The recent transfer of pregnant women from the Papua New Guinea detention centre to Australia was a good decision by the Gillard Government. The choice to follow medical advice not to transfer children under the age of seven to the facility is also good policy. But who could credit a Labor Government that believes detaining women and children (of any age) in remote locations, without justifiable reason, is a good idea in the first place?
The detention of any person in Nauru or PNG is bad policy. Care must be taken not to obscure the needs of vulnerable men when focusing on women and children. But the incarceration of women and children in particular sits uncomfortably with many Australians. The Government would be wise to suspend future transfers.
The capacity of the offshore asylum seeker camps is already surpassed by large numbers of ongoing arrivals, which render meaningless the 'deterrent' excuse. If the Government continues to make an example of women and children, the chorus of dissent will continue to grow. When Labor returned to power in 2007 it was on a promise to end the cruelties of the previous Coalition government, not to embrace or entrench them.
While Labor regularly finds itself wedged on asylum policy, the Coalition is gifted with an easier ride and allowed to indulge in higher levels of hypocrisy. Detaining asylum seekers in Nauru and PNG is Coalition policy — they invented it, they claimed it, Tony Abbott advocated for its return. But as the policy fails to produce desired outcomes, shadow immigration spokesperson Scott Morrison (pictured) is shifting blame to the Government.
Ray Hadley and other commentators supportive of the Coalition never call Morrison out on his 'inconsistencies'. Hadley, like Abbott, deliberately refers to asylum seekers as 'illegal' as he rails relentlessly against Gillard, and Morrison is one of his favourite guests. The rest of the media should stop letting Morrison off the hook.
When news broke of the transfers of pregnant women from Manus, Morrison quickly linked the move with the Government's decision not to transfer young children to Manus (based on medical advice covering a range of issues, including immunisations).
This was, he cried, 'another example of how the Government doesn't think these issues through' — meaning: women in Manus will get pregnant and give birth to children under the age of seven. But evidence of past Coalition practice, under its hastily cobbled together Pacific Solution policy, gives