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Immigration detention - reading the tea leaves

By Howard Glenn - posted Monday, 5 September 2005


There were the local community actions from retired school teachers who met the refugees released from the WA detention camps, and organised housing and English lessons for them. There were the experienced national campaigners like myself who shaped disparate groups into coalitions with budgets, strategies and credible media profiles. There were prominent identities who loaned their names and their networks, some with enormous generosity. There were the traditional refugee sector groups who tried to rise to the new challenges, some who failed, others who’ve become better organisations as a result. There were the political activists who found a gritty human reality to otherwise abstract issues; and, of course, there remain those who continue to make political capital from tragic situations.

It is by no means sufficient for a campaign organisation to just write a strategic plan (as we did in 2002) saying:

  • break bi-partisanship on the policies between Government and Labor;
  • focus on the children in detention with the Backbench Government MPs;
  • predict what will happen if TPVs are allowed to expire; and
  • maintain pressure on long term detainees and on Nauru.
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It then required the efforts and sustained energy of people to keep working together towards these goals. In the three years of the campaign, there were people who got better ideas and went off to make their own mark or to found their own better organisation, but the great thing is that thousands and thousands stuck with the task. While in the nature of things, community organisations spend a lot of time worrying about the importance of community organisations, the real strength of the campaign work was the thousands of people involved who were prepared to do precisely what was asked of them. Letters were written, money donated, politicians visited, petitions signed, public meetings attended, refugees and detainees visited or prayed for.

Of course, the structures of these movements were always flawed - and there was always an inherent conflict in a campaign organisation governed by a board of 20 representatives from other organisations, where all the energy and funds came from thousands of unrepresented individuals. The conflict was often unpleasant, but the prevailing view was to keep it all together because the net value of the organisation was so high.

Well now we’re in a situation where we’ve won a sort of victory. How much has been achieved can be the subject of dinner-table arguments, rather than long complaints about how powerless people are. What’s left to be done can be argued knowing that an agenda for change is worth discussing. Whether the campaign can or should take credit; which bit of the campaign worked; what was the most influential; did it really matter - there’ll be a host of views. But it’d be crazy to carry on without taking stock.

For me, the big thing in this week’s figures, and from pondering the campaign work of the last few years, is that it’s time to acknowledge that there’s been a big shift. We tried a form of campaign organisation and it worked. Now let’s make some new plans on the basis that campaigns can work.

Its successes aside, the asylum seeker campaign demonstrated clearly that, when it matters most, human rights protections fail in Australia. The Solon and Rau cases, and the other unnamed victims of arbitrary treatment by DIMIA remain testament to the simple reality that there are, in the end, no minimum rights of treatment for any of us.

This failure of protection of human rights has a big effect on so many other situations. For Australian children, for those who are ill, those who are feared, who are vulnerable, or for those who are different.

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It’s great that so many people are keen to join a campaign to look at this fundamental problem in our social structures. There’s a lot of work ahead, but we can see that it’s worth it.

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About the Author

Howard Glenn leads lobby group Rights Australia Inc, was previously founder and national director of Australians for Just Refugee Programs, and brought the widest range of organisations and individuals together to challenge poor treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.

Formerly CEO of the National Australia Day Council, he was responsible for modernising national celebrations and the Australian of the Year Awards, and involving communities across Australia in debates on reconciliation, republic and national identity.

Howard was an adviser to the Minister for Aboriginal Affairs in the Hawke-Keating Governments, and had key involvement with Indigenous education policy, the response to the deaths in custody Royal Commission and the establishment of the reconciliation process. Outside government he has extensive community sector involvement, currently on human rights, HIV-AIDS, drug and alcohol issues. When not at a computer, Howard is a middle distance runner and a surf lifesaver.

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