By Jane Salmon
If The Jackboots Actually Fit … Why Does Labor Keep Tripping Over Its Own Feet?
On Tuesday, a bunch of bright young refugees went to parliament to talk about their community contribution, their quest for permanent residency and what more they could give the nation if granted domestic tertiary study rights.
They were to meet with independent members of parliament and senators, alongside sector organisers like Jana Favero of ASRC. Interacting with politicians and representing the sector seemed positive enough.
But instead of sharing their dreams, these young people ended up addressing the nightmare of deportation, in the light of proposed Amendments to the Migration Act.
The actual bill seems not only hasty and loose, but an over-reaction.
Just who are these measures intended for? Dare the Government even say?
“Australia could ban visa applications from five countries under proposed new laws to thwart a potential repeat of the high court detainee scandal.
“The laws would grant the minister the power to block visa applications from countries that do not accept their citizens being involuntarily returned.
“Up to five countries are reportedly being targeted by the Albanese government – Iraq, Iran, South Sudan, Zimbabwe and Russia.”
The terms of the bill as so broad that they seem capable of causing grief for many of the brightest refugees in the nation.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge via X):
“Just uncovered a massive element to this Bill, there is a loophole in this Bill that will allow this law to be applied to any non-citizen, without restriction, regardless of which visa they are on.”
Why is the Bill so comprehensive if only targeting one bloke (ASF17) due before the High Court in mid-April?
And what is the actual emergency? A few gaps in the system occasionally leave the Department with egg on its face. Despite maintaining those gaps for 9 years in office, the Opposition enjoys celebrating these shortcomings in the media.
Where is the replacement for the failed Fast Track scheme?
There is also the matter of criminalising an authentic fear of repatriation. Five-year sentences and a fine seems excessive.
Rather than treating irregular arrivals kindly after over a decade of living and working here, we are again focusing on a handful of bad apples and disregarding the larger, more productive bunch.
That is, we are being disproportionately punitive.
It is almost phobic. And it shows no faith in the judiciary. And is it warranted? Some studies indicate that overall, refugees are no more likely to break the law than ordinary citizens. They may take less for granted.
A 2019 study found no impact of immigration on crime rates in Australia:
Foreigners are under-represented in the Australian prison population, according to 2010 figures. A 1987 report by the Australian Institute of Criminology noted that studies had consistently found that migrant populations in Australia had lower crime rates than the Australian-born population.
Some ethnic groups seem to attract more attention from the law and others less. This may be down to background or police perception.
Don’t most people break the law due to a lack of support?
Then there is the double jeopardy problem. Are law breakers without visas who serve a sentence actually any more dangerous than an Australian citizen who serves a jail term? We have warehoused those few refugees who break state or national laws in jails and then all over again in detention centres without any form of useful rehabilitation. How smart is that?
Moreover, deportations can and do get pushed through no matter what countries are involved. Australian immigration guards are quite assertive like that.
Should individuals carry the responsibility for breaches in nation-to-nation diplomacy?
It is ironic that even the Liberals think the Bill is too hasty.
This is the same party that a few years ago sought to get immigration (Australia Border Force) troopers garbed in black onto the streets to randomly check peoples’ immigration papers. An LNP Government oversaw years of the sometimes-fatal Manus and Nauru detention regimes offshore.
So … do the LNP inspire jackboot, kneejerk, reactionary laws and then seek extra time to make the rules more horrible?
Or they aim to maintain and enjoy the spectacle of Labor squirming after awkward release decisions by the High Court?
Or is it that the LNP genuinely seek information and due process? Now that would be quaint.
Rather than acknowledge the deeper causes of Australian economic or social challenges, Labor apparently seeks to improve electoral chances by playing up to racial prejudice. Replacing media slants and scapegoats with facts might do them more credit with voters born overseas.
Mirroring the LNP has not gone smoothly. When trying on Dutton’s racist jackboots, Labor seems to slop about uncomfortably and occasionally trip.
So which is Labor’s real game: draconian policy or benign inclusion and compassion? If Labor intermittently apes the LNP just to get across the electoral line, more of the electorate may be tempted to flirt with independents and the LNP.
Wouldn’t it be better to judge individual cases on merit than by country or income or skills? At the moment immigration decisions seem classist and arbitrary. Culture is as much of a threat as war or the law in places hostile to religious or ethnic minorities, LGBTQI+, women from Sharia countries or even those living with disabilities.
Nothing has actually replaced the flawed Fast Track process as yet. Shouldn’t Government be getting on with that?
Yes, some gaming of tourist and student visas overstayer loopholes occurs. (You can’t logically seek a protection visa and then nip back home for a holiday). But, given the clumsiness of assessment processes, how else do people escaping sudden war get here in a hurry? Remember the chaos of Kabul airport? The lack of a working DFAT hotline?
Deciding refugee status strictly by nationality has never been adequate. Anyone from anywhere can face exceptional threats.
The arbitrariness of assessments seems concerning. Departmental staff do not seem trained enough nor equipped to assess real situations on the ground. Nor are they held to account for their decisions.
The latest Migration Act amendments reflects the fact that Pezzullo’s protégées are still running the department. They are actively papering over the mess that their own indefinite detention decisions created. (Most of their ankle monitor rulings did not stick when assessed by a judge). They have poured their poison into the ears of once-compassionate politicians for too long.
A sharp new broom is needed to clear out the departmental debris.
Meanwhile many vulnerable asylum seekers and refugees are stressed and some even seem suicidal. It is far too easy for any citizen to suggest they stay calm, steer a steady course at work and keep making allies in all areas of parliament. Those with traumatic lived experience might reasonably find all that harder in practice.
They long for rights to study, work, hugs with ageing relatives, secure mortgages and plan for a clearer future. After up to 12 long years of feeling stuck, constrained and afraid, it seems a fair ask. That they cope at all is admirable.
What is next? We have 5 weeks to analyse the Bill and make submissions to a senate review. The Coalition’s James Patterson claims he is all for passing it.
This “emergency” has been decades in the making. Surely less kneejerk, more constructive solutions are needed?
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If James Patterson is all in favour of passing it, that should tell you all you need to know about why you should oppose it. Labor will do itself no favours with social justice left-wing warriors who will drift across to the Greens!
Excellent article, Jane. Poses many relevant questions.
The entire business has a history of reactionary knee-jerking, and developed into a divisive xenophobic beat-up of the old racist, white supremacist, religiously partisan devices of the old colonial imperium. Premised on notions of invasion of hordes of terrorists (which of course in itself was a beat-up).
The brutal savagery of the schemes escalated via a political competition between the parliamentary parties.
After years of brutality, sense and popular demand almost saw it disassembled, yet the scare-mongering bs remains just below the surface.
With the rapid global onset of infrastructural wreckage by climate change, the potential for mass migration of refugees is fast approaching. In the face of that, our current recipes are ludicrous and dysfunctional.
It’s way beyond time the entire approach and legal framework was reworked using a mature humane perspective, rather than a carceral mindset, exceptionalism and greed.
Clakka, your conclusions are correct and we can agree that necessary changes are well overdue.
You note the long-standing “fear of the other” as being largely responsible for the repressive regimes imposed over the last 20 odd years – all designed to keep “them” out.
My concern is that, as happened in the past, political and other (MSM) rhetoric designed to inculcate fear in the electorate will always be successful unless and until this carefully chosen tactic is resisted by a sufficient number of voters.
Trouble is, the likelihood of this happening seems to be as remote as ever, largely on account of the electorate’s unwillingness to engage on such issues, or simply a lack of interest.
As Andrew Smith and others have noted in these pages, voter age, educational standard, lack of alternate sources of reliable information, and so on, all work to impair alternative strategies.
Nonetheless I remain ever hopeful that we can do better – even tho’ as you suggest, we will simply have to in order to face what might be coming our way.
Yes JulianP,
The common, lazy and apathetic mindset of abdicating responsibility to the powerful dominion seekers (aka the manic, the demagogues, the despots, the righteous, the peddlers of gods and MPs) goes back to the year dot. It’s probably the oldest industry.
Even through the advent of science, technology and secular education, it’s as if that old virus-like infection keeps morphing requiring a reinvention of antibodies to keep outbreaks at bay. Those beguiled by bling, obeisance and notions of supremacy are getting a shake up, but I suspect their habits of sloth and engorgement will see them cling to their status quo, rather than allow them to eat the necessary crow.
Today’s such communicable diseases travel the globe at lightspeed, one can sense the increased paranoia and angst. Seems we can only hope that lessons are learned and remedies applied at lightspeed, otherwise we’ll be doomed to endless tsunamis of multifarious pandemics.
Clakka, I think this article may ring a bell with you. Though apparently written some time ago, it offers an interesting – though bleak summary of where we’re at.
[ https://johnmenadue.com/fatal-shame-can-australia-seize-the-anchor-of-history/ ]
JulianP, thanks for the ref,
A beautifully crafted work, referring to much of my reading and understandings so formed. It bangs the nail right on the head. But I fear the nail is already so bent that any banging will fail to affect a solid structure out of our already crumbling white ant infested framework.
Oz has rapidly become a tepid blancmange of complacency and denialism, a bling-driven monument to anti-science, self-interest, greed, exploitation, environmental apathy and stupidity. An insidious cycle affecting all, and most cruelly and destructively, new arrivals to Oz, who see it as a norm to be adopted in their struggle to fit in.
And contrary to Sande’s words,
” … in Australia the significant contributors [to education], call them intellectuals, so often come from a rural or religious background, places where there is already ‘a cosmos’, not a scrabbling for locus, rather a sense of place … “
since ‘white’ conquest and settlement, those folk have either been entrenched in, or discombobulated by the imperial traditions of deceit. They, largely have either slipped silently into line, or had to endure horrendous struggles to make a life for themselves amongst institutional usury and lies. And many have coped generationally by turning a blind eye to their past struggles, and trying to hold fast to their earned status quo, whilst it appears to be being eroded from every direction, not least the often ill-informed carnival of social media and populism. A reactionary hunker-down often ensues.
At this point I am reminded of an important and acclaimed Oz author and academic Ghassan Hage, recently dismissed from an assignment by the Max Plank Institute on a biased interpretation of a reasonable public comment he made. Academia is by no means immune from historical and global biases and inculcated prejudice. And it would be easy to imagine that Oz would not even pick up his recent tome, The Racial Politics of Australian Multiculturalism.