The most telling comment on the passing of the government’s immigration detention bills came from a Coalition politician, who boasted that the government had implemented Coalition policy. For some of us, it recalled Luke’s mordant remark that after Jesus had been humiliated under both men, ‘Pilate and Herod became friends that day.’ The Gospel writers had learned to see political actions and alliances through the lens of the human qualities of both their victims and the officials themselves.
I shall leave it to others better equipped to analyse the Federal Government’s reasons for these laws and their consequences — intended, permitted, and likely. Here, I will focus on the human reality of the laws as experienced by those affected, and on the broader understanding of law implied by the government’s actions and the High Court decisions to which they are a response.
In human terms, the test of all laws lies in the relationships they enforce, create, and encourage between individuals, society, and its agents — bureaucrats, police, institutions, and their employees. If these relationships embody respect for self, for others, and for the community, the laws are beneficial. If not, they fail. Laws should not be judged solely by a supposed need but also by the effects of their implementation on those at whom they are directed, on those who enforce them, and on the society that endorses them. Laws are fundamentally about relationships.
The recent legislation focuses on removing from Australia people who are not legal citizens. This includes individuals and families who have sought protection in Australia. Some of these individuals have yet to have their claims and appeals processed, while others are appealing initial refusals. Many in the latter group already suffer from physical and mental illness, exacerbated by the lack of support for their basic living needs. The most publicised targets are those found guilty of criminal behaviour. Many of these individuals have lived in Australia for a long time, served their jail sentences, and are now detained again under this legislation.
Now, imagine being detained indefinitely in Australia, afraid to return to a country where you have genuine reasons to fear for your life, separated from your family, who are left without the little support you can provide. Under the new laws, you are forced to request your removal from Australia or face the prospect of being ‘sold’ to a country willing to take you. What would the effect of this be on your mental and physical health, your trust in the decency of Australia, its legal processes, and its claims to democracy?
Consider, too, the effect on those tasked with administering such laws. Imagine informing someone that they are being sent to a country with no guarantee of safety or physically escorting them onto a plane. Could you do so without losing respect for others and any sense of moral integrity? Would you not risk becoming an unfeeling instrument in the service of injustice? Laws devoid of respect corrupt humanity — not only for those who enforce them but also for those who devise them. This has been evident in Australia’s immigration policies, as Behrouz Boochani powerfully demonstrated in his reflections on Manus Island, which he has drawn upon in his commentary on the new laws.
The underlying assumption of this legislation is that laws are an expression of power and will, and that governments can act as they please in making laws without considering their effects on those subject to them. The only ethical framework deemed relevant is public opinion, expressed electorally and manipulable through political messaging. The higher ethical claims once vested in shared philosophies or religious beliefs — insisting on the dignity of every human being — are now seen as irrelevant to political decisions. Nor are appeals to universal human experience considered valid.
The cry, ‘But I am a human being,’ made by those systematically disrespected by governments — whether in a Burmese jail, on Manus Island, or facing removal from Australia — is dismissed as mere emotion. The removal of a human being from their home, family, community, and host nation is treated as no different from the dispatching of a parcel. Borrowing Anne Frank’s analogy, the removal both of parcels and people is judged only by its efficiency in getting them to their destination, not by the means taken of getting them there.
'The underlying assumption of this legislation is that laws are an expression of power and will, and that governments can act as they please in making laws without considering their effects on those subject to them. The only ethical framework deemed relevant is public opinion, expressed electorally and manipulable through political messaging.'
The gratuitous brutality of this legislation is significant. It reveals resentment at the High Court’s decisions precisely because of their implicit ethical basis. It does not seek to match the Court’s hand, but to cut it off. The High Court’s decision came close to recognising an assumption implicit in the Constitution: to recognise the human dignity of each human being. Laws cannot treat them as parcels. Whether this interpretation is correct will certainly be tested in the Court’s response to the many appeals that will made by persons against decisions based on these laws.
Andrew Hamilton is consulting editor of Eureka Street, and writer at Jesuit Social Services.
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