’t particularly complicated. The Senate inquiry, chaired by the government, can be expected to come down on party lines, rather than adding much new.</p>
<p>Gross horse trading is now a feature of dealing with legislation in the Senate. While sometimes the Senate acts as a genuine house of review, at others it seems the proportional representation voting system, which has delivered so much clout to crossbenchers representing relatively few voters, has a lot to answer for.</p>
<p>No doubt the government would be willing to put a feast on Lambie’s table to get a win on what has become this totemic issue for it.</p>
<p>But this is a piece of legislation on which Lambie should not contemplate any deals, whether in response to carrots for Tasmania or anything else the government might hold out or she might want.</p>
<p>The key crossbencher’s decision should involve only judgements about morality, the medical needs and future lives of vulnerable people, and border security. On those criteria how she should vote seems pretty clear, even while she keeps everyone guessing how she will vote. </p>
<p>*This article has been changed to correct the Senate sitting date.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/124639/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The government would be willing to put a feast on the table to get a win on the medevac repeal, but this is a piece of legislation on which Lambie should not contemplate any deals.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1192972019-06-24T20:11:12Z2019-06-24T20:11:12ZPeter Dutton is whipping up fear on the medevac law, but it defies logic and compassion<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280893/original/file-20190624-97751-1mp5obs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The medevac law was passed to streamline the process for emergency medical evacuation of refugees from Manus Island and Nauru. Thirty-one people have been transferred since its passage.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Refugee Action Coalition</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>With all the hyperbole about the <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-will-the-medevac-bill-actually-affect-ill-asylum-seekers-111645">medevac law</a>, it is easy to lose sight of its purpose. </p>
<p>Refugees have been transferred off Nauru and Manus Island for emergency medical treatment since offshore detention restarted on these islands in 2013. The Department of Home Affairs reported to Senate estimates that <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/23/peter-dutton-claims-asylum-seekers-refusing-resettlement-in-us-due-to-medevac-laws">898 refugees and asylum seekers</a> had been sent to Australia for medical treatment prior to the passage of the medevac law earlier this year. Of those, 282 were returned to Manus and Nauru after receiving treatment, and the rest remained in Australia in detention. </p>
<p>These transfers occurred in response to pleas from doctors and health professionals on an ad hoc basis. And it was up to the Home Affairs Department and Minister Peter Dutton whether to comply with such a request. Medical emergencies could include life-threatening brain or heart conditions, complex abortions, or emergency psychiatric care for children at risk for suicide – all of which are beyond the capacity of the health systems on Nauru and Manus to treat. </p>
<p>Although some refugees were granted emergency medical evacuation, many others were not. In response, <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/somali-refugee-on-nauru-wins-bid-to-have-abortion-in-australia">legal cases</a> were brought against the government for breaching its responsibility to care for the refugees. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-will-the-medevac-bill-actually-affect-ill-asylum-seekers-111645">Explainer: how will the 'medevac' bill actually affect ill asylum seekers?</a>
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<p>This required the federal court to convene at short notice to hear cases. It also required the expenditure of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/sep/29/australia-spent-320000-fighting-requests-for-urgent-medical-transfers-of-asylum-seekers">huge amounts of taxpayer money</a> to call expert medical witnesses and file thousands of pages of supporting documentation. </p>
<p>Because of the delays in treatment, these legal battles were enormously risky for those in need of medical care.</p>
<p>Through these early cases, the court <a href="https://www.hrlc.org.au/human-rights-case-summaries/2018/5/23/federal-court-orders-australian-government-to-remove-refugee-children-from-nauru-to-receive-appropriate-mental-health-treatment">established</a> that it was a breach of the government’s duty not to provide refugees with emergency medical treatment. And yet, the Home Affairs Department continued to fight applications for transfers for emergency medical treatment, only to be overturned by the courts, time and time again. </p>
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<h2>How the process works under the medevac law</h2>
<p>The medevac law was passed due to concerns the department was rejecting transfer applications for political rather than medical reasons. The point was to provide an expedient, objective process to determine whether transfers were required. </p>
<p>And despite the Coalition government’s opposition to the bill, the process for determining which refugees are moved off Nauru and Manus for treatment remains highly deferential to the minister and Department of Home Affairs. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-asylum-seeker-policy-history-a-story-of-blunders-and-shame-118396">Australia's asylum seeker policy history: a story of blunders and shame</a>
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<p>There are <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-will-the-medevac-bill-actually-affect-ill-asylum-seekers-111645">two stages</a> to this process. </p>
<p>First, two doctors must assess the person and make a recommendation for transfer. <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/19/federal-court-overturn-attempt-to-block-medevac-transfer-from-nauru">The federal court recently ruled</a> it was possible to make this medical assessment based on documentation alone, as opposed to an in-person or teleconference assessment. This was a <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/20/do-duttons-medevac-law-claims-stack-up-against-court-ruling-explainer">necessary adjustment</a> to the law, given that the Nauru government has banned teleconferences for residents.</p>
<p>The minister is required to approve or refuse the recommendation for transfer within 72 hours. There are three grounds for refusal: </p>
<ol>
<li> the person is deemed a security risk </li>
<li> the person has a “substantial criminal record” (which equates to having been convicted of an offence with a sentence of imprisonment for 12 months or more)</li>
<li> the minister does not accept the transfer is necessary on medical grounds.</li>
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<p>If the minister rejects the transfer on medical grounds, the second stage of the process kicks in, with an independent health advice panel (IHAP) assessing the doctors’ recommendation. It is important to note that this panel is comprised of government medical officers and other health professionals appointed by the minister. </p>
<p>To date, there have been <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/medevac-panel-overturns-two-cases-in-four-months-despite-floodgate-fears-20190622-p5208u.html">31 medical transfers</a> under the law. In addition, nine recommendations were refused by the government. The panel of health experts upheld seven of the minister’s refusals, and overturned two.</p>
<h2>Dutton’s claims don’t stand up under scrutiny</h2>
<p>Dutton has made a number of claims about the impact of the medevac law that he argues justify its repeal. All defy reason and logic.</p>
<p>First, the minister has claimed “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/23/peter-dutton-claims-asylum-seekers-refusing-resettlement-in-us-due-to-medevac-laws">activist doctors</a>” were using the law to bring people to Australia when they do not require emergency medical care.</p>
<p>This is frankly highly offensive to the medical profession in Australia, and contradicts the clear intention of the law to take politics out of transfer decisions. Even if doctors making the initial recommendation are too left-leaning for Dutton, the expert panel is stacked with medical practitioners of his choosing.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/there-are-70-million-refugees-in-the-world-here-are-5-solutions-to-the-problem-118920">There are 70 million refugees in the world. Here are 5 solutions to the problem</a>
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<p>Second, the minister has <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-20/warnings-of-boat-arrivals/11226254">argued</a> that the capacity to be transferred to Australia for emergency medical treatment will lead to a resumption of the people-smuggling trade. </p>
<p>This is patently absurd. It is true that people smugglers can make up all sorts of stories about Australia relaxing its policies and it being easier to get to Australia. But the facts are crystal clear: the Coalition government maintains a policy of boat turn-backs and indefinite offshore detention for anyone thinking of making the journey.</p>
<p>Medical transfers to Australia are for a temporary period. Once people have been treated, they are returned to detention on Nauru or Manus. It is true that many asylum seekers have remained in Australia for extended periods for ongoing treatment, but these refugees remain within the immigration detention system. They are escorted to medical appointments and remain under guard while receiving treatment. They are given no hope of putting down roots in Australia. </p>
<p>The deterrent to people smugglers remains overwhelming. And, unsurprisingly, we have not seen a restarting of boat arrivals following the passage of the medevac law. Dutton’s own department has signalled this is unlikely in <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/13/nine-facts-about-the-medical-evacuation-bill">a briefing</a>: </p>
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<p>[Potential illegal immigrants] will probably remain sceptical of smuggler marketing and await proof that such a pathway is viable, or that an actual change of policy has occurred, before committing to ventures.</p>
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<p>The only possible messaging that people smugglers might use to persuade people to get on a boat is the Coalition government’s own dire warnings of reopening the floodgates and political stunts like the brief resurrection of the Christmas Island detention centre at the staggering cost to taxpayers of over <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/03/we-paid-180m-for-scott-morrison-to-have-a-press-conference-on-christmas-island">A$180 million</a>.</p>
<p>Dutton’s third claim is that some refugees are <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/jun/23/peter-dutton-claims-asylum-seekers-refusing-resettlement-in-us-due-to-medevac-laws">refusing resettlement</a> offers in the US because of the medevac law.</p>
<p>Again, it defies logic for refugees to refuse the US option – it is the only hope of resettlement currently on offer. One wonders whether the minister is using this claim as a cover for the fact that transfers to the US have <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/mental-health-on-nauru-absolutely-devastating-as-trump-rejects-refugees-under-extreme-vetting-20181011-p5092w.html">come to a grinding halt</a> under President Donald Trump. </p>
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<h2>The medevac law and human compassion</h2>
<p>For over six years, successive Australian governments have maintained an unwavering narrow focus on stopping refugee boats with no concern for the victims of this policy – the innocent people on Manus and Nauru. </p>
<p>These people are under Australia’s care. It is Australia that pays the governments of Nauru and PNG to house offshore detention centres to create the disincentive for others to travel by boat to Australia. It is Australia that pays the security companies to keep them detained. And so it is Australia that is responsible for the dramatic decline in their mental and physical health. </p>
<p>It is the narrowest of concessions to offer emergency medical treatment in Australia to people we have so mistreated.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119297/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Reilly receives funding from the Commonwealth Department of Social Services for a project on refugee women and work.</span></em></p>With parliament sitting next week, the home affairs minister is pressuring Labor to support a repeal of the medevac law. But the law has worked just as it was intended.Alex Reilly, Director of the Public Law and Policy Research Unit, Adelaide Law School, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1189202019-06-20T04:24:41Z2019-06-20T04:24:41ZThere are 70 million refugees in the world. Here are 5 solutions to the problem<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/280350/original/file-20190620-171188-wygex0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Little has been done to help the millions of refugees from Myanmar, Venezuela, Syria and other troubled countries find permanent resettlement options.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Nyein Chan Naing/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>This week, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, Filippo Grandi, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/middle-east/australia-among-countries-in-crisis-of-solidarity-as-refugee-numbers-pass-70-million-un-20190619-p51zbk.html">labelled the world’s refugee problem</a> a crisis that is primarily impacting developing countries, who are hosting most of the world’s 70 million displaced people. </p>
<p>It’s the highest number of people fleeing violence since the second world war, the agency said in a <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/globaltrends2018/">report</a>. Last year, 37,000 people were forced to flee their homes every day. </p>
<p>My colleague and I have conducted extensive research on refugees at the US-Mexico border and in Southeast Asia and Australia, studying the lives of people in detention, in transit, and resettled in host countries. In all these cases, an enduring problem is that nations are not doing enough to provide adequate protection for refugees.</p>
<p>Australia, and the international community as a whole, needs to do more to help the world’s most vulnerable people. Here are five solutions we believe can work.</p>
<h2>1. Give them their rights: enforce international conventions</h2>
<p>Most countries have either signed the <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/1951-refugee-convention.html">1951 Refugee Convention</a> or its <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/ProtocolStatusOfRefugees.aspx">1967 Protocol</a>. These ensure basic rights and protections for refugees, in addition to other human rights conventions. </p>
<p>However, many nations maintain reservations on key articles, have not implemented the agreements or simply do not comply with their international obligations. Others do not provide access to these protections for people without legal status, such as refugees. </p>
<p>Addressing the nonexistent enforcement mechanisms of international conventions, agreements and declarations is the first step for improving refugees’ rights.</p>
<h2>2. Share the responsibility: regional refugee compacts</h2>
<p>In December 2018, the <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/the-global-compact-on-refugees.html">UN Global Compact on Refugees</a> was agreed to by 181 countries. The document has the <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/2018-global-compacts-refugees-and-migration%20for%20sharing%20responsibility%20on%20the%20global%20refugee%20crisis">following objectives</a>: </p>
<ul>
<li>easing the pressure on host countries</li>
<li>helping boost the self-reliance of refugees </li>
<li>expanding access to <a href="https://reliefweb.int/report/world/safe-pathways-refugees-oecd-unhcr-study-third-country-solutions-refugees-family">third-country resettlement options</a> </li>
<li>supporting conditions in refugees’ home countries to help them safely return. </li>
</ul>
<p>The global compact also includes recommendations for similar regional and national action plans. </p>
<p>Cooperation of this sort has been attempted in our region before with the <a href="https://dfat.gov.au/international-relations/themes/people-smuggling-trafficking/Pages/the-bali-process.aspx">Bali Process</a>, which focused on cross-border people smuggling and trafficking. But this agreement had an adverse effect by criminalising the movement of people across borders to seek asylum. </p>
<p>A <a href="https://theconversation.com/asylum-solutions-we-need-a-regional-refugee-compact-16815">regional refugee compact</a> would shift the focus away from border protection and deterrence and instead ensure refugees receive the protections they need in transit and on arrival in host countries.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/asylum-solutions-we-need-a-regional-refugee-compact-16815">Asylum Solutions: we need a regional refugee compact</a>
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<h2>3. Treat refugees like human beings: close detention centres</h2>
<p>According to the <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/detention.html">UNHCR</a>, detention should be considered a last resource for countries dealing with influxes of refugees. And yet, <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/">refugee confinement</a> has become common practice. </p>
<p>All over the world, the closure of borders and privatisation of immigration detention centres have <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13621025.2016.1277981">resulted in</a> a rapid increase in the imprisonment of refugees, including women and children. Although Australia has moved hundreds of refugees off Manus Island and Nauru in recent years, there are <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/2/">still 915 remaining in detention centres on the islands</a>.</p>
<p>It is paramount that detention centres and offshore processing centres be closed. The practice is not only cruel, it’s expensive. According to the <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/">Refugee Council of Australia</a>, it <a href="https://www.kaldorcentre.unsw.edu.au/publication/cost-australias-asylum-policy">costs more than A$573,000 a year</a> to hold just one refugee in detention on Manus or Nauru.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/secrecy-over-paladins-423-million-contract-highlights-our-broken-refugee-system-118996">Secrecy over Paladin's $423 million contract highlights our broken refugee system</a>
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<p>The <a href="https://idcoalition.org/alternatives-to-detention/">International Detention Coalition</a> has identified over 250 alternatives to detention, such as providing temporary legal status to refugees while they await decisions on their permanent status.</p>
<p>Another alternative is to increase global refugee resettlement quotas. These quotas have been decreasing sharply around the world in recent years. The US, for instance, <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/06/19/canada-now-leads-the-world-in-refugee-resettlement-surpassing-the-u-s/">resettled fewer refugees than Canada in 2018</a>.</p>
<h2>4. Allow them to participate: work rights for refugees</h2>
<p>Refugees should not be treated as <a href="https://asylumaccess.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/FINAL_Global-Refugee-Work-Rights-Report-2014_Interactive.pdf">passive recipients</a> of humanitarian aid and charity – they should be permitted to work. </p>
<p>Providing working visas for refugees in transit countries, as well as those on bridging visas or waiting for their asylum claims to be processed, would help them earn a livelihood and contribute to society. </p>
<p>In Malaysia, for example, refugees have no work rights at all and have to work illegally in the shadow economy. In Australia, <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/fast-tracking-statistics/">work rights</a> for many refugees on bridging visas depend on the discretion of the Home Affairs department.</p>
<p>Another important issue: permitting refugees the right to work must also come with <a href="https://www.policyforum.net/working-legally-win-win-refugees-malaysia/">safeguards</a> to prevent their exploitation. </p>
<h2>5. Let them in: open borders</h2>
<p>This “refugee crisis” is really just a crisis of who has the right to move. Thanks to the <a href="http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674032712">birthright lottery</a>, some people are able to move freely across borders, while others remain trapped in violence and poverty. </p>
<p>If <a href="https://refuge.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/refuge/article/view/32074">borders were open</a> to all, the human smuggling business would cease to exist. And refugees of all sorts, including those displaced by climate change, would be able to enjoy work rights and access to health care and education. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-refugee-law-expert-on-a-week-of-reckless-rhetoric-and-a-new-way-to-process-asylum-seeker-claims-111756">A refugee law expert on a week of 'reckless' rhetoric and a new way to process asylum seeker claims</a>
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<p>Even though we live in an era where more walls are going up between nations, <a href="https://theconversation.com/europes-refugee-crisis-explains-why-border-walls-dont-stop-migration-110414">we have evidence this does not stop migration</a>. </p>
<p>And the evidence for the economic benefits for open borders is unambiguous. According to some <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-us-100-trillion-case-for-open-borders-72595">estimates</a>, opening the world’s borders could increase global GDP by US$100 trillion. We just need to take a bold step and give refugees a right already enjoyed by some – the right to move.</p>
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<p><em>The authors will be <a href="https://alumni.uq.edu.au/event/session/6267">discussing the world’s response</a> to the global refugee crisis at a talk on Thursday, June 20, at the University of Queensland.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118920/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gerhard Hoffstaedter has received funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sara Riva is affiliated with Griffith University. </span></em></p>Current responses to the world’s refugee crisis are inhumane and ineffective. We propose five ways forward to help the world’s most vulnerable people.Gerhard Hoffstaedter, Senior lecturer in Anthropology, The University of QueenslandSara Riva, Resident Adjunct, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1189052019-06-16T09:36:29Z2019-06-16T09:36:29ZLambie’s vote key if government wants to have medevac repealed<p>The government almost certainly would have to obtain the support of Tasmanian crossbench senator Jacqui Lambie to amend or repeal the medevac legislation.</p>
<p>Home Affairs minister Peter Dutton on Sunday claimed Labor was reconsidering its position on the legislation, but that was quickly dismissed by his opposite number Kristina Keneally.</p>
<p>The Coalition would need four of the six non-Green crossbench Senate votes, assuming the ALP and Greens opposed.</p>
<p>The government could rely on One Nation, which will have two senators, and Cory Bernardi from the Australian Conservatives.</p>
<p>But that would leave it one vote short. Stirling Griff, one of the two Centre Alliance senators, said Centre Alliance was “100% opposed” to repeal or amendment of the legislation. That position was “non-negotiable”, Griff said.</p>
<p>This would put Lambie, who is returning to the Senate after having to quit in the citizenship crisis, as the swing vote. Her spokeswoman said she was not giving answers on anything yet.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/setka-furore-opens-division-within-the-labour-movement-and-there-is-no-easy-solution-118756">Setka furore opens division within the labour movement – and there is no easy solution</a>
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<p>The government said in the election campaign that it would repeal the legislation.</p>
<p>It claimed when the medevac bill was passed – against Coalition opposition during the period of minority government – that it would lead to a flood of transfers from Manus and Nauru, including of people accused of serious crimes. It reopened Christmas Island and said any transferees under the medevac legislation would be sent there.</p>
<p>Dutton said on Sunday just over 30 people had come under the new law, none of whom had been sent to Christmas Island. Asked on the ABC whether they included any criminals or people charged with offences Dutton said he didn’t know. When pressed he said, “we don’t bring anyone to our country where we can’t mitigate the risk”.</p>
<p>Dutton continued to insist the government could be compelled under the legislation to transfer criminals, although the medevac legislation gives the minister power to veto people on security grounds.</p>
<p>The minister claimed Labor was reconsidering its position “and that they would be open to suggestions about how that bill could be repealed or at the very least wound back”.</p>
<p>But Keneally said he had misrepresented Labor’s position; she stressed it supported the legislation.</p>
<p>It was “up to the government to explain if changes are necessary. I have no information that would suggest changes are necessary,” she said.</p>
<p>“If the government believes that the medevac legislation is no longer necessary to ensure that sick people can get the health care they need then the government needs to explain why to the parliament.</p>
<p>"And if the government wants to improve the medevac legislation to ensure that people can more readily get the health care that they need then the government needs to explain that to the parliament.</p>
<p>"The government has said nothing about either of those two aspects of the legislation”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/video-michelle-grattan-on-john-setka-press-freedom-adani-approval-and-tax-118845">VIDEO: Michelle Grattan on John Setka, press freedom, Adani approval and tax</a>
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<p>Dutton said there were now just over 800 people remaining across Nauru and Manus.</p>
<p>He did not think the United States would take the maximum 1,250 people under the deal between Malcolm Turnbull and Barack Obama.</p>
<p>So far 531 had gone to the US and there were about 295 in the pipeline who had approvals but hadn’t gone yet. More than 300 had been rejected by the US.</p>
<p>He hoped all offered a place would take it up. About 95 had either withdrawn from consideration or rejected an offer. “If we can get those 95 across the line, we get closer to zero”.</p>
<p>In a controversial decision, Australia accepted under the US deal two Rwandan men accused of involvement in the murder of tourists on a gorilla-watching expedition in Uganda in 1999. The government says the men have been found by Australian security agencies not to pose a threat.</p>
<p>Pressed on whether these two were the only ones coming here to fulfil Australia’s side of the deal, Dutton said: “We don’t have plans to bring any others from America at this stage.”</p>
<p>Dutton, while saying it was a matter for the department, also indicated the security company Paladin was likely to have its contract for services on Manus rolled over, despite an ongoing investigation by the Australian National Audit Office into the Home Affairs department’s management of the procurement process for the earlier A$423 million contracts.</p>
<p>Keneally said the A$423 million contract had been “given out by the government in a closed process – a closed rushed process […] to an organisation that was registered in a beach shack on Kangaroo Island, that had one member barred from entering PNG, had another accused of fraud”.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118905/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Dutton continues to insist the government could be compelled under the medevac legislation to transfer criminals, although the legislation gives the minister power to veto people on security grounds.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1183962019-06-12T03:07:11Z2019-06-12T03:07:11ZAustralia’s asylum seeker policy history: a story of blunders and shame<p><em>This article was developed from a series of interviews with politicians, officials and other key players, including former Immigration minister Chris Evans and former Victorian premier Steve Bracks. Others preferred to remain anonymous.</em></p>
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<p>We know very little about the kind of government Scott Morrison runs. After beating Peter Dutton and Julie Bishop to the prime ministership in August last year, most commentators assumed Morrison was keeping the chair warm until Labor’s Bill Shorten won the 2019 election. </p>
<p>Following the Coalition’s unexpected victory, it’s time to ask more searching questions, not only about Scott Morrison’s political values and policy aspirations, but about his prime ministerial style.</p>
<p>Recent history suggests processes of policy decision-making can make or break governments. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/cruel-and-no-deterrent-why-australias-policy-on-asylum-seekers-must-change-117969">Cruel, and no deterrent: why Australia's policy on asylum seekers must change</a>
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<p>Labor’s shambolic attempts to create asylum seeker policy during the Rudd-Gillard years are emblematic of the dire consequences when tried-and-tested processes of policy advice fail.</p>
<p>In the face of internal dissent, thousands of asylum seekers arriving by boat and a marauding opposition leader, the government rejected its most vital source of advice, the public service.</p>
<h2>It began in 2009</h2>
<p>In mid-October 2009, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was informed that a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/oceanic-viking-breakthrough-asylum-seekers-to-come-ashore-20091117-ijly.html">vessel carrying 78 Sri Lankan asylum seekers</a> was in danger of sinking in Indonesian waters. Rudd negotiated directly with the Indonesian president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and decided to dispatch a Customs vessel, the Oceanic Viking, to rescue the asylum seekers and return them to Indonesia.</p>
<p>The then immigration minister Chris Evans first heard of the plan when he received a phone call from Rudd’s chief of staff, Alister Jordan. </p>
<p>Jordan was not consulting the immigration minister, but rather informing him of a plan that had been enacted. Evans rang his departmental secretary, Andrew Metcalfe, who told him the plan would not work because the asylum seekers would <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Triumph_and_Demise.html?id=Ij9bBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">refuse to disembark</a>.</p>
<p>As Metcalfe had foreseen, the asylum seekers refused to leave the Australian boat at Bintan. Australian voice surveillance revealed there was <a href="https://books.google.com.au/books/about/Triumph_and_Demise.html?id=Ij9bBAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=kp_read_button&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false">talk of mass suicide</a>. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-the-next-australian-government-can-balance-security-and-compassion-for-asylum-seekers-110713">How the next Australian government can balance security and compassion for asylum seekers</a>
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<p>The standoff lasted four weeks, until a deal was struck that saw the Sri Lankans resettled in countries including New Zealand.</p>
<p>Officials in the Immigration Department were dumbfounded. One told me: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Oceanic Viking was a thought bubble from Rudd … It was an absolute debacle. It was crazy. It had nothing to do with immigration but we were asked to go in and fix it up. And that scuttled any possibility of us doing anything with Indonesia for a long time.</p>
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<p>The boats kept coming. There were <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-07-30/boat-arrivals-record-broken/4162680">6,555 boat arrivals in 2010</a>. On the night he lost the prime ministership to Julia Gillard, Rudd told the Labor caucus that if he won the leadership vote, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-06-23/gillard-moves-on-rudd/878810">he would</a> “not be lurching to the right on question of asylum seekers”. </p>
<p>What Rudd didn’t mention was that the government had been actively exploring offshore options for some time. </p>
<p>The Immigration Department had prepared a list of possible sites for offshore detention that included Malaysia, Pakistan, Thailand, Indonesia, and East Timor. </p>
<h2>Sounding out the East Timorese government</h2>
<p>Evans was focused on pursuing a multilateral solution. His officials consulted with members of the refugee lobby, including the prominent lawyer David Manne, about being part of a broader regional arrangement that had the approval of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).</p>
<p>Evans and his department worked on an offshore deal that would meet with the approval of Australian stakeholders, neighbouring countries, and the UNHCR. But meanwhile, a small group of ministers focused on East Timor. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-refugee-law-expert-on-a-week-of-reckless-rhetoric-and-a-new-way-to-process-asylum-seeker-claims-111756">A refugee law expert on a week of 'reckless' rhetoric and a new way to process asylum seeker claims</a>
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<p>The former Victorian premier, Steve Bracks, was approached at an airport and asked to sound out the East Timorese government about a processing centre. Bracks reported back that Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao was interested, but he would need some time to win support within his government. </p>
<p>Gusmao wanted negotiations to be done through the president, Jose Ramos Horta. This process was in train when Kevin Rudd was overthrown as prime minister on June 24, 2010.</p>
<p>In a speech to the Lowy Institute on July 5, the new prime minister, Gillard, announced she had discussed with Horta the possibility of establishing a regional processing centre in East Timor. But in going public, she had pre-empted the internal East Timorese process. Gusmao distanced himself from the plan and it quickly fizzled.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, the public servants who had been working on the multilateral solution were left scratching their heads. One official told me: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have no idea where [East Timor] sprang from. </p>
<p>We were working on arrangements … and one of the really difficult things was thought bubbles kept coming from funny quarters and then you’d have the media onto it, laughing at it or making a joke of it.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Failed Malaysia initiative</h2>
<p>After the 2010 election, the new immigration minister <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-25/malaysia-signs-refugee-deal/2809512">Chris Bowen secured</a> an offshore processing arrangement with Malaysia. Immigration Department officials had encouraged Bowen to bring refugee stakeholders and the UNCHR on board. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/refugees-are-integrating-just-fine-in-regional-australia-101188">Refugees are integrating just fine in regional Australia</a>
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<p>But Bowen, who was facing immense political pressure from opposition leader Tony Abbott, preferred to deal unilaterally with his Malaysian counterpart, Hishamuddin Hussein, with whom he had developed a strong rapport.</p>
<p>Hours before the first 16 asylum seekers were due to be transported to Malaysia, Manne <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/malaysia-solution-on-hold-20110807-1ihvv.html">obtained an injunction</a> against their removal from Australia, pending a <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/refugee-to-challenge-malaysia-deal-in-court-20110616-1g63r.html">challenge to the legality</a> of the government’s agreement with Malaysia. </p>
<p>In September 2011, the High Court decided in a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-08-31/high-court-rules-on-asylum-seeker-challenge/2864218">six-to-one decision</a> that the Malaysia agreement contravened the Migration Act because the refugees would not be given the protection required by the Australian legislation.</p>
<p>According to a key player, the High Court ruling was the product of a profound failure of process: </p>
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<p>the government did a very bad job at … going to the organisations who would be part of any solution. And, instead, pissed them off so comprehensively they went to the High Court.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/robert-manne-how-we-came-to-be-so-cruel-to-asylum-seekers-67542">Robert Manne: How we came to be so cruel to asylum seekers</a>
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<p>This account is rejected by David Manne, who says the decision to take the Malaysia agreement to the High Court was not linked to politics and was a response to a request for legal representation from asylum seekers on Christmas Island.</p>
<p>After the failure of the Malaysia initiative, the Gillard government <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/gillard-moves-swiftly-on-nauru-option-20120814-246ai.html">hurriedly reopened</a> the Nauru and Manus Island processing centres. </p>
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<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WmxKK2hySRA?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">In 2013, then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Opposition Leader Tony Abbott debate about asylum seeker policy, and the ‘PNG solution’.</span></figcaption>
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<p>When Rudd replaced Gillard in June 2013, he <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-more-asylum-in-australia-for-those-arriving-by-boat-rudd-16238">announced</a> that no one who arrived by boat would ever be settled in Australia. The boats slowed, but it was the institution of boat turnbacks under the Abbott government’s Operation Sovereign Borders that stopped them altogether.</p>
<p>The consequences of the Rudd and Gillard governments’ blundered handling of asylum seeker policy were considerable. Indonesia and East Timor were unnecessarily offended, the government’s political fortunes suffered and, most significantly, asylum seekers were again subjected to processing on Nauru and Manus Island.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/in-manus-theatre-delivers-home-truths-that-cant-be-dodged-113352">In Manus, theatre delivers home truths that can't be dodged</a>
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<p>It is conceivable that Manus and Nauru would have remained closed and Operation Sovereign Borders rendered unnecessary had the Rudd and Gillard governments heeded the advice of the Immigration Department to bring key refugee stakeholders and UNHCR on board into the process. </p>
<p>The institution of rigorous decision-making processes will not guarantee Scott Morrison’s success, but they could help him avoid many of the pitfalls that contributed to the downfall of the Rudd and Gillard governments.</p>
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<p><em>Carolyn Holbrook is presenting a talk on this topic at the Australian Policy and History ‘History and the Hill’ Conference at Deakin University on Thursday, June 13</em></p>
<p><em>This story has been amended to include a response from David Manne.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/118396/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Carolyn Holbrook receives funding from the Australian Research Council. She is the Director of Australian Policy and History. </span></em></p>Prime Minister Scott Morrison can learn from the pitfalls that contributed to the downfall of the Rudd and Gillard governments.Carolyn Holbrook, ARC DECRA Fellow at Deakin University, Deakin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1179692019-05-31T02:15:06Z2019-05-31T02:15:06ZCruel, and no deterrent: why Australia’s policy on asylum seekers must change<p>The Coalition’s election victory on May 18 had an immediate psychological effect on the refugees on Manus Island, with reports of several people attempting <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-48375120">suicide</a>. </p>
<p>Two class-action lawsuits currently before the High Court <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2018/12/10/class-actions-manus-nauru/">allege</a> “torture”, “persecution” and “other inhumane acts” in Australia’s offshore detention centres. This action follows an action for damages in 2018 that the federal government <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/former-manus-island-detainees-paid-70-million-in-compensation">settled</a> for A$70 million, effectively admitting that the claims of mistreatment were well-founded. </p>
<p>The Iranian-Kurdish journalist and poet <a href="https://twitter.com/BehrouzBoochani?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Behrouz Boochani</a>, who has been detained on Manus for six years, has borne witness to a cruel system in his book, <a href="https://www.panmacmillan.com.au/9781760555382/">No Friend But the Mountain</a>. Written secretly on a mobile phone, the book has won a swag of major Australian literary awards. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-behrouz-boochanis-unsparing-look-at-the-brutality-of-manus-island-101520">Book Review: Behrouz Boochani's unsparing look at the brutality of Manus Island</a>
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<p>As a result of the testimonials of Boochani and others, the terrible conditions on Nauru and Manus are well-known. There are regular reports of physical and mental illness due to unsanitary conditions, cruel treatment and hospitals with no capacity to deal with the extent and severity of the health crisis among the refugee populations. </p>
<p>These reports reinforce the underlying cruelty of subjecting innocent human beings to indefinite and arbitrary detention in the first place. And to what end?</p>
<h2>There is no justification for offshore detention</h2>
<p>For many years, there has been no justification for the detention of asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru. </p>
<p>The original justification of deterring others from making the dangerous journey from Indonesia to Australia carries no weight. The point has been well and truly made that attempting to reach Australia by boat is a futile exercise. In the words of the allegations in the class action, the journey will <a href="https://www.crikey.com.au/2018/12/10/class-actions-manus-nauru">result in</a> years of:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>…arbitrary, indefinite detention in tents, barrack-style buildings, or small, hastily constructed dwellings where living conditions lead to poor health […] physical, sexual and psychological abuses, [and] systemic mental distress. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>The government claimed that the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-13/senate-passes-controversial-refugee-evacuation-bill/10806196">medivac law passed in February</a> risked a new wave of boat arrivals and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/03/we-paid-180m-for-scott-morrison-to-have-a-press-conference-on-christmas-island">spent over A$180 million</a> reopening the Christmas Island detention centre in preparation for new arrivals. The government has since committed to closing Christmas Island again. The expense involved in this political exercise is staggering, with absolutely no benefit to the taxpayer. </p>
<p>There has also been no new wave of boat arrivals. Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-05-30/asylum-seekers-sent-back-to-sri-lanka-from-christmas-island/11163526">revealed</a> Thursday that a boat from Sri Lanka had been intercepted near Christmas Island this month. However, the details of who was on board, and why the boat was in Australian waters has not been made publicly available. </p>
<p>There will always be the occasional refugee boat arriving Australian waters for a variety of reasons, but it is important to distinguish these isolated occurrences from a reigniting of the people-smuggling trade. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australias-government-failed-to-stand-up-for-press-freedom-after-nauru-barred-abc-journalist-99366">Australia's government failed to stand up for press freedom after Nauru barred ABC journalist</a>
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<p>It’s high time the government ceased linking detention on Manus and Nauru to stopping the boats. The evidence does not stack up. As I, and <a href="https://johnmenadue.com/frank-brennan-tim-costello-robert-manne-john-menadue-boat-turnbacks-and-medical-transfers/">others</a>, have <a href="https://theconversation.com/resettling-refugees-in-australia-would-not-resume-the-people-smuggling-trade-60253">argued previously</a>, the experience during the Howard years suggests that simply the possibility of offshore detention is a sufficient deterrent. </p>
<p>When the government settled asylum seekers on Nauru in Australia and New Zealand from 2002-04, without dismantling the offshore detention regime, asylum seekers did not begin arriving by boat. </p>
<p>Most asylum seekers in Indonesia are registered with the UNHCR and are waiting for resettlement through the UNHCR process. Their situation is admittedly desperate. Nonetheless, when interviewed after the passing of the medivac law, asylum seekers in Indonesia <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/17/refugees-in-indonesia-say-few-would-risk-a-boat-ride-to-australia">testified</a> that they did not see taking a boat to Australia as an option. </p>
<p>It’s important to remember that asylum seekers have done nothing wrong in seeking our protection. Australia is a signatory to the <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/en-au/1951-refugee-convention.html">UNHCR Refugee Convention</a>, which establishes a responsibility to protect people who arrive on our border seeking protection. If offshore detention can be justified as deterrence at all, it must surely be kept to the bare minimum, in the context of our protection obligations. </p>
<p>Long-term detention is simply cruel and rightly labelled a “crime against humanity”. </p>
<h2>Alternatives to detention</h2>
<p>If there is even a remote possibility of a boat arriving in response to resettling refugees from Manus and Nauru in Australia and New Zealand, the government has many deterrence strategies at its disposal. </p>
<p>One novel strategy that avoids the need for offshore detention is Labor’s 2011 <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-25/malaysia-signs-refugee-deal/2809512">Malaysia arrangement</a>. The deal was a simple one. In exchange for the transfer to Malaysia of 800 asylum seekers who arrived in Australia by boat, Australia would provide financial assistance to Malaysia and resettle 4,000 UNHCR-recognised refugees on top of existing commitments to resettle refugees from the region. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/refugees-and-asylum-seekers-in-malaysia-the-good-the-bad-and-the-unexpected-8532">Refugees and asylum seekers in Malaysia: the good, the bad and the unexpected</a>
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<p>An important part of the arrangement was that those asylum seekers returned to Malaysia would not be penalised, and would be provided with housing, the right to work, and access to education for children. </p>
<p>The arrangement would act as an effective deterrent to people taking a boat to Australia to seek asylum because their expensive and dangerous journey would just result in their return to Malaysia. The Malaysia arrangement had the benefit of refocusing Australia’s response to asylum seekers and drawing in our neighbours to a regional response. </p>
<p>It’s critical that the Australian government take a new direction in refugee policy and move beyond its tired and false rhetoric of deterrence as a justification for detaining refugees on Nauru and Manus.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/117969/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Reilly receives funding from the Commonwealth Department of Social Services for a project on refugee women and work. </span></em></p>It’s critical that the Australian government take a new direction in refugee policy and move beyond its tired rhetoric of deterrence as a justification for detaining refugees on Nauru and Manus.Alex Reilly, Director of the Public Law and Policy Research Unit, Adelaide Law School, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1133522019-03-13T00:42:44Z2019-03-13T00:42:44ZIn Manus, theatre delivers home truths that can’t be dodged<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263297/original/file-20190312-86678-1ym8xp1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Iranian theatre company Verbatim Theatre Group performed Manus as part of this year's Adelaide Festival.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mohammad Sadeq Zarjouyan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>Review: Manus, Adelaide Festival, March 8</em></p>
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<p>How to review a play whose relationship with matters of fact is so serious and politically culpable it overwhelms the critical distinctions that might normally be used to judge it? </p>
<p>Where is <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislavski%27s_system">Stanislavski</a>’s “magic if” (if I were a refugee locked up for six years by the Australian government …)? What are the “given circumstances” (near-drowning at sea, a sun-beaten island at the end of the earth)? Or the “inciting incident” (political oppression, military destruction, despair on an epic scale)? </p>
<p>We might ask is the narrative balanced? Does the piece make appropriate use of contemporary staging techniques in portraying, say, how a 23-year old refugee set himself on fire, or a group of teenage youths sewed their lips together? </p>
<p>Is it well-shaped dramaturgically? Is the flow of events satisfying to an audience expecting a good night out at the theatre? Or is it too much for those affronted by the horror, the inhumanity, the endless hell of it all? How will Australians in particular cope, given that we are the ones responsible for building that hell and setting its cycle of torment in motion?</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263296/original/file-20190312-86693-1jhzqc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263296/original/file-20190312-86693-1jhzqc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263296/original/file-20190312-86693-1jhzqc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263296/original/file-20190312-86693-1jhzqc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263296/original/file-20190312-86693-1jhzqc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263296/original/file-20190312-86693-1jhzqc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263296/original/file-20190312-86693-1jhzqc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263296/original/file-20190312-86693-1jhzqc8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">In Manus, actors perform verbatim interviews with Iranian asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Elsby</span></span>
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</figure>
<p><a href="https://www.adelaidefestival.com.au/events/manus/">Manus</a>, as the title will suggest to most, but especially Australian audiences, is a drama presenting the stories of eight refugees from Iran who sailed to this country in 2013, just after the passing of the Coalition government’s <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.au/Details/F2013L02166/Explanatory%20Statement/Text">Operation Sovereign Borders legislation</a>. </p>
<p>Apropos the new zero-tolerance approach to marine-arriving asylum seekers, they and hundreds of others were mandatorily detained at Manus or Nauru Regional Processing Centres for five years or more. There they faced limited resettlement options, and an explicit commitment to never allow them entry into Australia, regardless of whether they were found to be “genuine” refugees or not.</p>
<p>The first half hour of this 90-minute show by Iranian company Verbatim Theatre Group explores the background of the characters – who are not characters, of course, but men and women with names, faces, families and fates, just like you and me – and the reasons they chose to leave their home. </p>
<p>These are as various as you’d expect, and fall into the category of the credible. Their journey takes them via Indonesia, into the Arafura and Timor seas, where they hit storms and rough waters, their flimsy vessel breaks apart, and they nearly drown. </p>
<h2>Harrowing narrative</h2>
<p>Just in abbreviated form, delivered with the slight means at the disposal of a small company from Tehran – two dozen red petrol cans, some projections and a rain effect – this section of the narrative is harrowing.</p>
<p>It’s a ghastly journey even when undertaken with adequate food, water and equipment, which are frequently absent. Rescue comes from a British naval vessel and the Iranians are asked where they want to go. They say Australia.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263285/original/file-20190312-86686-jcmmrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263285/original/file-20190312-86686-jcmmrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263285/original/file-20190312-86686-jcmmrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263285/original/file-20190312-86686-jcmmrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263285/original/file-20190312-86686-jcmmrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263285/original/file-20190312-86686-jcmmrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263285/original/file-20190312-86686-jcmmrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263285/original/file-20190312-86686-jcmmrj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">The first part of the show is dedicated to the life stories of the people portrayed in the play.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Elsby</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>There are sharply divided opinions in this country about what director Nazanin Sahamizadeh describes in the program note as: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>a world in which every three seconds one person is forced to flee home … to seek safety, security or simply a better life in peace and freedom. Tragedy in our time shows its ugly face when the borders are closed rather than open to these women, men, girls and boys.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It is not hard to imagine her view being strongly contested: the argument put that opening our borders only encourages people-smugglers, for example, thus more dangerous maritime crossings, and thus more deaths at sea. It is also possible to question the social impact of large-scale migration (though <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1617/Quick_Guides/MigrationStatistics">Australia’s in-take</a> is not especially large) and a global order where, in the words of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/sep/20/migrants-refugees-asylum-seekers-21st-century-trend">academic Alexander Betts </a>“refugees and displacement are likely to become a defining issue of the 21st century”.</p>
<p>But beyond the general debate we find, in legal parlance, a <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright-line_rule">bright-line</a>. The last two-thirds of Manus narrate how the eight Iranian detainees fared in their tiny island prisons, and the neglect, abuse, humiliation, indifference, and, to our ever-lasting shame, outright violence and cruelty they were subject to. </p>
<p>In this, the main body of the play, we hear the voices and accounts of those who saw the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/the-truth-or-not-about-manus-island-riot">2014 riots</a> on the island close-up, because, unlike the Australian politicians glibly sure of their judgements later, they actually witnessed them. </p>
<p>The deaths, injuries and hunger-strikes that followed were peaks in a sine wave of misery that ground down the asylum seekers through repeated acts of petty tyranny. The play describes this through the voices of the actors: food delivered late or not at all; latrines limited in number and broken; electricity cut off in the middle of the night; telephone calls restricted. </p>
<p>On and on and on it goes: a stream of organisational meanness as deliberate, ingenious and grim as any that can be found in Dante’s Inferno. </p>
<p>It is one thing to refuse entry to people who claim asylum in Australia on the grounds their entry is illegal. It is another to treat them in the way we have, subjecting them to prolonged and aggravated incarceration for no criminal offence, dragging Australia’s reputation into the slime, where it will no doubt remain for some time to come, and deservedly so.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263284/original/file-20190312-86686-1dfsk2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263284/original/file-20190312-86686-1dfsk2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/263284/original/file-20190312-86686-1dfsk2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263284/original/file-20190312-86686-1dfsk2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263284/original/file-20190312-86686-1dfsk2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263284/original/file-20190312-86686-1dfsk2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263284/original/file-20190312-86686-1dfsk2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/263284/original/file-20190312-86686-1dfsk2m.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Manus is delivered entirely in Persian.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">James Elsby</span></span>
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<h2>An imperfect show</h2>
<p>Manus is not a perfect show. It is hard to imagine how such a panorama of human misery could be condensed into 90 minutes of stage action.</p>
<p>Within the verbatim theatre model there is a tension between emotional authenticity and documentary accuracy. Delivered entirely in Persian, with English surtitles, Manus leans toward the first, with the result that sometimes details blur and it is difficult to judge the scale and effects of a given event. News footage, projected onto the bodies of the performers themselves, is used to boost atmosphere rather than to communicate precise chronology.</p>
<p>But this does nothing to rob the drama of its impact in the Australian context. In fact, the opposite: the show’s imperfections only point up the evil perpetrations we have let slither by us, as an electorate, like a venomous snake. Theatre has a trick of banging-out home truths in ways that can’t be dodged, even with our nation’s studied mastery of the toad-arts of moral evasion. </p>
<p>I left the venue feeling numbed, drained and profoundly confronted. What was I doing while all of this was happening? While these refugees, normal people, neither better nor worse than myself, were having their lives excoriated by devils, large and small, in my name? What were we all, as supposedly good Australians, thinking? </p>
<p>Not even God can change the past, the Spanish say. We have infinite time ahead of us to answer such questions, and contemplate the void they have opened up in our national soul.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/113352/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Julian Meyrick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>This verbatim drama presenting the stories of eight Iranian asylum seekers detained on their island prisons delivers uncomfortable home truths.Julian Meyrick, Professor of Creative Arts, Flinders UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1107132019-03-04T19:03:19Z2019-03-04T19:03:19ZHow the next Australian government can balance security and compassion for asylum seekers<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258650/original/file-20190213-90491-j9enr0.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Crossbenchers Kerryn Phelps, Julia Banks and Rebekah Sharkie celebrate the passing of the "Medivac" law through the House of Representatives.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Lukas Coch</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>This is part of a major series called Advancing Australia, in which leading academics examine the key issues facing Australia in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election and beyond. Read the other pieces in the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/advancing-australia-66135">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>With a rapidly changing climate and increased instability in the world order, patterns of people movement are likely to change dramatically in the future. It is not a tenable response to isolate Australia from the shocks of these changes.</p>
<p>Sadly, the politicisation of refugee policy <a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-mv-tampa-and-the-transformation-of-asylum-seeker-policy-74078">since the Tampa crisis of 2001</a> indicates that our major political parties are incapable of the kind of honest and open decision-making that is required in this complex and vexed policy space. However, the passing of the Kerryn Phelps-<a href="https://theconversation.com/morrison-government-defeated-on-medical-bill-despite-constitution-play-111636">led amendments to the Migration Act</a> to facilitate medical evacuations from Manus Island and Nauru may point to a shift in the nation’s mood on the issue. </p>
<p>In the second half of the 20th century, Australia transformed the idea of itself into a multicultural nation. An important part of this story has been Australia’s contribution to the resettlement of refugees. </p>
<p>Australia was the first country outside Europe to accede to the <a href="https://www.unhcr.org/1951-refugee-convention.html">1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees</a>. Australia was also an early adopter of the <a href="https://www.ohchr.org/EN/ProfessionalInterest/Pages/ProtocolStatusOfRefugees.aspx">1967 protocol</a> that extended the convention beyond Europe. Australia’s generous resettlement of refugees under the convention has reinforced its identity as a nation built on migrants. </p>
<p>Australia’s acceptance of refugees remained uncontroversial while the numbers of refugees could be strictly controlled through its immigration program. The first serious challenge to control was the arrival of <a href="https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/vietnamese-refugees-boat-arrival">boatloads of Vietnamese refugees</a> in 1976. However, the Fraser Coalition government maintained control through an arrangement with South East Asian countries that Australia would resettle a high number of Vietnamese refugees if those countries stopped redirecting boats that arrived on their shores back out to sea. </p>
<h2>How the Tampa changed Australian asylum-seeker policy</h2>
<p>When boats began arriving in larger numbers from 1999 to 2001, the struggling Howard Coalition government used the rescue of 438 asylum seekers by the MV Tampa as an opportunity to implement a more restrictive policy. This included boat turn-backs, offshore processing and detention, and issuing temporary protection visas for people arriving by boat whose applications for asylum were accepted. The boats stopped arriving within months. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australian-politics-explainer-the-mv-tampa-and-the-transformation-of-asylum-seeker-policy-74078">Australian politics explainer: the MV Tampa and the transformation of asylum-seeker policy</a>
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<p>In 2007, the Labor government dismantled these policy settings. Asylum seekers arriving by boat were rescued at sea and processed on the Australian territory of Christmas Island. If they were found to be refugees, they were granted permanent protection visas. This policy was premised on boat arrivals being at similar levels to those experienced previously. But this proved mistaken. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258060/original/file-20190210-174883-hr9n30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258060/original/file-20190210-174883-hr9n30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258060/original/file-20190210-174883-hr9n30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258060/original/file-20190210-174883-hr9n30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258060/original/file-20190210-174883-hr9n30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258060/original/file-20190210-174883-hr9n30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258060/original/file-20190210-174883-hr9n30.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">The Norwegian cargo ship Tampa collected 438 stranded asylum seekers and changed Australian policy on the issue.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AAP/Wallenius Wilhelmsen</span></span>
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<p>By 2013, refugee policy was in disarray. In 2012, <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1617/Quick_Guides/BoatTurnbacks">17,204 people arrived by boat</a>, rising to 20,587 in 2013. This far outnumbered the planned refugee intake of 13,750 and reinforced the fear that Australia was in danger of being “swamped” by asylum seekers.</p>
<p>Prior to this rapid rise in boat arrivals, the Labor government had attempted to introduce a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2011-07-25/malaysia-signs-refugee-deal/2809512">novel policy response</a>, the Australia-Malaysia asylum-seeker transfer agreement. The Malaysian government agreed to the return to Malaysia of asylum seekers who tried to reach Australia by boat via Indonesia. Malaysia guaranteed housing, education and work rights for these asylum seekers, but also that they would receive no advantage in resolving their application for refugee resettlement. </p>
<p>This arrangement removed the incentive to take a risky boat journey to Australia.
We will never know if it would have stopped the boats, as the High Court held the government did not have the power to implement the arrangement, and the Coalition and the Greens blocked an attempt by the government to amend the Migration Act to provide it with the requisite power. </p>
<p>In mid-2013, the Labor government <a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1314/AsylumPolicies">changed direction</a> radically. It committed to offshore processing for the first time, stating categorically that no asylum seeker reaching Australia by boat <a href="https://theconversation.com/no-more-asylum-in-australia-for-those-arriving-by-boat-rudd-16238">would ever be resettled here</a>.</p>
<p>When it was returned to government in 2013, the Abbott Coalition government readily adopted Labor’s policy and added a policy of aggressive boat turn-backs covered in a <a href="https://theconversation.com/should-operations-to-turn-the-boats-around-be-kept-secret-18670">veil of operational secrecy</a>. It also reintroduced temporary protection visas for the 30,000 asylum seekers who had entered Australia during the six years of Labor government. Within a few months, boat arrivals had <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-boats-may-have-stopped-but-at-what-cost-to-australia-30455">ceased completely</a>. </p>
<h2>Asylum-seeker policy becomes a national security issue</h2>
<p>The current Coalition government has successfully cast refugee policy as an issue of border security. The ministers for immigration, first Scott Morrison and then Peter Dutton, have spun a narrative that any softening of the government’s stance on resettlement would risk relaunching a flotilla of boats.</p>
<p>The line they have drawn is breathtaking in its strictness. The government has been unwilling even to accept New Zealand’s offer to resettle <a href="https://www.radionz.co.nz/international/pacific-news/369352/nz-confirms-refugee-offer-is-150-each-year">150 refugees a year</a> from offshore detention for fear they will then have backdoor entry to Australia. It has also made it very difficult for asylum seekers to get emergency medical treatment in Australia. </p>
<p>The government’s narrative of border protection does not acknowledge the human cost of long-term offshore detention. Since detention centres on Nauru and Manus were opened in 2014, <a href="https://www.refugeecouncil.org.au/operation-sovereign-borders-offshore-detention-statistics/">3,127 people</a> have been transferred there. As of early February 2019, as a result of third-country resettlements and voluntary returns, about <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/10/coalition-ministers-fail-to-explain-whether-all-refugees-held-offshore-need-medical-transfer">1,000 remain</a>. The last <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-02-03/nauru-last-asylum-seeker-children-to-leave-detention-pm-says/10774910">children on Nauru</a> were resettled in the US in February 2019. </p>
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<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/as-children-are-airlifted-from-nauru-a-cruel-and-inhumane-policy-may-finally-be-ending-105487">As children are airlifted from Nauru, a cruel and inhumane policy may finally be ending</a>
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<p>Despite strictly controlling access to information from Nauru and Manus, the government has not been able to prevent courageous medical officials bearing witness to the human suffering of refugees. This includes suicides and self-harm, and children simply giving up. It has not been able to prevent Behrouz Boochani using mobile phone messages <a href="https://theconversation.com/book-review-behrouz-boochanis-unsparing-look-at-the-brutality-of-manus-island-101520">to write an award-winning book</a> bearing witness to the official strategies used to break the spirit of refugees on Manus Island. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258059/original/file-20190210-174857-yipo0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/258059/original/file-20190210-174857-yipo0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258059/original/file-20190210-174857-yipo0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258059/original/file-20190210-174857-yipo0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258059/original/file-20190210-174857-yipo0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258059/original/file-20190210-174857-yipo0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/258059/original/file-20190210-174857-yipo0e.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Asylum seeker and journalist Behrouz Boochani wrote the award-winning book No Friend but the Mountains.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Amnesty International handout</span></span>
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<h2>Finding a more humane way forward</h2>
<p>As on so many policy issues facing Australia, we need an honest discussion on refugees. On the one hand, it needs to be acknowledged that refugees are victims of regimes intent on persecuting them and are deserving (and entitled) to our protection. </p>
<p>As a nation, we continue to have a policy of high levels of immigration, and refugees can be a significant part of our strategy for future prosperity. We have a responsibility not to contribute further to people’s suffering, and thus long-term detention of refugees is untenable.</p>
<p>On the other hand, Australians believe they are entitled to determine who is provided access to the benefit of membership in the Australian state. This being the case, refugee policy must be able to control the number of people who are accepted for resettlement. The most effective mechanism of control is to prevent onshore arrivals by boat and plane, and to use planned resettlement from refugee camps in consultation with the UNHCR. </p>
<p>The unprecedented number of boat arrivals in 2012-13 tilted the equation towards control over compassion. However, there is a sensible middle ground more in line with Australian values.</p>
<p>First, it is possible to resettle all the asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus in Australia expeditiously, without triggering large numbers of boat arrivals. This resettlement must be the immediate priority of a new government. It was never envisaged that refugees would spend up to six years in offshore detention.</p>
<p>Retaining the architecture of offshore detention and processing for the future and the possibility of boat turn-backs is more than adequate deterrent to prevent people risking the perilous journey to Australia by boat. The Coalition governments in 2001 and 2013 demonstrated that if this proves to be wrong, introducing a hard-line policy can stop the boats very quickly.</p>
<p>Second, all those refugees on <a href="https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/temporary-protection-785">Temporary Protection Visas</a> and <a href="https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/getting-a-visa/visa-listing/safe-haven-enterprise-790">Safe Haven Enterprise Visas</a> in Australia need to be offered permanent protection. Temporary visas create a huge psychological and social burden on refugees in Australia, with no benefits.</p>
<p>Third, the movement of refugees, particularly from the Middle East, through South East Asia to Australia is a regional problem. The Australian government needs to resume discussions with Indonesia and Malaysia about a more nuanced solution. </p>
<p>With the Coalition cutting through with its narrative of fear of invasion and Labor still spooked by policy failure during its previous term in government, it has taken independent MPs to begin to push Australian refugee policy to a sensible middle ground.</p>
<p>Kerryn Phelps’ amendment to the Migration Act, supported by Labor and the Greens, <a href="https://theconversation.com/explainer-how-will-the-medivac-bill-actually-affect-ill-asylum-seekers-111645">provides for</a> the evacuation of asylum seekers and refugees to Australia if two doctors assess that they require medical treatment not available on Nauru or Manus Island. The minister for home affairs retains the power to reject a transfer on security grounds. The law is also limited in its application to refugees already on Nauru and Manus Island. </p>
<p>In parliament, Prime Minister Scott Morrison and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten framed their positions on the “Medivac” law as a test of character. Morrison focused on the importance of “mettle” and “holding the line”. Shorten focused on “compassion” and “balance”. </p>
<p>The passing of the law ensures refugee policy will be a key election issue once again. The Australian people will determine what version of character prevails.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/110713/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Alex Reilly receives funding from the Department of Social Services in its National Grants scheme to conduct research into Refugee Women and Work.</span></em></p>Since the Tampa affair in 2001, successive governments have been anxious to be seen as “hard-line” on asylum seekers, but the cost – to people and the country – has been too high.Alex Reilly, Director of the Public Law and Policy Research Unit, Adelaide Law School, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1119102019-02-15T04:13:51Z2019-02-15T04:13:51ZVIDEO: Michelle Grattan on reopening Christmas Island and One Nation’s shenanigans<figure>
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<p>University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor Deep Saini and Michelle Grattan talk about the week in politics. They discuss including the government’s historic defeat in the House of Representatives on the medevac legislation, plans to reopen the Christmas Island detention facility, One Nation’s embarrassing conduct and the push for a royal commission into the treatment of disabled people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/111910/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Michelle Grattan does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Deep Saini and Michelle Grattan talk about the week in politics.Michelle Grattan, Professorial Fellow, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.