Voices of conscience

Resolute protesters are quickly learning they won't easily change immigration law, writes Marian Wilkinson.

They were middle-aged, middle-class, mainly women and pretty angry. More than a hundred of them gathered at a community church on Sydney's North Shore last week, hoping to spearhead a people power movement to end the mandatory imprisonment of boat children in Australia's detention centres.

"We have lost our innocence on human rights and in particular on children's rights," Junie Ong lectured her audience. "But don't forget The Power of One."

Four months ago, Ong, a Sydney businesswoman, saw a television program on the ABC about the Iraqi child Shayan detained in Villawood detention centre. She and her husband, she said, resolved with friends to act.

They launched Children Out of Detention, or ChilOut, a grassroots lobby campaign to release children and their families from immigration detention centres. They are now fielding 30 to 50 inquiries a day.

With John Howard storming to electoral victory on the back of his tough, extremely popular stand on boat people, a grassroots campaign supporting asylum seekers may well seem doomed to failure. For several years, Australian churches and a few war-weary refugee lobby groups have fought a losing battle with the Australian public and politicians for a more sympathetic response to asylum seekers and, in particular, an end to Australia's bipartisan policy of mandatory detention for boat people.

But Ong and her friends are undeterred. One of their strategies is to encourage their new members to visit children and their families in detention. "People can visit Villawood on our program," says Ong. "They won't be the same again."

Some of the few politicians who have visited detention centres have also expressed grave concerns about holding children in captivity. Earlier this year, a parliamentary inquiry headed by the South Australian Liberal senator Alan Ferguson recommended moves to limit the time all asylum seekers, but particularly children, spent in detention and to ensure better access to education for children.

The Democrat Senator Vicki Bourne said nearly all the committee members, from Liberal, Labor and minor parties, were "stunned" by their experience.

The parliamentary report was an insightful document but pulled some of its punches, a compromise in an election year, according to several committee members. Nevertheless the report was slammed by the Howard Government and

Labor's then leader, Kim Beazley. Labor's leading member on the committee, retiring MP Colin Hollis, was abused by some colleagues for speaking out.

It was Labor's bipartisan stand on asylum seekers that helped launch another movement against mandatory detention, Rural Australians for Refugees.

Southern Highlands writer Anne Coombs tore up her ALP membership during the election campaign. With her friend, fellow writer Susan Varga, and a local doctor, they handed out flyers in the Bowral shopping centre inviting people to a town meeting.

Some 400 turned up and since then, says Coombs, the trio have been overwhelmed: "It's taken over our lives." Now a loose committee, including members from groups as diverse as the National Party and the Greens, is juggling phone calls and emails from as far afield at Port Hedland.

Against the inevitable criticism that those who live furthest from Australia's migrant suburbs find it easiest to be compassionate, Coombs and her friends are organising a campaign for rural towns to sponsor a detainee family.

Last Monday, to honour Human Rights Day, the fledgling organisation went to the Norwegian Embassy in Canberra to present their inaugural human rights award to the captain of the Tampa, Arne Rinnan.

Their most ambitious aim is a march on Parliament House, Canberra. Just how many Australians participate is a moot point. Judging by the polls, not many. Coombs and Ong's aim is to appeal to their fellow citizens.

But in today's heated debate over Australia's policy on asylum seekers, they are on a rapid learning curve. On Monday night, ChilOut's widely advertised keynote speaker was Dr Duncan Wallace, the Naval Reserve psychiatrist who wrote to newspapers recently describing the navy's border protection operations as "morally wrong and despicable". Hours before he was due to speak, Wallace was gagged by the Defence Department. Only the Prime Minister, the Defence Minister and the Immigration Minister were authorised to speak on the operations, it said.

Dissent on asylum seekers policy will not be easy to foster.