Migration Amendments
I spoke today on the government’s amendments to the Migration Act.
Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing)
22 September 2011On 18 October 2001 an Indonesian fishing boat left the port of Bandar Lampung. There were 421 people on board, including at least 70 children. The boat was just 20 metres long and four metres wide, so people were tightly packed on board. The next day, about 70 kilometres south of Indonesia, the boat encountered heavy seas, took on water, listed violently to the side, capsized and sank within an hour. There were life jackets on board but none of them worked.
As a Senate committee, chaired by the late, great, Senator Peter Cook concluded, there were at least 70 children aboard when SIEV X sank. Only three survived. Two hundred adults also lost their lives. As the International Organisation for Migration pointed out, the tragedy was due to ‘the way the people smugglers pack these boats’.
Nine years later, on 15 December 2010, a boat carrying around 90 asylum seekers sank off the coast of Christmas Island. Thirty bodies were recovered, including those of four juveniles and four infants. Up to 20 others are missing, presumed dead. The report of the Joint Select Committee on the Christmas Island Tragedy quoted Raymond Murray, the first person to arrive at the scene. He told the committee:
‘Standing right out on the edge of the rocks, there were times when that the boat was closer than you are to me now. I will never forget seeing a woman holding up a baby, obviously wanting me to take it, and not being able to do anything. It was just a feeling of absolute hopelessness. It was like it was happening in slow motion. A wave would pick the boat up and almost hit the rocks and then go back again, and then finally it was like it exploded.’
Over the past decade or so there have been 414 confirmed drownings by asylum seekers at sea. For example, apart from those I have mentioned, five were drowned on 16 April 2009, 12 on 1 November 2009 and 12 on 15 June 2010.
Apart from this, there have been over 500 more unconfirmed deaths by asylum seekers at sea. There were reports of a vessel carrying 200 people that disappeared in March 2000. There were reports of another vessel carrying 100 people, that disappeared—presumably with the loss of everyone on board—in October 2009. We will never know how many asylum seekers have died at sea in attempting to reach Australia, but we do know that those people certainly number in their hundreds and perhaps in their thousands.
Quite often the asylum seeker debate focuses on people who arrive by boat, but that is only a portion of the refugees we take. We also take refugees from offshore processing, people who in many cases have spent years in refugee camps. The more onshore arrivals we take the fewer offshore arrivals we take.
To provide a more complete picture, I want to say something about the refugees that are resettled from these offshore camps. The Department of Immigration and Citizenship has a vast network of offices, which work in cooperation with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to process refugees. Our offices include those in Amman, Beijing, Cairo, Moscow and Warsaw. Once recognised as a refugee by the UNHCR a person is referred to the Department of Immigration and Citizenship for resettlement.
Australia is unusual in this. We are one of only about 20 nations worldwide that participate formally in the UNHCR’s resettlement program and accept quotas of refugees on an annual basis. For the last year for which I was able to obtain statistics, Australia had the third largest number of refugees for resettlement under this UNHCR program. We were outranked by the United States and Canada, but on a per capita basis we take more UNHCR refugees than either of those two countries. Of course, the numbers that we take are small. Our total humanitarian quota was 13,750 in past years, increasing now to 14,750. But that is a small share of the world’s 15 million refugees, 10½ million of whom are under the UNHCR’s mandate.
The world as a whole needs to do more to take in UNHCR refugees. Last year there were only 539,170 refugees recognised or resettled under the UNHCR. Of these, only 98,761 were resettled from other countries. What we need is a regional approach to a global problem. This approach began through the Bali meeting in March, bringing together countries in our region to discuss the challenge of refugees. Labor’s approach has always been one of multilateralism. That is as true for immigration as it is for trade and foreign policy. The coalition, on the other hand, have a tendency to focus on unilateralism, striking particular deals with single countries. They do it in trade and they do it in migration. We believe it is the wrong approach. Modern Labor’s approach will always be a multilateralist one.
Yet while I am proud of modern Labor’s multilateralist approach on refugees, it is important to also acknowledge my party’s history. That history has not always been a great one.
We were a party formed to protect the rights of Australian workers, and, partly for that reason, there were Labor representatives in this place who played a shameful role in restricting the intake of Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Europe in the 1930s. They did so because of a mix of anti-Semitism and anti-capitalist radicalism. Labor Senator John Armstrong in 1938 said:
‘I urge the Government to take steps to prevent the unrestricted immigration of Jews to this country …’
This meant that Australia took only 5,000 Jewish refugees before the outbreak of war. Later, under the White Australia Policy, Labor immigration minister Arthur Calwell was shocked when the High Court ruled that he could not deport an Indonesian woman who had six children with her Australian husband. Calwell thought it was right that that family be torn apart.
But Labor’s role is fundamentally a proud one. In 1945, at the San Francisco conference to establish the United Nations, Jessie Street—the only woman on the Australian delegation—argued for the removal of restrictions on Jewish migration and for an increased intake of Jewish refugees to Australia. In 1948, as the fourth President of the UN General Assembly, HV ‘Doc’ Evatt was a key drafter of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document that says, in article 14(1):
‘Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.’
This set the foundation for the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees, which was originally to address the problem of the millions of Europeans displaced by World War II and was then updated in 1967 to apply to refugees generally.
Today, the issue of immigration is a proud Labor issue. In my first speech, I mentioned my mother’s parents—a boilermaker and a teacher—who lived by the credo that, if there was a spare room in the house, it should be used by someone who needed the space. I remember as a little kid eating in my grandparents’ home with new migrants from Hong Kong, Papua New Guinea, Chile, Cambodia and Sri Lanka.
Last year, I attended a prize-giving ceremony for an art competition run as part of Refugee Week. First prize went to a Karen Burmese woman who had woven a traditional crimson tunic. Because she did not have a proper loom, the woman had taken the mattress off her bed and fashioned a loom from her pine bed base. It is hard not to be overwhelmed by the courage and spirit of Australia’s migrants.
In referring to refugees in my first speech, I was not unusual. If there is a defining characteristic about first speeches by Labor members and senators, it is that they almost invariably include a migrant’s tale.
Part of what we are doing in the agreement with Malaysia is trying to ensure better treatment for refugees currently in Malaysia. The challenging protection environment in Malaysia makes it difficult for the UNHCR to fulfil its mandate in the country. The UNHCR registers asylum seekers, determines their status claims and provides them with documentation. Our agreement will allow the UNHCR access to persons seeking asylum, including to assess their need for protection. It will strengthen the relationship between the UNHCR and Malaysia, not just for those refugees who come from the Malaysian camps to Australia but for the nearly 100,000 refugees who are in those camps. In the words of the UNHCR:
‘It is UNHCR’s understanding that the Arrangement will with time deliver further protection dividends in the two countries, as well as the region …’
Lasting improvements in the region’s response to asylum seekers and refugees necessarily involve countries, like Malaysia, that are not yet party to the convention. The arrangement with Malaysia is subject to oversight by committees involving representatives of the Australian and Malaysian governments, the UNHCR and the International Organisation for Migration.
There are no simple solutions. As the old Max Weber line goes, public policy is like ‘slow boring through hard boards’. Nowhere is this truer than with migration. As the Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency Mark Dreyfus has pointed out, this is not about being compassionate; it is about ‘competing compassions’.
I reject attacks on public servants in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship that we have heard in recent weeks. Public servants have a difficult task, and we should respect the long hours that they put into crafting policy. I respect the many constituents of mine who work in the Australian Public Service and I will defend their impartiality.
I also reject the claim that some have made that this is a new ‘Pacific solution’. There are two reasons this is wrong. Firstly, the Howard government’s Pacific solution saw no increase in the total refugee intake. Under this policy, we are taking an additional 1,000 refugees per year. The second reason is that the Pacific solution had no involvement from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Ours has a strong involvement from that body.
As a Labor member of parliament, I believe that the neediest people should be given the first priority. In our offshore processing centres in Africa, Asia and the Middle East, working with the UNHCR, we take people who have nothing. Those who come by boat are invariably those who have enough money to pay a people smuggler. In saying this, I am not reflecting on those who come by boat. In their shoes, I might well make the same decision. But we have a fixed humanitarian quota: 13,750 now, which will increase to 14,750. I believe it is appropriate to prioritise those who are selected in our offshore processing centres.
This is a hard debate, and I have had many conversations and email exchanges with people in my electorate about what is the right thing to do. I respect those who disagree with the government’s position on this. But no-one has a monopoly on compassion.
In closing, I pay tribute to those in the ACT who work with refugees, as my maternal grandparents did with refugees in their home. I want to acknowledge the work of the Multicultural Youth Services in settling young refugees, often those who are orphaned or who only have one parent. The work they do to help newly arrived migrants develop friends and social networks is valuable work indeed. I recognise Companion House, which works with the victims of torture and trauma. It is hard and important work. They provide health care and social services. I acknowledge those who work in these organisations and the many other bodies that assist refugees in the ACT. Their compassion is a great credit to them and it is one of the reasons why I hope that in the future Australia will be able to take still more refugees than we do today.
Andrew,
as one of those that has been part of the ‘hard debate’ in our email exchanges I congratulate you on what reads as a fine speech. I am sure it came across well live. Unfortunately I missed it.
Also I thank you for always replying with courtesy and respect and in particular acknowledge that at 5:00am on a Sunday you took the time to reply to one I had sent at around 11:00pm the night before. Excellent service and I tip my hat to you.
On the way the politics has been (and is being) played, we will have to, as one of my other good comrades and I often do, agree to disagree for the moment.
I for one am proud to have you as my representative and the people of Fraser are fortunate that you chose to change careers.
Keep up the good work.
Denis Lyneham
Great speech, Andrew. Please convey to the Minister, Chris Bowen, my admiration for the patience and persistence he has shown in pursuing this policy. I must express my admiration too, for the Prime Minister in following through on what many of us can see is a principled if difficult process.
Andrew, it must be remembered that it was the ALP that re-started the people smuggling trade and now they can’t stop it. It seems only a change of government will stop the people smuggling trade.
Thank you for sending me the speech Andrew. I appreciate your attention.
It will be a fine day for all Australian when our Labor Government is able to follow the ALP’s Platform in regards to Immigration and other matters.
Andrew,
I am glad I did not vote for you or I would have been even more disappointed in your speach.
Sending asylum seekers back to where they did not come from has absolutely nothing to do with concerns for safety.
Rather it has everything to do with populist, rascist politics that belong to the Calwell age. A concern for safety would be manifested in the media by reportage of not just those who died in SIEV X (and other disasters) but the amazing tales of heroism and courage by those who survived clinging to debris for days waiting to be rescued. And then concerne for their follow up treatment in Australia.
Who will ever forget the lone yachtsmen wrecked at sea, and the lengths to which Australia proudly went to rescue them? Tony Bullimore (2004) and Isabel Autissier (twice! 1994 and 1996). Their tales of bravery and courage made them household names. But these were entirely discretionary activities conducted by wealthy white people. Concerns for safety have rightly lead to reviews of these races.
I challenge you or any of your kind to name just one of the hundreds of those others who survived even worse disaster at sea, and been subsequently rescued by the Australian Navy. The tales of their lives are tales of human endurance and suffering, beginning in the country of origin and continuing through extended incarceration at the hands of Australian authorities allegedly concerned for their safety.
The deliberate dehumanisation of these people is consistent across both sides of mainstream politics, and it is regrettable that you chose party discipline over morality in your speach to perpetuate this dark, Orwellian tragi-comic appeal to asylum seeker ‘safety’.
The people of Fraser are not idiots. This issue has as much to do with immigration as it does with safety. You flirted with the main issue once, in your reference to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees, linked to an appeal to the mulitlateralism of the modern Labor Party I would like to support.
Australia is uniquely placed in an economically and environmentally challenged world to take a rational (and legal – need I mention the High Court decision?) approach to humanitarian issues. But this will require values based leadership on the treatment of asylum seekers (and our dependency on fossil fuels, and our relationships with the US and China, and other ‘big’ issues), but I fear we are not going to get that leadership from this Back to Future version ‘modern Labor’ far too focussed on not losing the next election through failed appeals to rascism, smallmindedness, fear and mediocrity.
You can do better. I look forward to your next speach.
This is an edited text of Mary Gaudron’s address to the annual lunch of the Jessie Street Trust held in the Strangers’ Dining Room in the Parliament House, Sydney, on 3 March 2006. Mary Gaudron QC was the first female Judge of the High Court of Australia and served as Justice from 1987 to 2003. She was Deputy President of the Australian Conciliation and Arbitration Commission from 1974 to 1980 and Chairman of the New South Wales Legal Services Commission from 1979 to 1980. She was appointed Solicitor-General of New South Wales in 1981 and held this office until her appointment to the bench in 1987. She is currently a Judge with the International Labour Organization (ILO) Administrative Tribunal and the member of a panel of external and independent experts who have been appointed by the Secretary-General to explore ways to redesign the system of administration of justice at the United Nations.
Remembering the Universal Declaration
And Australia’s human rights record
By Mary Gaudron
Shut the detention centres down, says Mary Gaudron.
If, as they say, the road to hell is paved with good intentions, I am knocking on the gates right now. I had intended to speak about Jessie Street the internationalist. I had intended to do some research on the topic. But unfortunately, life got out of control once more. What I do know about Jessie Street the internationalist is that which Madame President Burgmann recalled at the beginning of this lunch. She was an adviser to Bert Evatt — I should call him the Honourable Herbert V Evatt — at the San Francisco Conference in 1945, which established the United Nations. That conference wrote the UN Charter, but it also did something else. It wrote what is arguably the most important document ever reduced to writing, whether on paper, papyrus, velum or tablets of stone; namely, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was not officially adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations until December 1948, but its drafting was completed in December 1945. Its 60th birthday was celebrated with some considerable fanfare in Europe last December. It would not surprise me, however, if the events passed unnoticed here in Australia. The lack of surprise, if that was the case, makes it all the more amazing that Jessie Street should have been committed to an international solution to the problems we faced here and in many other countries, and that she should have been committed to the idea of an international declaration of human rights.
Although, at the time of the Declaration’s drafting, Australia had many men and women in many theatres of war throughout the world, Australia in 1945 in general was somewhat less than truly international in its outlook. England was home. Australia’s involvement in the war, announced in 1939, was announced on the basis that England had declared war and in consequence Australia was also at war. Well, 30 years later — that is, in 1975 — the notion that Australia’s laws could be shaped by international conventions was fairly revolutionary. As a general rule, at that stage, the federal parliament only ratified treaties that it believed it could implement within its enumerated heads of legislative power. If it did otherwise implement them, it ratified them with something that became known as “the federal state clause”.
I recollect that in 1972, in the equal pay case, I argued on instructions from the two-man government — the wife of one of whom I see sitting over there — that Australia had not ratified the International Labour Organisation’s convention on equal pay because the Conciliation and Arbitration Commission had not granted equal pay to women. I argued, with some force, about which now I think I should have perhaps had some embarrassment, that it was the fault of the Arbitration Commission that Australia could not honour its international obligations and that the secondary consideration, of course, was that women didn’t have equal pay.
Equal pay, the ILO convention on equal pay which featured so importantly in that case, is just one aspect of the earlier 1945 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 23(2) simply provided that everyone has the right to “equal pay for equal work”. It is truly bizarre is that, although Australians, notably Dr Evatt and Jessie Street, should play such a significant role in the drafting of the Universal Declaration, it took so long for Australia to put into effect any of the obligations by which it was at least normatively bound from 1948 and earlier.
The principle of equal pay, which maybe, maybe not, came about in 1972, was not the only key provision in the Declaration of Human Rights. Of far greater significance was, and is, Article 7. Let me read to you:
All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
That must have been a pretty radical idea in 1945. We know now that Australian Aborigines are still far less than equal, and in 1945 they were considerably less than equal before the law. And I am here to tell you that, at that stage, the law afforded them no protection at all. It was not until 1975 that the passage of the Racial Discrimination Act and the UN Declaration on the Elimination of all Forms of Racial Discrimination was implemented in Australia. The Act’s implementation was not based on that convention and it was not based on Article 7 of the Universal Declaration. It was based on the 1967 Constitutional amendment, which simply did two things. It provided that the Commonwealth parliament had the power to legislate with respect to people of various races, including the Aboriginal race, and it provided that Aboriginal people could be counted as citizens. Australian Aborigines were citizens of this country, if not the equivalent; that is to say, they were British subjects by virtue of and from the moment of their birth. It is a disgrace that we should have failed to recognise and treated them so poorly and so shamefully for so many years.
Article 7 was not of course concerned solely with the rights of people of different races. There was no 1967 amendment to the Constitution allowing for the federal government to legislate for the equal rights of women. But their protection languished, not withstanding the presence of Article 6, which says that everyone “has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law”. That position did not change till 1973. By then, some of the more adventurous thinkers were putting forward a proposition which much earlier had been advanced by Dr Wilfred Jenks as President of the International Labour Organisation. He had argued that the federal clause was a ban and that the federal government could legislate pursuant to its external affairs power to implement the treaties it had ratified. By 1983 that view was in the ascendancy, and Senator Susan Ryan took steps to ensure the ratification of the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women and in 1983 she shepherded through the parliament the Sex Discrimination Act. Let me interpolate here Susan, just this much as an aside. It is my great delight that it was and remains called the Sex Discrimination Act. When I was growing up, nouns had gender and people had sex. Now it is the other way around.
It was almost 35 years to the day after the adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human rights that Australia had at least embraced the notion of equality in its laws. Now the importance of those two pieces of legislation, the Racial Discrimination Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, can never be minimised. They are not Constitutional enactments. The parliament can repeal or revoke them any day it wants to. But they’re all that we have in this country to ensure we are anything like a fair and equal society. Let me amend that. Apart from the little-used, less often thought of, Section 117 of the Constitution that was explored in a case called Street — he being one of the descendants of Jessie Street — and the Queensland Bar Association. They are all that we’ve got. Section 117 provides that a resident of one state shall not in another state be subject to any discrimination in the other state on account of his or her residency of the other state.
Those two pieces of anti-discrimination legislation are all that we have got. It is not an accident that, in the context of the 10-point Wik plan — hands up those who remember the 10-point Wik plan that has almost disappeared from our consciousness — our Aboriginal leaders insisted that the Racial Discrimination Act could not be amended. The Racial Discrimination Act is the bedrock foundation upon which native title lies.
No I do not want to enter this debate. I know and I understand the reason why someone should argue for a constitutionally enshrined bill of rights, and particularly a bill of rights that replicates and guarantees rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration. But let me tell you about a little job I had in Belarus. The international trade union movement complained to the International Labour Organisation that the independent union movement of Belarus was being discriminated against and that its members were being persecuted. The government of Belarus pointed to what was undoubtedly the most beautiful constitution I’ve ever seen. The constitution enshrined the equal rights of everyone. It guaranteed at least every right in the Universal Declaration and then some. For example, it guaranteed the rights of trade unions and trade unionists. So seriously did Belarus take its international obligations, that it had the public holiday for International Women’s Day.
Quite naturally, in the face of the allegation that it was treating its trade unionists a little less than properly, it pointed to its beautiful constitution. “How can it be”, they said. “Look, we’ve enshrined all these rights in the constitution and in addition we have enshrined every international norm. So it’s just not possible.” Well indeed it was possible. It was possible for one reason and one reason only. There was nothing in its constitution which permitted citizens to approach the courts in the protection of their constitutional rights. That could be done only by the prosecutor-general — he was the man giving the trade unionists a moderately bad time — the president or the chief justice. But the chief justice would only do so after the trade unionists had served their time in prison. I mentioned the situation in Belarus because the Universal Declaration recognises there is no protection of human rights without the rule of law.
Let me read you some of the articles that relate to the rule of law:
Article 8: Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 11: Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
Article 12: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Well, if Australia was tardy in implementing or giving effect to Article 7 of the Universal Declaration, it was more than ingenious in recognising the rule of law. The genius of the Australian Constitution lies in a little subsection called section 75(5). Its terms are probably meaningless to those of you non-lawyers who are present here today. It gives the High Court original jurisdiction in which any person, citizen or non citizen seeks mandamus, prohibition or an injunction against an officer of the Commonwealth. As a result of that tiny little subsection, ministers of the federal government, federal public servants, their agents and others acting on their behalf may be compelled to perform their Constitutional and legal duty and may be restrained from acting in excess of their constitutional or legal power. The section, like lamingtons and Australian Rules Football, is all our own; our own peculiar genius. Not surprisingly, governments of both sides have sought from time to time to cut down the operation of that little subsection; and equally not surprisingly, High Court has resisted their attempts every time. That little subsection is quite unique. It has no equivalent, as far as I know, in any other Constitution. Certainly it has no equivalent in the United States of America. And it is only because America hasn’t got that equivalent provision that we have that legal black hole known as Guantanamo Bay.
The last time I ventured into the debate about Guantanamo Bay, I was quite rightly dismissed as an armchair critic. Let me not argue the point; but I can still read and I can tell you that the indefinite detention without trial before a properly constituted and independent tribunal is a breach of several of the provisions of the Declaration of Human Rights. I won’t go through all of those provisions, but let’s start with “Article 3: Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person”; “Article 5: No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment”; “Article 9: No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile”. What else is incarceration in Guantanamo Bay? “Article 10: Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal”; “Article 28: Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realised”.
In dismissing my criticisms of Guantanamo Bay, the Attorney General quiet correctly said that it was the courts of the United States that would decide if David Hicks’ detention was lawful and it is true. At this stage they are four years too late in doing so. There is no point in my doing anything more because I’m sure you all know the United Nations and the European Union have both called for the closure, the immediate closure, of Guantanamo Bay.
Now I have mentioned Guantanamo Bay and David Hicks for another reason. It is true that today in far too many places, human right abuses occur on a large scale. Human rights abuses are often driven in those places by political, ethnic or religious differences. In the case of white Australia, human rights abuses also occur, and they occur at individual levels. The victims of those abuses are usually the most vulnerable. As a general rule the authorities don’t interfere with nice middle class men and women like us. They pick on the difficult people. They pick on the non-conformists, the troublemakers, the dissidents, and as often as not they pick on the mentally ill and the mentally disabled.
We now know of the most serious violations of the rights of Christine Rau and Mrs Solon. So far as I know, no compensation has yet been provided. But let me hazard a guess that the damages must be enormous. I read in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald, which I always understood to be a journal of record, that two men, nameless and unidentified, have been in immigration detention for three and five years, respectively. How much more vulnerable can you be than to lack a name and an identity? Today, the Herald reported that the Commonwealth government has settled the claim of a child who had been severely traumatised as a result of the two years he spent in immigration detention. According to the Herald, this was settled after a 63-day hearing in the Supreme Court. For that there will not be any change out of a million dollars, I promise you. Moreover, it is said that the damages aspect would be in the order of a million dollars.
Now I have been round this town long enough to know that abuses occur not only because people are vulnerable; they occur as often as not because good people do nothing, and as often as not good people know nothing. Detention centres are set apart and isolated from the mainstream of society, and deliberately so; so that you will not know what is going on. But it cannot be denied that, if abuses can occur, they will occur.
For that reason, I am not going to talk about Guantanamo Bay any more today. I am going to take this occasion to remind you or perhaps acquaint you with the terms of Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It says simply: “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” Not a word about detention centres there. And because of that, I think today is an appropriate occasion to call for the immediate closure of immigration detention centres. At least there is a better than respectable argument that we should do it on economic grounds, if we won’t do it because of the terms of Article 14, if we can’t do it out of fellow feelings with other human beings.
(Australia), President of ILO Admin Tribunal, said:
“The Universal Declaration recognises there is no protection of human rights without the rule of law.
Well, if Australia was tardy in implementing or giving effect to Article 7 of the Universal Declaration, it was more than ingenious in recognising the rule of law.
The genius of the Australian Constitution lies in a little subsection called section 75(5). Its terms are probably meaningless to those of you non-lawyers who are present here today. It gives the High Court original jurisdiction in which any person, citizen or non citizen seeks mandamus, prohibition or an injunction against an officer of the Commonwealth”.
“As a result of that tiny little subsection, ministers of the federal government, federal public servants, their agents and others acting on their behalf may be compelled to perform their Constitutional and legal duty and may be restrained from acting in excess of their constitutional or legal power”.
“The section, is all our own; our own peculiar genius. Not surprisingly, governments of both sides have sought from time to time to cut down the operation of that little subsection; and equally not surprisingly, High Court has resisted their attempts every time. That little subsection is quite unique. It has no equivalent, as far as I know, in any other Constitution. Certainly it has no equivalent in the United States of America”.
“Under our political system all three arms of Government exist separately yet none may have unbridled power unto itself or untrammelled power over any other. This is known as the doctrine of the separation of powers”.
The separation of powers is a convention we adopted from the United States of America as part of our constitutional arrangements.
I keenly want you to know it is possible , to compel the Minister and his Department of Immigration to do their duty as required by our Treaty regarding Refugees and any other treaty.
In particular the taking in of those asylum seekers who spontaneously present at our borders over and above our quota as pledged.
Australia is one of ten Countries who is pledged to take a defined quota of refugees over and above the number of asylum seekers who spontaneously present at our borders.
John Ward
I do remember Howard gave orders to the navy to wait until all asylum seekers were in the water before any attempt to rescue them be made.
I know there is something that sailors are forbidden to talk about and that the secrecy act is used as a threat over their heads.
I wait to see if the Grey warships that turned searchlights on the survivors of SIEV X, then sailed away to leave them to their fate. I wait to see if if they were Australian.
Dear Andrew
I went to your website to say I expected you to vote against the migration amendments and would vote Green at the next election if you declined. I will check your vote. The press says Kate Lundy will not support the amendments. I hope your party will not disendorse her for her position: if so, she may win as an independent. May I suggest your electors will support your vote against the bill. The risk may be slight as it seems doomed and you could be seen as principled.I support onshore processing and an end to mandatory detention. The spend on the present shambles is a waste.In Canberra we have community detention via the Red Cross. We could have more as Secretary Andrew Medcalfe properly said to the Senate. Frank Brennan SJ at ACU in Warson tells me both major parties will continue mandatory detention so we only have the Greens perhaps to add a condition to another minority government (which is why we might get a price on carbon ).You have time to consult before the vote. Your speech was OK but avoided the issues and toed the party line that many believe is wrong. Before the next election you can read the report of the Joint Committee on migration. Also in a week or so we will all have the report on DIAC policy by Alan Hawke and Helen Williams. This is likely to address some relevant issues and will benefit from input by officials. I hope you read this and send me an email to Downer. The prior comments may indicate to you the views of the electorate that you discard at your peril.Finally I was pleased to read about Mary Gaudron: we started at Sydney Law School in the same class in 1961.Please readers show this vote matters.
Sincerely
Michael Flynn
Downer
Thank you for sending me your speech Andrew.
It’s well written. It is also profoundly disappointing. I hope you are able to move towards implementing the ALP Platform on this issue soon. Then you could speak with honour.
Regards
Amanda
Andrew, Amanda and all
Is there a case for a conscience vote? Perhaps there will emerge a few Coalition votes against the amendments. All we see in the press is the Labor Left faction have principled objections. I have yet to see independent MPs views.I doubt the majority of voters want to see politicians tough on refugees. Most of us came here from elsewhere and we aspire to compassion for those who seek refuge here. It is not true that it is illegal to seek asylum or a “crime” to provide transport although legislation can deem it a crime then add venom by calling mostly poor people “people smugglers” It is a sad fact the media have provided saturation coverage for far too long on a trickle of needy people.Let us all do better. Our country Australia should not be defined by this nasty public brawl. The UN Secretary General asks we set an example! There are many examples of our foreign and domestic policy being a source of pride. It is time for voters to act
Michael
Downer
Fantastic speech Andrew; however it does not talk about the fact that the reason most of these people are in leaky boats pursuing freedom from conflict is because the U.S. & Australia are in their countries escalating these conflicts that are really none of our business! There is a family in Yass that came to Australia as refugees from Croatia & they have worked hard & been very successful but they are not allowed to bring their mother to Australia!! not even for a visit!!! In spite of the fact that they have worked really hard & contributed to our well being. I just don’t get this type of thinking?? I don’t know who we think we are to say ‘you can’t come here’. Let’s do the humanitarian thing & help these people in the communities because if we do that they will become staunch citizens of this country & not resentful, bitter ones. Regards Josie
Dear Andrew and all
I have booked for the opening night of the play MP at the Street Theatre in Canberra next Saturday 1 October to help me understand what could happen to our excellent Federal Mamber for Fraser if he votes against the caucus decision. I plam to attend the debate on the Bill in the Houss of Representaives.I hope our three Labor elected members talk to each other. If any local member fails to support the amendments may I ask what the voters will do to help them. Should they abstain? The Canberra Times today Monday 26 September has an article by Ramesh Thakur and a good letter about MP shame.
Sincerely
Michael
Downer
Dear Andrew and all
When the vote comes up I hear Doug Cameron may not be in the chamber so will not be recorded as voting against the Government so liable to expulsion from the ALP. This risk for all members of the House could be mitigated by the stomach bug that is in Canberra now. We have had it. When the bells ring, a prudent member may be called urgently to the toilet.There are people who aspire to other members’ safe seats. We do not want to lose our excellent member for Fraser. The Australian Financial Review reports Chris Bowen is confident there will be no abstentions from the vote. I wonder if Tony Abbot is as confident that Malcolm Turnbull will vote against the amendments but not give us all his own reasons.
Sincerely
Michael
Downer
Dear Andrew
You have been elected to represent the views of this electorate, NOT the opinions of anonymous focus groups NOR the self interest of Labor members for western Sydney. The majority of us in Fraser(certainly of those of us who vote Green and ALP) are compassionate, humane and intelligent – certainly too intelligent to be taken in by the very convenient concern now so vocally expressed for the safety of asylum seekers risking passage at sea, and compassionate enough to want those who arrive by boat to be treated with justice and dignity. The proposed amendment to the Australian Migration Act would completely undermine both spirit and letter of the UNDHR, and I call on you, as my MP, to remember who put you into parliament and to vote against it.
I urge you to implement ALP policy platform by supporting the call for rapid, efficient onshore processing of refugee claims, thus significantly reducing the massive expenditure on the current processing charade and freeing funds for essentials such as health care and education – what about a dental medicare, for example? I urge you to support increased, additional intake of refugees from the countries represented by maritime arrival asylum seekers, selecting these from departure points such as Malaysia and Indonesia, thereby encouraging refugees to rely on ‘conventional’ processing channels and discouraging potentially dangerous boat trips. And I further urge you to support national education efforts aimed at countering the fear-mongering rampant in public discourse (if one can honour it with this title!) on the topic of asylum seekers.
Yours sincerely
Lorna Tilley
O’Connor
Andrew
Like others I thought your speech a well crafted piece but that it was more about justification of an unpopular policy position (which just happened to be beyond the Government’s legal authority as well) than a really principled approach. Sure the passage to Australia in a leaky boat is extremely dangerous and has doubtless cost many lives; but sending those who make the journey successfully off to Malaysia and then bringing them back isn’t going to stop them coming. If they go to Malaysia in the first place they won’t get the benefits of accelerated process, work rights and health care that they would get if they come here first; in fact most who stop by Malaysia first will never get here! So if they want to come to Australia then, almost by default, they will still need to arrive in Australian waters to kick start the process – what’s the difference other than that we take some extras from Malaysia, something we could do as a separate exercise anyway??
regards
Bill
Andrew
You quote: ‘Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.’ But your entire specch cotradicts this.
Dear Andrew
Is Australia an independent country or not?, if answer to this question is yes then why do we get more than 50 percent of our migrants from England?
Our existing immigrant intakes are:
1. Lest than 10 percent of Australian immigration from China where its population is around 1.3 billions
2. Less than 5 percent of Australian immigrations are from India where its population is around 1.3 Billions
3. Less than 2 percent of Australian immigrations are Muslims where their populations are 1.5 Billions
5. More than 50 percent of Australian immigrations are from England where its population is only 60 million
Do you still claim that Australia is an independent country and still you claim that Labor party is committed to multiculturalism?
Why then 95 percent of our top political jobs, banking jobs, media jobs, public service jobs, manufacturing jobs and 95 percent of wealth of the Australia gone to the Anglo Saxon race of Australia where only contain 50 percents of Australia population
If you even trying to say maybe Anglo Saxon are more intelligent then you are wrong since I have employed people in Australia last 25 years and i have been a fair employer since job went to the best person then only 20 of my jobs went to the Anglo Saxons
Even your job, you are not the best man for seat of Fraser, there are lost of non Anglo Saxon are more qualified for your job than you are
Would you please take of the woolen Jumper off my eyes
Is ignorance one of essential requirements of Australia politicians?
Have you ask the question of who is running the world?
Have you ask the question of who plotted 9/11? And why do we need $600 million intelligence building in Australia plus fit out which will be 1.5 billions plus running costs
Is this intelligence building has been designed to spy on our own people to strengthen hands of colonism on Australia to keep this share of 80- 20 going
That means 80 percents of Australian profits go out and 20 percents only for Australians
Have you asked who and why did change Kevin Rudd, it looked like was labor party but certainly it wasn’t labor party and reason was Super Mining tax he was proposing
When I went in search of Al-Qaeda, I found out that Al-Qaeda is creation of the western world intelligence to control Western world and Asia
How much do you know?
Is your job warming seat? and get paid and not allowed to deal with the real issues such as Australian independence
In 70s and 80s Labor party did a better job in regard of Australian independence but now Labor party has totally lost the plot
I want my independence, Full Stop
Dear Andrew & all
Today Friday 14 October I hope we see our Prime Minister with your support make onshore processing permanent. As the detention faciilitie fill we could try to put more people in ACT community detention. Good news to hear our PM talk about compassion. Our resettlement policies are excellent so let us shift resources there away from detention centres. Our ACT community is open to others from elsewhere but we need careful action to make their time here work for all of us. If the ACT and its local government can get a funded arrangement to work , we may have a model for other regions. I noticed both Andrew and partner at the opening night of MP at the Street theatre – is it time to see the Member for Fraser promoted to the Ministry or enabled to assist a Minister. Perhaps the Attorney General could share some legal issues so we set an example of best practice in international law on refugees, Afghanistan and climate change. We could use the visit of President Obama and the energy of our Foreign Minister to do good work in the global climate scene.
Sincerely
Michael
Downer