Robust public debate over the treatment of asylum seekers who arrive unauthorised by boat is important, for the stakes are high. If the arrivals are forced home, their future prospects, freedom and very lives may be at risk. At the very least, they or their families will have wasted a lot of money, and perhaps be deeply in debt.
The stakes are less dramatic for Australians, but they are not inconsequential. Individuals and state authorities are torn by conflicting values and sentiments, ranging from compassion for the arrivals, to anger and frustration over the disruption they cause orderly and targeted migration and humanitarian programs, to anxiety over the possibility of a trickle becoming a flood.
In this environment, moral passion — a desire to do the right and the good — is common, especially among those who cast themselves as refugee advocates and proponents of value based policy, or at least policy based on respect for human dignity and human rights.
But moral passion should not be confused with moral superiority. The ethics and politics of refugee policy are complex, and the 'caring for us, caring for them' conundrum that underlies it is difficult to juggle. Any claim to occupy the moral high ground in this area of public policy is at best brave and at worst self-serving.
To illustrate we need only consider the Malaysian solution, under which unauthorised boat arrivals will be sent to Malaysia in exchange for UNHCR-recognised refugees.
The Government sees the initiative as a way to discourage people entering Australia using risky, uncontrolled and self-selective processes. Critics see it as an uncaring, politically motivated response to people whose sufferings are real, and who we have a legal and ethical obligation to assist because of their proximity.
Obligations based on proximity may seem consistent with the principle of the Good Samaritan, which suggests we should help anyone who falls within our immediate reach. They are at the heart of the non-refoulement clause in the Refugees Convention, which obliges us not to return any arriving person to a place where they have a well-founded fear of persecution for a Convention reason.
However, a refugee and humanitarian policy based on proximity has critical flaws, including from an ethical point of view.
Firstly, physical distance is no longer the barrier it once was to individuals and governments learning about and reaching out to help refugees and asylum seekers wherever they may be in the world. Convenience,