It is easy for refugee advocates to be caught in despair. They know what Australia does to asylum seekers and are outraged by it. When asked why Australian policy should change, they describe what lies before their eyes. But few of their listeners see the indecency, feel the outrage, see the need for change. Asked for more evidence, more convincing arguments, they are tempted to use the words of the parable, ‘if they don’t see what is in front of them, they would not be convinced even if someone were to rise from the dead’.
Robert Manne’s Quarterly Essay reflects the tension between the need to record what asylum seekers suffer at the hands of Australian refugee policy and the need to urge changes that, in all decency, should not need to be pressed. He writes with a barely controlled passion about the treatment of asylum seekers, while arguing that those currently in Australia should be granted permanent residence. With some heroism he restricts his arguments to the reception of asylum seekers, leaving aside the morality of the devices by which Australia now excludes anyone arriving by boat from claiming protection here. His arguments are persuasive, although like any arguments for common decency, they are unlikely to persuade those who call loudest for argument.
Manne uses well the more substantial accounts of Mares, Brennan and Wilkinson to tell the story of recent changes to Australian immigration policy and the pressures that led to them. The arrival of the Tampa was the catalyst for brutal measures to turn away the large numbers of refugees arriving from Afghanistan, Iraq and Iran. Manne shows that detention in remote places, harsh living conditions, and limitations on the protection awarded to refugees, have been conceived as a deterrent. He also acknowledges that the interdiction of vessels by sea, the excision of Australian territory from the immigration zone, and the transportation of asylum seekers to Nauru have made it impossible for refugees arriving by boat to engage Australian obligations to protect refugees.
Of particular interest in Manne’s narrative is his account of the deceitful and intimidatory devices by which Immigration Department officials have tried to send back to dangerous situations both asylum seekers and refugees on temporary protection visas. The indecency of these dealings supports his argument that decency requires that they be allowed to remain in Australia. It also shows how great the obstacles are to