Photo: Former foreign minister, Alexander Downer has ignored some important facts in his comments on asylum seeker policy. (News Online Brisbane)
It is remarkable how rarely in the Australian debate about boat people the basic facts rate a mention. Even former foreign minister Alexander Downer seems to forget, writes Mike Steketee.
Alexander Downer shared an anecdote with us this week. He recently asked a very senior official from Singapore why people smugglers didn't try to send people from nearby Indonesian islands to "rich and happy Singapore".
"His answer was simple," he wrote in The Australian (paywall).
"'If they come to Singapore we just send them straight back to Indonesia'."
Downer didn't get around to mentioning a few inconvenient facts. Singapore does not have a refugee program; Australia does. Singapore has not signed the United Nations refugee convention; Australia has.
A few days earlier, Downer had delivered a stern lecture to Indonesian foreign minister Marty Natalegawa for having the temerity to suggest that, if the Abbott government acted unilaterally to send asylum seeker boats back to Indonesia and paid Indonesians to spy on people smugglers, it would risk the close cooperation and trust between the two countries.
"Let me make this point for Mr Natalegawa's benefit," said Downer on ABC television's The Drum.
"Indonesian boats, Indonesian-flagged boats with Indonesian crews are breaking our laws, bringing people into our territorial waters. This is a breach of our sovereignty and the Indonesians need to understand that, instead of a lot of pious rhetoric."
Downer's arrogance was exceeded only by the ignorance of his comments. The ignorance was feigned because, as a former foreign minister, Downer of all people knew that what he was saying was plain wrong. But as a former politician Downer also knew that his comments, offensive as they were to Indonesia, reflected Australian public sentiment.
To return to an earlier theme, like Singapore, Indonesia is not a member of the refugee convention; Australia is. Indonesia has not taken on any formal obligations to refugees and they have no legal status there. They have no rights to work, education or medical treatment and they are liable to arrest and detention.
They go to Indonesia for one reason alone: in the hope of making it to Australia where, if they are genuine refugees, they do have rights, at least in theory. They are only Indonesia's problem because Australia once willingly decided to make them our problem.
It is remarkable how rarely in the Australian debate about boat people these basic facts rate a mention. It is not as though we are conscripts to the refugee convention. We were one of the first countries to ratify it in 1954. Any time we want to withdraw from it we can, provided we give 12 months' notice.
In the meantime, the convention's provisions apply to us and they have been enshrined in Australian law. They oblige us to offer protection to refugees who have left their country and arrive here. They leave it up to us to establish whether they meet the definition of refugee - that is, whether they have a well-founded fear of persecution on the grounds of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.
The convention does not say refugees cannot come by boat and it does not require them to carry passports or identity documents. But it does say that refugees cannot be penalised for the way they come here and they cannot be returned to the country where they suffered persecution.
It says nothing about refugee camps overseas: it deals solely with people who flee their country of origin and land in a member country or come under its jurisdiction.
Sure, there are arguments about the continued relevance of an agreement drawn up in response to the refusal of countries to accept Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi persecution. Yes, there are problems in the way the convention operates in practice.
People come by boat because it is impossible to get to Australia by plane without a visa and it is difficult to get a visa if they come from countries with high asylum claims. Asylum seekers drown on the high seas at tragically regular intervals.
If they make it to Christmas Island, it can be difficult to establish if they really were under threat in the country they left and there is an understandable tendency to give them the benefit of the doubt rather than risk sending them back to danger. Returning people whose refugee claims have been rejected has often proved difficult.
But the Indonesians are right. The only real solution is through cooperation between Indonesia, Australia and other countries in the region. People will stop getting on boats only if they become less desperate to do so and that will happen only if they have a degree of security in Indonesia, access to education and health services and the reasonable hope that their asylum claims will be processed (which in Indonesia means by the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) and that countries like Australia will then accept them.
Downer acknowledged this very point this week when he proposed an agreement under which Australia would take one UNHCR-assessed refugee from Indonesia in return for every boat person Australia flew back to Indonesia - not that this should be the sole basis of our refugee program.
Deterrence through turning back boats and other draconian measures is ultimately just a way of offloading the problem on to other countries. It leaves refugees either to languish in Indonesia or Malaysia or not to leave their country of origin at all.
If the latter seems like the ideal solution, then ask an ethnic Hazara whose life is threatened by the Taliban in Afghanistan or Pakistan if he or she agrees. By the way, many refugees, including Hazara, cannot make it to refugee camps, let alone have much hope of ever being processed as a refugee if they do.
The alternative is to remove the real sugar on the table, to use a Tony Abbot phrase - our membership of the refugee convention. We would be the first of the 145 member countries country to withdraw and we would be turning our back on genuine refugees who have had no alternative but to flee their country, including as a result of wars in which we have participated in Iraq and Afghanistan.
It has just one small argument going for it: it would end the hypocrisy of Australia pretending to be a splendid international citizen through membership of the refugee convention while turning ourselves inside out to avoid its obligations.
Mike Steketee is a freelance journalist. He was formerly a columnist and national affairs editor for The Australian. View his full profile here.
Australia has an obligation to refugees - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
