THE release of almost 2000 files on cases of abuse (personal and custodial) on Manus Island – called “incident reports’ – must dent the Australian psyche and sense of moral, if not legal, conscience.
After all, if Don Dale can shock, so must the lingering shadow of our questionable refugee policies? Boat arrivals have all been about “turning back the boats”, “deaths at sea” and “sovereignty.
The Australian electorate has been persuaded by apparent success and it then became a political matter from which neither party dared waver. Ok, we take that as a given.
But in recent times.
On last weekend, Jesuit priest Frank Brennan, Robert Manne, Tim Costello and John Menadue started to call for an end to the – soon to be explosive – refugee on Nauru and Manus islands.
Brennan says: “I think this can be done while keeping the boats stopped. I think it ought to be done.”
I agree and maybe some readers of these words will also agree. After all, even if one is a pragmatist, it is only going to get worse, much worse, including for Australia’s reputation.
Appearing on the ABC 7.30 program last Thursday, after the Guardian’s release of the 2000 documents from Nauru, Minister Peter Dutton, for Immigration and Border Protection, told presenter Leigh Sales, “I would like to get people off Nauru tomorrow but I have got to do it in a way that we do not restart boats.” He went on to say: “We have had discussions with as number of other countries, but what we are not going to do is enter an arrangement that sends a green light to people smugglers.” But Minister Dutton knows that Nauru and Manus are ticking time bombs.
During the election campaign, Malcolm Turnbull said that we could not be misty-eyed about the situation on these islands, a situation of Australia’s making and a situation funded recurrently with the Australian taxes. Now that the election is over, neither our politicians nor their strategic advisers can afford to wilfully close their eyes to the situation.
The majority of asylum-seekers on Nauru and Manus have now been proved to be refugees. They are not going to accept cheques to go back home and face renewed persecution.
That is, after all, why they fled in the first place. Most of these people have had their lives on hold, in appalling circumstances (have you been to Manus? I have. And I taught the children for many years at Hagita High School) They have been there for three or more years. It is time to act.
The ‘Brennan Compromise’ envisages a way of redesigning the getting of asylum-seekers off Manus and Nauru in such a way that “we do not restart boats”, ensuring that we send a red light to people smugglers in Java.
This suggestion is a compromise that may well work and it is in everybody’s interests and the moral interest that we give it every chance.
As we approach Refugee Week, August 22 to 28, it would be a great opportunity to argue for this moral and humane compromise.