The Manus Island deal has been thrown into disarray, with the PNG Supreme Court declaring the detention centre on the island to be unconstitutional.
The decision was celebrated among refugee advocates who have consistently maintained that the arrangement was at best unlawful and at worst, torture.
In response, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has instructed Australians not to get 'misty-eyed' about our asylum seeker policy. There would be no changes, he said, to our firm commitment to protect our borders thereby saving thousands of lives that would otherwise be lost at sea.
The PM's choice of words reflects something that has troubled me for some time. Frequently, broad community discourse among those who object to Australia's treatment of asylum seekers is an appeal to politicians' compassion. This language indicates an emotional, values-based response to the admittedly complex and global issue of asylum seekers, albeit an entirely rational one.
Further, it calls on politicians' personal value systems rather than using language more familiar to policy-makers. (I distinguish here calls for greater compassion among the voting public, which is an important ingredient in galvanising public support for asylum seekers.)
I wonder if the language of compassion makes it easier for parliamentarians to dismiss opposition to asylum seekers, in the way the PM did in his statement. 'Misty-eyed' invokes an emotional or sentimental state of being. The PM is saying that 'emotional' arguments will be ignored in favour of hard-nosed, rational decision-making.
In his statement, the PM invoked the historical 'logic' of 'binary opposites' pursuant to which the world can be definitively explained in terms of dualities: strong and weak; good and bad; intellect and emotion. In each pairing, one word signifies a positive attribute, and the other a negative.
The historical privilege of so-called positive attributes is no longer so certain. The privilege traditionally attached to all that is 'masculine' and 'rational' has ceded ground to the equally valuable 'feminine' and 'compassionate'. The strategy of binary opposites still holds sway however, as indicated by the PM's comment.
"Although limited, the law does provide a framework for compassionate responses to human dignity."
Because we continue to think in binary opposites, it still has currency and in this context I have often wondered at the likely success of entreaties to compassion for asylum seekers. This is not because I do not personally feel compassion for these people. And it is not because I do not believe that it is morally correct to show compassion, including