Doctors must be fair as the refugee debate rages

Doctors will be under scrutiny as they deal with asylum seekers claiming the need for medical treatment in Australia.

I am a GP, with significant experience in the medical care of “boat people” when the immigrant flow was at its highest, in 2012-13 (“Border protection regime, executive power in peril”, 16-17/2). The present imbroglio is essentially short-term; the medium term depends on the outcome of the federal election.

It is critically important that the clinical assessments and conclusions presented to the minister are informed, objective and unbiased, that they identify real problems and evaluate and quantify them competently.

It is important they are not tainted by an emotional urge to be kind, nor an officious or punitive perspective; that they address clinical perspectives and medical and psychiatric problems; and are not part of a surreptitious means to inappropriately change immigration status. The involvement from the beginning of doctors using Australian resources (and aware of their limit and inadequacy), is likely to provide this balance.

Glenn Rosendahl, Elanora, Qld

The Coalition regularly refers to boatpeople as “unlawful” or “illegal” refugees. For Australia, as a signatory to the UN 1951 Refugee Convention, such labelling is politically motivated nonsense. Only people who are found not to match the convention’s specific definition of refugee – after arrival or assessment elsewhere – are not bona fide refugees. In the main these are economic “refugees”, illegal migrants.

The use of these labels to justify parking people on Pacific islands for years doing nothing is unproductive and costly. The boat smugglers could easily be stopped by approving genuine political refugees in Indonesia and flying or shipping them to Australia from there. Both the UNHCR and the Australian embassy in Indonesia could organise this. It would also be much cheaper, an honest policy and a more honourable solution.

Klaas Woldring, Pearl Beach, NSW

I sense Paul Kelly’s anger and frustration that parliamentary independents and the Left can subvert Australia’s legal processes with so little thought to the consequences for our country (“Shorten cannot please everyone”, 16-17/2).

This is not just a march through the institutions — this is the creeping perversion of the democratic process and the rule of law, using activist lawyers, doctors and their ilk.

Helen Derrick, Sherwood, Qld

In defending his refugee medivac policy against the charge that it will lead to a resurgence in attempted illegal boat arrivals, Bill Shorten has emphasised it will not apply to new arrivals. The effect of this is that an existing detainee with, say, cancer will receive treatment in Australia, but that will be denied to a new detainee.

If Shorten were to maintain the policy in government, it would be unlikely to survive a legal challenge that the government cannot discriminate in its duty of care between new and existing detainees.

Philip Temple, Larrakeyah, NT

The problem with so-called asylum seekers is not that they aren’t deserving of a better life. They are. The real problem is Australia’s welfare system, that allows people in and as soon as they put a foot on the ground entitles them to draw money from taxpayers.

This is the real incentive for all and sundry to some to these shores. While ever this carrot is dangled in front of individuals who have little, the boats will not stop coming and the human rights advocates will press for increased funds for lawyers, doctors and other services, extracting those funds from tax payers.

Peter Whitehurst, Swan View, WA

Activist doctors, now they’ve helped dismantle a pillar of our border protection through their concern over a “crisis” on Nauru, might consider why they and their fellow medicos are so reluctant to move to rural areas in Australia where a doctor within a hundred kilometres is a rarity.

Paul Clancy, Tanunda SA

It appears Ross Fitzgerald (“Boatpeople jump Medicare queues?”, 18/2) would have supported turning my grand-dad away as a “queue jumper”. In the early 1900s, my grandfather’s parents smuggled him, aged 10 and his 12 year-old brother to England as asylum seekers.

Granddad’s parents were unable to escape from Russia and were killed. My grandfather and his brother survived and my father, who served in World War II, fought to defeat Hitler’s genocidal fascism.

Peter Smith, Lake Illawarra, NSW