Horrific policy ditches Labor's principle of equal opportunity for asylum-seekers

Eric Lobbecke

LABOR'S plan to allow asylum-seekers to live in the community, in government-provided accommodation with a small taxpayer-funded stipend of a little more than $200 a week without the right to work tells you everything you need to know about modern Labor's lost direction as a political movement.

I've never liked the Coalition's tough international law-breaking approach to asylum-seeker policies, but in recent years Labor has matched, if not exceeded, the Coalition's lack of humanitarianism when it comes to refugees, not to mention the disregard for international laws Australia has signed up to.

Now, with detention centres full, leaving nowhere to lock up new arrivals, and with no evidence that a return to the Pacific Solution (used by the Howard government in a very different era) is working to stop the boats, Labor is releasing asylum-seekers into the community under a scheme similar to Howard's system of temporary protection visas. Only this time those on the modern equivalent of TPVs, known as indefinite bridging visas, have no right to work. They will work, of course, adding to the taxless cash economy. Or they will learn a life of welfare dependency, eroding their productive value for years to come, and possibly contributing to a culture of inter-generational welfare among their children.

It is a truly horrific policy.

On Thursday, former prime minister Bob Hawke launched an edited collection of Labor speeches, For the True Believers. In his speech, Hawke highlighted that equality of opportunity was one of Labor's enduring principles. Where is the equality of opportunity for genuine refugees released into the community indefinitely who aren't even allowed to seek full employment? For their children, confined to a life of welfare dependency and government housing? Not to mention the uncertainty of a future in which, at any moment, they might be shipped back to the country they fled, even if, across many years, they have since built a life here.

Whether you support a tougher set of border protection measures and therefore believe Australia should remove itself from its international law obligations by pulling out of the UN conventions on refugees, or if you believe Australia should be more accommodating of genuine refugees coming to our shores, all sides must agree that the right to work is a basic human right.

Yet the policy Labor wants to introduce denies this right. It is a cornerstone of successful Western liberal democracies. The union movement, which underwrites the ALP, championed "your rights at work" ahead of the 2007 election, yet the Labor Party itself won't allow asylum-seekers the opportunity to work at all.

Tony Abbott is wrong about many things when it comes to how to address the complex issues of asylum-seeker policies. Towing boats back to where they came from and describing desperate people coming here by sea as part of a "peaceful invasion" are more than a little unhelpful. But Abbott is dead right when he calls on the government to allow asylum-seekers released into the community to have the opportunity to be productive members of Australian society.

Of course, as is so often the case with Abbott, his rhetoric goes too far even when he is right, seeking to turn the right to work into some sort of lightning rod for angry sections of Australia to also demand entitlements be cut if asylum-seekers don't take up work.

The toxic debate that has now entirely replaced rational discussion about how to handle the global problem of more than 50 million displaced asylum-seekers looking for a better life has consumed both main parties.

Labor has sold out every rhetorical attack it launched on the Howard government concerning its Pacific Solution. Every principle it once held so dear. Former immigration minister and still leader of the government in the Senate Chris Evans described the day that Labor abolished the Pacific Solution as the proudest moment of his political career. I wonder how he is feeling now?

Current Labor ministers lined up to condemn TPVs, in opposition and more recently, as not only ineffective when Howard introduced them but damaging to the mental health of anyone forced on to one because of the life of uncertainty it consigned them to. Health Minister Tanya Plibersek was at the forefront of making this argument. Where is she now that Labor has proposed a scheme experts say is even tougher than Howard-era TPVs?

On the Coalition side of the parliament, conservatives look backwards instead of forwards, mocking Labor for creating the problem of increased boat arrivals because it unwound the Pacific Solution, which the Coalition claims sent a powerful message of deterrence. Apart from the fact the Department of Immigration and Citizenship does not agree that the dismantling of that policy is the cause of increased arrivals, and apart from the international evidence that push, not pull, factors are behind the rise in boat arrivals in recent years, the Coalition in fact supported the closing down of Nauru and Manus Island detention centres.

Yes, that's right: before Abbott seized the Liberal leadership from Malcolm Turnbull, the then opposition immigration spokeswoman, Sharman Stone, told the ABC's Lateline program on April 16, 2009, that there was no need for the Pacific Solution any more. Asked directly by the interviewer whether the Pacific Solution was still needed, Stone replied: "We don't need the Pacific Solution now, that's Nauru Island and Manus Island, because we have the Christmas Island centre completed."

This is important because Abbott seeks to draw a distinction between his Coalition team that stands by the policies of the Howard government and a Labor government that caused the surge in arrivals and now seeks to crawl back from its failed policies.

The Coalition is clearly on the record as having backed the ending of the Pacific Solution, making Abbott's attempted distinction highly misleading.

If our main parties seriously want to "stop the boats" they need to find a way to prevent asylum-seekers who island-hop their way to Australia from doing so. This, more than anything, is what irks Australians, because most of us see people who do so as economic refugees rather than genuine refugees fleeing persecution.

But according to the UN conventions on refugees, any country that has not signed on to the treaty (such as Indonesia or Malaysia) is not a safe haven, and genuine refugees have a right therefore to continue on to a nation such as Australia, which is.

Convincing, cajoling or downright bribing Indonesia, Malaysia and other regional non-signatories to ratify the refugees conventions is the only way that Australia can honour its legal obligations to refugees at the same time as stopping the boats.

Or we could simply pull out of the UN convention ourselves. However, with the Pacific Solution and other tough approaches to asylum-seekers not working, it's hard to see what else might work to stop the boats, even if we did decouple ourselves from our international legal obligations.

Peter van Onselen is a professor at the University of Western Australia.