The circumstances in which the Sri Lankan asylum seekers have found themselves in an Australian ship off the coast of Indonesia are dramatic. And the arguments about the legality of the steps by which they have found themselves there are complex.
But this incident is part of a clear policy to prevent asylum seekers from arriving by boat in Australian waters, and to transfer responsibility for housing them, adjudicating their claims and ensuring protection for those found to be refugees, from Australia to Indonesia, in concert with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Given the stridency of the arguments about the issue, it may be helpful to review the moral claims that asylum seekers in boats make on Australia, and the morality of attempting to prevent them from making those claims by transferring responsibility for them to Indonesia.
The core of the argument that we have moral obligations to asylum seekers lies in the responsibility we all have to one another by virtue of our shared humanity. When people come to us in need, they make a claim on us. Where their lives and safety are at risk, we are responsible for helping them insofar as is reasonable.
The difficult moral questions arise in assessing honestly what is reasonable. The obligation we have to try to save the life of a child who has fallen into a river, for example, will be affected by the fact that we cannot swim.
The responsibility to help those in need of protection also falls on us as a society and nation. It is acknowledged in our incorporation of the United Nations Convention on the Status of Refugees and Protocol into our domestic legislation. The UN also provides a framework for sharing the burdens of protecting asylum seekers. Australia, as a wealthy nation with considerable resources, helps by processing and accepting off-shore some refugees from nations where they face danger on return. These have recently included Myanmar, Sudan and Afghanistan.
The Convention also provides ethical ways of responding to people who make claims for protection on-shore. It allows for processes to discern those with strong claims for protection from those whose claims are weak.
Not all people in urgent need are covered by the grounds set out in the Convention, a fact that is recognised in forthcoming Australian legislation on complementary protection. But the Convention and the prospective legislation recognise that morally the reception of asylum seekers