Over the last two years, there has been a winding back of rights for asylum seekers in Australia by the Labor Government. This has been driven partly by the increased numbers of asylum seekers arriving by boat and partly by the chanting of the Opposition. The announcement that all future arrivals by boat will be sent to PNG for assessment and, if successful, resettled in PNG, shows how far policy has gone from principle to politics.
Initially it was proposed to send asylum seekers to Malaysia and accept refugees from Malaysia in return, as a way of creating a disincentive for people to get on boats. Somehow trading the bad refugees for the good refugees was politically expedient. This deal came asunder when the High Court ruled that the Government had failed to consider the human rights protections in the Migration Act before deciding to send people to Malaysia. This section had been inserted in 2001 by the former Howard Government.
The solution was to repeal the section and in its place allow the Minister to have unfettered and unreviewable discretion, so that pesky human rights obligations could be sidelined.
Other changes followed the release of the expert panel report in August 2012 and the creation of the 'no advantage' myth. Nauru and Manus Island were again to be used to warehouse refugees and also to assess their cases. People were told they would wait until the same time as those waiting elsewhere for UNHCR resettlement places. Still no one has been able to identify how long this supposed period is, and UNHCR's denial that such a period of time can be even used has been ignored.
Some say that those arriving by boat take the places of the more deserving refugees in camps. This view is flawed for several reasons. Firstly there is no real way of comparing who is or is not more deserving of a place. In reality, places are offered to those who are idenfiied as suitable for resettlement. Every resettled refugee means less places for those remaining. There are over 45 million refugees and displaced people in the world, a growing, not diminishing, number — there will always be more refugees needing protection.
In 2012, Australia paid Nauru to take the asylum seekers; Australia pays the staff to manage the centres, trains the decision makers and seconds DIAC staff