Photo: Iranian asylum seeker Reza Berati died in a riot on Manus Island on February 17. (Supplied)
Australia's recent asylum seeker policies have been more about results than morality. But their unintended consequences can no longer be ignored after the events on Manus Island, writes Mungo MacCallum.
So now the Chinese have joined the international chorus of condemnation of Australia's policy on asylum seekers.
It would be easy to brush this aside with talk of pots and kettles, to point to Beijing's ruthless repatriation of desperate escapees from North Korea. But while doing so is entirely legitimate, it ducks the real issue: the criticisms undoubtedly have substance.
It is no longer seriously denied that the policies of successive governments have breached Australia's obligations under the United Nations Convention on Refugees, or that human rights of the asylum seekers in detention, especially in the offshore gulags of Nauru and Manus Island, are being abused. And, as the tragic events of the last week have made abundantly clear, the debate is no longer just about legality or even politics; it has become a question of basic morality.
In a sense it always has been; since Paul Keating first implemented the policy of mandatory detention, opponents of the increasingly draconian measures used to deter the boat people have argued that they are cruel and inhumane. But by and large the objections have been dismissed as impractical idealism and the protesters derided as do-gooders and bleeding hearts.
Morality seldom intrudes on realpolitik. When it comes to dealing with the more immediate concerns of the voters, toughness is seen as a positive virtue, and mercy and compassion as weakness to be avoided at all costs.
The current supreme commander of our borders, Scott Morrison, insists that his religious faith has taught him the value of kindness, justice and righteousness, but he adds immediately: "The Bible is not a policy handbook." The sermon on the mount may be all very uplifting in its place, but government has to deal with harsh reality.
One of the few politicians who does accord morality a wider role in everyday life is Kevin Rudd, and he designed the Papua New Guinea solution in the full knowledge of the ethical dilemma it involved. As he tells it, the imperative was to end the drownings at sea, and to achieve this end, any means could be justified.
If asylum seekers were so desperate that they were prepared to risk the leaky boats in the hope of salvation, then that hope had to be removed: it had to be made clear that the end of their voyage, if they achieved it, would be as bad as, if not worse than, the beginning. Manus would be a hell on earth; even the camps of Indonesia would be preferable.
And of course Tony Abbott has embraced the principle with enthusiasm, although in public his reasoning has been rather less complex than Rudd's: Abbott's slogan has always been Stop the Boats, not End the Drownings. And the public, uninterested in splitting moral hairs, has generally been happy to endorse any measures taken by either side, as long as they work.
At least it has up till now. But the death of one man and the injuries to scores of others in the melee of last week last week has meant that the unintended consequences of the policies can no longer be ignored. If the Manus Island solution ever was sustainable, it is not so any longer. The antipathy between the locals and the inmates has passed the point of no return.
The asylum seekers, having been informed that they have no chance of asylum in Australia and therefore nothing left to lose, will continue to rebel and the islanders, resentful of the incursion of those who insult them personally and denigrate their culture, will be a continuous hostile presence, their anger enhanced by the more generous payment and treatment of outsiders employed by the government, even - or perhaps especially - if many of them are their fellow countrymen from other wantok clans.
There have been reports of clashes between local employees and the PNG police as a result, with the detainees caught in the middle. Papua New Guinea has always been a volatile mix, impossible to control from a central government; the extra elements added on Manus Island have put it into meltdown.
The outsourcing has not absolved the Australian government of ultimate responsibility for the break down. Canberra, through the responsible minister Scott Morrison, still has a legal and moral duty to care for those in its charge, and if he cannot fulfil that duty under the present policy, he will have to adapt the policy until he can. Abbott can bluster all he likes about not succumbing to pressure and moral blackmail but we are no longer talking theoretical abstracts and hypothetical outcomes, but actual events. One man is dead, and as things stand, more deaths, injuries and general mayhem are inevitable.
Confronted with another death recently, an Indian student who hung himself in a detention centre as he faced deportation for overstaying a visa, Morrison shrugged it off: asked by the ABC's Barrie Cassidy if anything could have been done to prevent the suicide, he quipped: "Could he have avoided overstaying his visa?" Very droll, minister, but the situation has gone a little beyond that point.
If Morrison does not recognise it, there are signs that some of the military, who have been conscripted to his command, are starting to feel a little uncomfortable. The Defence Forces chief General David Hurley, the head of the Navy Admiral Ray Griggs and of course Morrison's personal C-in-C, Lieutenant General Angus Campbell, have all been forced to make personal appearances in the last couple of weeks to defend the actions of those under their command.
And they have not looked happy. Perhaps they even thought of another interrogation, a more formal one; one in which the response "I was only obeying orders" was dismissed as totally inadequate. When the full history of these troubled times is written, its verdict may be a harsh one.
Mungo Wentworth MacCallum is a political journalist and commentator. View his full profile here.
The morality of Manus can no longer be avoided - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
