mandatory detention
15 Aug 2008
No Hard Feelings?
Protests at Villawood detention centre
We locked up and brutalised innocent people for years - then we stopped. That's not really good enough, writes Ezequiel Trumper
In the wake of the recent changes to our policy on refugee detention, I find myself embarrassed and ashamed. What has happened to this great and decent country? Am I the only one who thinks this way? I am not talking about what happened then but about what is happening now.I have felt like this since the day on which the Rudd Government announced the abolition of the mandatory detention regime for asylum-seekers two weeks ago. It was obviously not the decision but the reaction, or to put it plainly: the lack of any reaction. No reaction by the public or the mainstream media, little or muted reaction by opinion makers and commentators.
Their silence was deafening. On the day after the dramatic announcement, The Daily Telegraph chose to run a rugby league story. The Sydney Morning Herald relegated it to page 4. The media coverage was limited to the ABC, SBS, and other relatively low-rating outlets. The public at large could not have appeared to care less. There were no calls for any inquiries into the damage suffered by those affected, no moral censure of the perpetrators of these horrendous human rights violations. Yet this is exactly what we were abolishing - or shall we call the incarceration of children just a "bad policy"?
The Rudd Government decision was not the abolition of a levy, or of some obscure road tax. What Chris Evans did on the day was a public acknowledgement that the previous Australian government had committed serious human rights violations which, in most countries, would have warranted, as a minimum, a major inquiry, with serious consequences for the perpetrators. After all, is there any other developed country in the 21st Century which institutionalised and enshrined in black-letter law the incarceration of children? Isn't this what Howard and their ilk - the infamous Ruddock, Vanstone, and Andrews - have actually done?
Unquestionably yes.
So what happened on the day this shameful chapter in our nation's history was closed by the new Federal Government? Well, very little.
The public cared little. Mainstream media looked the other way. The Opposition made no comment on the demise of their unspeakable policy and its mandatory incarceration of innocent human beings indefinitely, including - I repeat - children.
So there I was on that day, monitoring every mainstream news report on radio and TV - and for the two days following. I found a bit on the ABC and SBS, and very little else. I am not a conspiracy theorist, or a member of any fringe organisation. I am a centrist, free market supporter, conservative lawyer, climate change sceptic. I am as normal and decent as the next bloke. I like my football, and a good yarn. How could I then feel what I was feeling while so many of my compatriots could do and say absolutely nothing? This was a major moment in Australian history after all. So what was the reason?
Are people ashamed that all this happened on their watch? Is the mainstream media embarrassed because in virtual complicity with the perpetrators they said and published so little about one of Australia's most serious errors? Or is it that we as a society just don't care about what we did. Because history will look at the facts and will attest to one thing: in an era of unprecedented economic prosperity the vast majority of Australians solemnly nodded or just tuned out as our very popular prime minister persuaded us that incarcerating children was just, and necessary for the sake of national security. This same majority treated the tiny minority who cared about the horrors taking place with derision, dismissing the plight of refugees as just "a Doctor's wife issue".
I don't buy the argument that the Keating government started off with this policy and for that reason both political parties are equally responsible. That falsification of history ignores the extent to which the Howard administration exploited the race issue and perfected the cruelty of their inhumane detention policy, both within our borders and beyond, through the calculated perversity of the so-called Pacific Solution.
The Rudd Government does not have a clear economic agenda, struggles on bread and butter issues, has dangerously placed too much political capital on climate change in times of economic uncertainty, does not have a strong cabinet line-up in key positions, and now it even appears it will have to fight much harder than most predicted to secure a second term. However, even if everything else turns to custard, it will already go down in history as the government that rectified one of the most horrific institutionalised human rights violations that has occurred in our short history.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, Immigration Minister Chris Evans, and Attorney General Robert McClelland have guaranteed their entries in the history books for the best of reasons.
For the victims, now growing up in our wonderfully prosperous country, the battle for justice has not even begun. For Australian society as a whole, however, the shame and the profound introspection that should go with it remain to be dealt with.
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It took us decades to apologise to the Aboriginal people, we still can’t acknowledge some of the things we have done in war, our government’s complicity by not pursuing Indonesia over the Bilbao killings are only now being discussed and we left Timor for dead for years.
On that scale I would expect to hear more about this issue sometime around 2030, when all the decision makers are safely out of public office and the main players are dead.
It seems the consensus is that the loss of parliamentry seats and face is punishment enough. I for one would love to see an enquiry and charges laid. Remember Reith and the phones, Wooldrige and the imaging machines, Howard, Downer, Ruddock and children overboard. The only reason Labour don’t go ahead with an enquiry into these matters is because that would set a precedent they probably cannot afford at the end of their tenure.
2030 is too late for me - I will probably have lost my marbles or be dead by then. I want recognition and contrition for spirits broken now but there is little chance of that. We need a warts and all Royal Commission.
At a fundamental level Australians don’t care about human rights maybe because they do not even really understand what these are. "I’m alright mate so bugger the rest".
That even our Courts could support the government in depriving a human being of their liberty for their whole lives without a charge or facing a court demonstrates where we stand on rights. How easy to ignore the rights of "others" and "non-citizens"!!
Mandatory Detention is not dead- It lives on in the legislation- ready for the next boat. Minister Evans may have advised the department to use detention as a last resort but where is the law to make this happen.
Finally thankyou- I am relieved that others are also underwhelmed by the lack of concern at this change of direction. Maybe it demonstrates that it would be soo easy to legislate an end to mandatory detention- the electorate simply doesn’t care.
I’m not so sure it’s a matter of Australians not caring, pamelac, there is still a strong and tacit racist streak in most white australians who are quite happy if ‘different’ people are kept excluded - Aboriginal people, refugees, whoever is ‘Other’: if they can’t be assimilated (i.e. they are so much ‘like us’ that we wouldn’t notice any small differences) then they should be excluded, pushed out into remote camps, a.k.a. Indigenous ‘communities’ and refugee ‘centres’ (Greer got that much right, at least). Exclusion is the rule. If they can be kept away from Australia in the first place, all the better: stick them on Christmas Island or Nauru and forget about them. Anyway, they don’t mind the heat like white people do, they can stand pain, they’re with their own kind, and anyway they should be thankful because even Christmas Island must be better than where they came from.
Seriously, I don’t think Australians have learnt a bloody thing since the War.
Joe
Lo and behold, our dear friend and colleague Irfan Yusuf reviewed Matrtha Nussbaum’s latest masterpiece in The Australian yesterday, on this very topic. As he comments:
‘A leading theme of The Clash Within is Nussbaum’s direct assault on Samuel Huntington’s (now almost cliched) clash of civilisations thesis, so often used by simplistic sectarian voices to support claims about an inevitable battle between monolithic Islam and the monolithic West (or, as Nussbaum puts it, to allege "the world is currently polarised between a Muslim monolith, bent on violence, and the democratic cultures of Europe and North America").
‘Nussbaum’s clash isn’t between supposedly monolithic civilisations but
"instead a clash within virtually all modern nations: between people who are prepared to live with others who are different on terms of equal respect, and those who seek the protection of homogeneity, achieved through the domination of a single religious and ethnic tradition".
‘It’s a powerful argument, made stronger by the fact that Nussbaum’s case study focuses on a nation that happens to be the world’s largest democracy and an emerging economic, political and military power [i.e. India].’
Well written, Irfan ! And precisely on a key principle of modern societies, open societies, civil societies - to include, and extend full rights to, all people who wish to contribute to a society - or to exclude, to differentiate, to justify segregation and separation.
Contrast this with the usual racist, and culturalist, approaches: put up the barricades, talk about ‘community’, devise rules about who is in and who is to be kept out, suspect all those who are different in the wrong sort of way. What is this but tribalism in a supposedly modern world ? It’s no accident that the subject of Nussbaum’s book, the semi-fascist BJP in India, developed theories of racial purity - and developed them precisely by defining who were NOT, and could NEVER BE, Indian, part of the great Hindu resurgence and re-conquest of the world. Yes, folks, theories of racial superiority float around even in the twenty-first century.
Joe
For an inclusive, democratic and open society for all Australians !
When Kevin Rudd was elected, he was described by many observers outside Australia as a scallywag, a bit of a naughty boy who was a bit clueless. Well, he and those working alonside/under him, his supporters and fellow contributors have ensured that his administration has got off to an absolute flyer.
He won’t get everything right, but to quote Mr. Trumper:
"..even if everything else turns to custard, it will already go down in history as the government that rectified one of the most horrific institutionalised human rights violations that has occurred in our short history."
A huge round of applause, therefore, to that man and his posse! It may have been low on the reporting priority-list (even more so outside Australia, let me tell you; this article was the first time I came across it), but it’s surely a laudable gesture.
I don’t think that Australians don’t care, but I do think (and this isn’t meant flippantly) that they should get out more..out of Australia, that is..
And, don’t forget about India’s 60 million untouchables, who live lifelong under their own form of Mandatory Detention, otherwise known as the caste system.. You can also add the Roma, the Tibetans, the Karen, those in Darfur, etc, etc..