Watching Immigration Minister Chris Bowen on ABC1's Lateline late last week, I was saddened to note that the Government's policy of sending asylum seekers to Malaysia is less concerned with protecting the asylum seekers' human rights and dignity than with breaking 'the business model of the people smugglers'.
Asked by host Tony Jones if this involved 'making an example' of 800 unaccompanied minors by sending them to Malaysia, Bowen said it's 'not a matter of making examples' but of 'ensuring you have a robust system in place to break the model. And of course we will treat people with dignity and ... with regard to their circumstances.'
'I do not want to send the message that it's okay to get on a boat if you fit a particular category,' he added, with reference to unaccompanied minors. 'The decision making is not based on principles of human rights and dignity, but on 'solving the boat people problem'.'
The focus on the situation of unaccompanied minors is legitimate. They present the Immigration Minister with a number of legal and ethical dilemmas. As Minister, he is legally their guardian and should be acting in their best interests.
Australia is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child as well as the Refugee Convention. This creates legal obligations, to provide security for children, act in their best interests, and provide for family unity or family reunification. So is sending them to Malaysia, not a signatory to the Refugee Convention, in their 'best interests'?
The political issue is that if minors are exempted from the Malaysian deal, it creates an incentive for people smugglers to fill up their boats with children, who will legitimately want to be later reunited with their parents and family. There was a similar consequence when the temporary protection visa was introduced in 1999, and men found themselves separated from their families for years. By 2001, many of the passengers on the boats were women and children.
This is a genuine fear. It is not as if the smugglers worry about these international obligations. However, to focus on people smugglers misses the point of the issue.
I recall an incident in Woomera detention centre in 2001. It was late at night, and we had been working for several days preparing cases. Many of the detainees were women who had children with them. The fathers and husbands had arrived previously and had been granted TPVs, but