Shamed by refugee policy
May 26, 2003
Geoffrey Barker AFR
Until recently Australians might have assumed that the imperatives of civil society, political accountability, and perhaps even moral decency, would at least minimise human rights outrages in this country.
No longer. Beginning with the Tampa incident in August 2001 the federal government's campaign against asylum seekers has marked the demise of any commitment to treating all humans with dignity, not as mere means to ends.
The full horror of the campaign (a central element of the government's 2001 election victory) flooded back last week when the ABC's Four Corners program broadcast grave allegations and shocking film of incidents at the Woomera detention centre.
Subsequent responses from Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock revealed again the moral blindness of a government that boasted: "We decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come".
This is not the place to repeat the shameful story. It has been told in devastating detail in Dark Victory, by David Marr and Marian Wilkinson (Allen and Unwin, 2003). Moreover, as Ruddock noted in television interviews, the Australian public was aware of what happened at Woomera.
But this is the place to ask what the miserable Ruddock and his attack-dog detention centre guards have done to Australia's regional and international reputation, and its ability to occupy any moral high ground in global politics.
It is also worth asking what Australians have done to themselves by their overwhelming acquiescence in mandatory detention policies.
First Ruddock. As a member of Amnesty International and a proclaimed Anglican, he has shamed both institutions by implementing policies and approving actions profoundly at odds with their deepest values and highest aspirations.
His main defence seemed to be the raison d'etat defence that he had reduced the number of asylum seekers coming to Australia. That, of course, is the political barbarian's defence of last resort: the end justifies the means. Ruddock deployed it as his first resort.
His main concern was not with the suffering shown on Four Corners, but with whether the commonwealth got value for money or whether it was, in his own inelegant phrase, "ripped off" by Australasian Correction Management, the turnkey corporation that operates Woomera.
Utterly indifferent to what he described as the "confronting" material shown on TV, Ruddock said the victims were attempting "to put us under duress" in order to obtain visas. But what of the duress under which the detainees were put? What of the government's duty of care to detainees who, in their desperation, resorted to vandalism, violence and self-mutilation?
Challenged by Kerry O'Brien on the ABC's 7.30 Report, Ruddock resorted to pious evasion: "We use our best endeavours to detain people humanely." Ruddock's understanding of the word "humanely" is at best bizarre and at worst Orwellian in the light of such footage.
So where does this leave Australia? The Four Corners footage will be seen throughout the region and the world. Conclusions will be drawn about the way difficult, inconvenient, unwanted, unwelcome and "different" people are treated in Australia.
And repressive authorities everywhere - such as Aceh, West Papua, China and Zimbabwe - will respond to Australian protests about their human rights violations by noting that the main difference between them and us is that Australia sub-contracts the dirty work to a private corporation.
The corporation invokes "maintenance of security, safety and good order" for refusing to be accountable for its actions. Ruddock seeks to diminish the credibility of witnesses with the snide suggestion that they are "in dispute" with the corporation.
Through his administration of mandatory detention and his acquiescence in what happened at Woomera, Ruddock has gravely undermined Australia's ability to speak credibly and to be taken seriously about human rights abuses anywhere.
For individuals the footage destroyed any residual innocence they might have had about what could and could not happen in their country and how Australians might be treated in the world.
Australians might once have reasonably cried "Why us?" when they were targeted abroad by extremists and political pyschopaths. Woomera has helped to supply an answer: because Australian hands are no cleaner than any others. We have not treated wretched humanity decently, and we cannot expect better for ourselves. It is a grievous loss.