Christian values and asylum seekers in an election year

But Rudd has thus far avoided travelling down the lowly path of forcing back boats, apparently due to the high probability of boats sinking and the limits of international law, and Rudd and his government have by degrees shifted our course towards the right direction as a humanitarian country. We now have one of the best Immigration Minister’s this country has seen in Chris Evans; policies are more humane, and the alternative is just so much worse. I can think of nothing more daunting than a return to the harsh values of the previous government and with Tony Abbott as the leader that is exactly what we would get.

Abbott is now even claiming, in his familiar blood sport style, that “people are dying on the high seas” because of Rudd’s “so-called compassion”, referring to the horrific boat explosion last year when five people were killed and others were badly injured. But if the boat was deliberately set on fire, as is claimed, then it could only have been because the people on board believed they would be forced back to Indonesia. Compassion does not kill people (I can’t believe I have to say that) and John Howard and his government’s lack of compassion has left us with a legacy that will take years to unravel.

My grandfather was the head the Health Department at a time when Australia was desperate for migrants to populate the country and we were happy to take as many refugees as we could find (not forgetting that they needed to be white back then). In his unpublished memoir he wrote: “In the early period of the migration scheme many children arrived in Australia in a ghastly condition. They had come from the refugee camps and were suffering from the effects of starvation, producing a condition of maramus in which they looked like living skeletons.” Many children on the boats were seriously ill and several fatalities were recorded before injections of gamma globulin were introduced by the International Refugee Organisation.

The refugee camps eventually dried up as a source for Australia’s migration program, something that is hard to imagine today as we bicker about keeping tiny numbers of refugees away from our shores, including children, and while millions of refugees (most not white) fill the camps around the world. At least 10 per cent of the children detained in Papua New Guinea under the Howard government’s Pacific Solution in 2001 were underweight for their age but the Howard government’s focus was on making sure they felt unwanted and unwelcome to Australia.

If our Christian and family loving politicians are truly people of faith driven by their Christian values, as they say they are, if they are not simply opportunists who speak and act now and ask for forgiveness later, then they might want to revisit their values and start talking about the millions of refugees in the world who will never find a home, the ones who will die in fear and squalor because the world has decided that their lives are not worth saving. Scott Morrison might consider expanding his understanding of refugees and start writing press releases about something other than boats and Senator Fielding could truly put families first and talk about improving the family reunion component of our humanitarian program, or about increasing our intake so that more families could be given a safe home.

Applications for asylum in Australia in 2009 (6,170) represent less than 2 per cent of the world’s claims and UNHCR notes that despite recent increases “figures in Australia remain not only below those observed in 2000 (13,100 claims) and 2001 (12,400 claims) but also far below those recorded by many other industrialized countries”. This is hardly a crisis.

The Refugee Council (PDF 113KB) has recently called for Australia’s intake of refugees to be increased over the next five years from the current 13,750 places to 20,000 per annum, beginning with the acceptance of an extra 1,000 highly vulnerable refugees from Asia in 2010-11. This would represent a modest increase and would be a good place for all our truly Christian politicians to begin in their advocacy for a better life for all human beings. They might also want to consider the commitment of the Brigidine Sisters:

... we stand in reverence
for the community of life
and we will continue to work
to further compassion and justice
for humanity and the earth.