As Manus Island roils from another “eminently foreseeable” outbreak of protest among detainees, both of Australia’s major political parties have ignored the festering problem of gross abuses on the island, and chosen instead to use the crisis for their own political gain.
The politics of asylum has, again, overshadowed the policy.
With hundreds of detainees in Australia’s care on hunger strike, others driven to suicide attempts and to swallowing razor blades in protest, finally both parties felt moved to comment publicly on the Manus Island detention centre. But they used it only as an opportunity to attack one another.
The immigration minister Peter Dutton, having denied for two days – in the face of photographic evidence – that a hunger strike was even occurring, said the protests on Manus were a result of “Labor’s mess” and the caseload of asylum claims his government had inherited.
He went on to blame the protests on ringleaders and un-named “advocates” who were apparently inciting dissent.
The Labor opposition did no better. For political convenience, Labor has chosen invisibility on asylum – Bob Carr’s “no daylight” doctrine – because the party believes it is an issue on which it can only get beaten.
This week Labor, somewhat remarkably, did put its head above the parapet on the issue. But rather than talk about the 1,000 men shipped into foreign incarceration against their will, held for how long they do not know – despite not being charged with a crime or even alleged to have committed any crime - the Labor leader Bill Shorten instead chose a minor corollary issue, condemning the “culture of secrecy” around offshore detention.
The point is a valid one, but demonstrates a short memory: Manus Island was just as off-limits to journalists and public scrutiny when a Labor government opened it in 2012.
Australia has been badly let down by its major political parties on asylum. The Greens have been a notable voice in opposition, though in Labor-Coalition bipartisan support lies the danger of poor policy uncontested for expediency’s sake.
Neither side, now, wants to address what has become a calamitous policy that has caused untold damage to thousands of people who have tried to come to Australia seeking protection, is a source of huge tension with supposed allies and a massive burden to the Australian taxpayer, and that has significantly damaged Australia’s reputation across the world.
On Manus Island scores of reports, from media outlets, human rights groups, staff whistleblowers and the federal parliament, have revealed a litany of abuses and concerns:
- Some of the men on Manus have been held in detention on the island for more than 500 days. They are no closer to knowing whether they will be found to be refugees.
- Detainees fear being moved from detention “into the community” at Lorengau because of hostility from the local community. One asylum seeker was murdered during riots last year when local police and workers invaded the centre. Reza Barati was allegedly killed when a rock was dropped on his head.
- Rape, sexual assault, violence, and other abuses are commonplace and often ignored by guards.
- “Non-compliant” detainees are held in solitary confinement, where they have alleged brutal and violent maltreatment.
- Medical care is catastrophically poor, detainees have been given expired medicines.
- Hamid Kehazaei died from a treatable infection, but the correct antibiotics were not kept on the island, and his transfer to Australia was delayed by bureaucratic hold-ups.
- The detention centre has been left without running water.
Nauru, similarly, has been wracked by regular reports of child refugees being beaten by locals, asylum seekers being sexually assaulted and raped, and reports of self-harm by children.
Nobody who has worked on Manus or Nauru sees them as long-term solutions for Australia’s refugee problem.
Senior public servants in the immigration department, experienced experts in the field, are increasingly exasperated at being forced to implement politically-expedient policies that have proven unworkable, that breach international law, and that cause more problems than they solve.
The Coalition government, in particular, has made a rod for its own back in its dealing with the issue of asylum seekers.
For months in opposition, it gleefully used “stop the boats” as a cudgel with which to beat Labor over its perceived failure on asylum seekers. In government, it gloatingly counted off the days since boats arrived.
Now the government is forced to defend increasingly hostile, brutal acts done in Australia’s name, to go to more and more draconian lengths, just to enforce an overly simplistic political slogan it finds itself ingloriously wedded to.
The government has backed itself into a political corner from which it can find no way out. And it is the asylum seekers in Australia’s care who continue to suffer as a result.
