You are currently viewing the archive for January 2003.
James Russell on excuses for our troops being sent early to Iraq: “Right, John. Nations go to the monstrous expense of shipping troops to other countries in preparation for war with those other countries so they won’t have to use them. I’m glad I’m living in a country whose leader understands the niceties of international war so brilliantly.”
Commenting on my support of asylum seekers who refuse to be repatriated to Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan, Ken Parish challenged me to reconsider my position. My gut instinct was to oppose forced repatriation, but I must admit I was expressing half-formed opinions at the time. I mentioned that I would do some reading on repatriation.
Which leads me to BS Chimni’s “From resettlement to involuntary repatriation: towards a critical history of durable solutions to refugee problems” (pdf), from the Journal of Humanitarian Assistance, which canvasses the different “solutions” to the refugee problem sought by the international community in the decades since the Second World War.
It is interesting to note that international opinion on the issue has hardened in line with Australian policy. From WW2, resettlement was promoted. From the early 80s, “voluntary repatriation” was acceptable. In 1993 (about the time mandatory detention was implemented), the notion of “safe return” was proposed to allow involuntary repatriation in some circumstances. 1996 (when Howard took over and the crackdown on boat people started) brought the doctrine of forced repatriation — something that the UN only reluctantly accepts: “As one UNHCR publication bluntly puts it: ‘it is quite clear that a large proportion of the world’s recent returnees have repatriated under some form of duress’.”
There was a time, according to Chimni, when paying refugees to leave was considered inappropriate, as it impinged on their freedom:
In so far as the Northern States accepted the solution of repatriation as the ideal solution in principle, they strongly supported freedom of choice even though 1,000,000 refugees were involved. So much so that even the decision to provide three months of rations to refugees deciding to repatriate was sharply criticized.
The Government’s $2000 offer to encourage refugees to return to an Afghanistan suffering from a war and the return of over a million refugees would have be seen as wrong. Indeed, I still have reservations about paying people to return to dangerous conditions.
Hmm… Andrea has exceeded her bandwidth limit. That’s frustrating, because there’s obviously something really, really interesting there, but I can’t see it!
Two dead, 388 homes lost in ACT blaze — including those of many bloggers. Hope they get it under control soon. Row’s pictures make the whole thing look surreal. Shit, a fourth person has died.
Lunch with Peter was good. He’s a really nice bloke.
I’m working on a long post on refugees at the moment. A bumper post, in fact. Stay tuned.
I’m meeting Peter for lunch today.
When I read Paul Sheehan’s glowing account of the Australian economy, I was struck by something — he doesn’t once mention employment. Maybe I was imagining it? No, I hit ctrl-f, tried “job” and then “employ”, but twice was met with “The text you entered was not found.” It seems that in talking up our economy, Sheehan ignores the people who make it possible — the workers. And, sadly, those who want to be workers but can’t find a job.
Anthony Albanese cares, though. His press release covers a multitude of issues, so I’ll quote a chunk:
While concerning in itself, the headline unemployment rate of 6.2% conceals even more disturbing trends with respect to the Australian labour market.
On top of the 628,400 who are officially classified as unemployed, figures also reveal that there are more than 700,000 Australians currently working part-time who want more hours and a further 1.16 million who are counted by the ABS as ‘not in the labour force’ who would still like a job.
In total, nearly 2.5 million Australians are not getting the financial and social stability that comes with having enough work.
Data from the Department of Family and Community Services, also released today, sheds further light on the plight of the unemployed and confirms that long-term unemployment is on the rise. This data shows that 393,105 people have been on the dole for more than a year, up by more than 15,000 on the previous month.
The number of people on the dole for more than 12 months is today higher than it was when the Howard Government was first elected to office in March 1996. Despite a decade of economic growth it is evident that under this Government the long-term unemployed have been abandoned to the ravages of the marketplace.
According to the ABS figures, youth unemployment remained unacceptably high at 20.7%. At this time of year this is particularly gloomy news given that over the coming weeks tens of thousands of young people will find out that they have been unsuccessful in securing a university place.
At a time when some many Australians simply want a job that pays a decent wage, we find out today that the executives of our top companies have granted themselves a 40% pay rise over the past 12 months. While the Government’s big business friends pocket an extra $10,000 per week, more than 600,000 unemployed Australians are excepted to survive on as little as $180 a week.
The economy’s going strong. Executives are raking in the dough — and more when they leave their job. Why can’t it be shared around? Why do we pretend that having 6% of Australians out of work but looking for it, is an acceptable state of affairs?
Oops, I forgot. Over 600 000 Australians are just bludging off the system. A Current Affair will be busy this year…
The big headline today is the fact that a measly 6% of Australians support war in Iraq without UN support. More telling is the fact that almost one in three Australians are totally opposed to war in Iraq, even if the UN gives the okay. Here are the results broken down by political affiliation — pretty much as you would expect [popup image].
It is also interesting to see how US and UK citizens see the issue:
The poll indicates that unilateral action against Iraq is even less popular in Australia than it is among Americans or Britons.
A British poll published this week suggested 13 per cent of Britons supported an attack regardless of UN support; a similar survey in the US yielded about one-third of respondents in favour of an attack.
Given that the UK and Australia are the two nations that Bush is counting on to offer some legitimacy to any attack outside the UN’s mandate (an ad hoc alliance that would be used to pretend the attack was multilateral), it is no doubt worrying for the hawks that there is overwhelming public opposition in those countries.
Of course, different results might be expected after the weapons inspectors in Iraq discovered about a dozen empty warheads that Iraq can’t quite explain. Obviously we’re going to have to wait a while before we reach a judgment on this one — it’s an obvious balls-up by Saddam, but it might be more innocent than it appears. Yeah, I know — “Honey, please… I can explain… it’s not how it looks…” sounds pretty lame when we’re talking about chemical weapons, but the US and Britain have misrepresented aluminium tubing that Iraq attempted to procure, alleging that it was specifically for use in a centrifuge despite evidence to the contrary.
Indeed, General Imam’s statements, that “They are just artillery rockets imported in 1986. Therefore they are expired, they cannot be used, since a long time ago, not now, at least (since) seven years or maybe ten years they were expired, not now” and that these types of rockets “were declared … to the UNSCOM in 1996 and … declared again” more recently, appear to be supported by a quick google.
In September 1991, the UNSCOM supervised the destruction of all empty chemical ammunitions at Al-Muthana Establishment which included 12,500 pieces of artillery ammunitions and aerial bombs. In February 1992, the UNSCOM destroyed the chemical ammunitions at Al-Khamissiya area which included 400 (122mm) rockets filled with Sarin. From June 1992 to June 1994, the UNSCOM destroyed the empty and filled ammunitions, the production equipment, production sites, stores, liquid and solid materials at Al-Muthana Establishment which included 690 tons of the produced final agents and 38500 ammunition pieces, filled and empty, liquid amounted to 1,800 000 litres, solid intermediate materials, amounted to 1000 tons as well as 150 production equipment and four production sites and stores.
Given that UNSCOM destroyed over 400 of these rockets, along with payloads and production equipment, the discovery of a dozen empty rockets does not necessarily mean much. It really could be nothing more than an Iraqi bureaucratic bungle, albeit with severe consequences.
We’ll have to wait until the inspectors test chemical samples they have taken, and make further investigations, before we’ll know anything for sure. Thankfully, the overwhelming public opposition to a US-led war might slow things down enough for a rational evaluation of the evidence — though nothing can be certain.
UPDATE [4:55pm]: It looks like the US are going to let the inspectors continue their work for a while. This is sensible — if the rockets really do represent something sinister, the inspectors now know what they’re looking for and will presumably make further discoveries quickly. If not, then this discovery will be added to a list of similarly insignificant breaches — something that, in the absence of a “smoking gun” (I believe that’s what the cool kids are saying these days), will put the US under pressure to show they’re not just clutching at straws.
Would someone explain to me how putting a CD in the computer is part of Glenn Reynolds’ routine when preparing to update InstaPundit?
Gareth Parker has again posted on asylum seekers, but has said nothing new. He does, however, play down the intention of his letter to the editor:
Nowhere did I mention the words “holiday”, “resort” or “hotel”. I simply stated the fact that asylum seekers are housed in reasonable conditions.
That’s an interesting take, Gareth. I’d say listing the “benefits” of being locked up in desert camps puts your letter firmly in the “asylum seekers are living in luxury” genre. Whether or not you used those specific terms, your intention was clearly to present Woomera, Port Hedland and Baxter as nice places to live — the same way David Penberthy did when he wrote his “Five Star Asylums” report for the Daily Telegraph. In his summary of the year’s most hyperbolic claims, Gerard Henderson wrote:
Canberra-based journalist David Penberthy attempts to rationalise why “many Australians” associate mandatory detention centres in the Australian deserts with “five-star accommodation”. Oh, yeah.
(The original Penberthy article is unavailable online, but his self-defence is there. Apparently you achieve balance by ignoring one side of the debate. Then why is it wrong for the ABC to counterbalance the right-wing private media?) This is clearly what Gareth is implying in his letter, as Ken Parish noted:
Essentially, if you are going to detain asylum seekers in government facilities while you determine whether they are entitled to a visa under an international treaty that Australia (like just about every other country in the world) has signed and professes to honour, the facilities that Gareth outlined are pretty much the bare minimum one could be expected to provide to avoid being justly accused of running punitive concentration camps. The tone of Gareth’s letter, especially the comment about “virtually no Australians” getting these facilities (which is incorrect anyway) has no other purpose than to convey the message that: (a) we are being very (perhaps even excessively) generous to these people; and (b) we should resent them, because they get benefits most Australians don’t, but still whinge about it.
Ken is right — the conditions in the centres are the bare minimum that could possibly provided. And they’re very clever politically, too. If someone says, “Improve the conditions in the centres!”, the government can respond with “What more do you want? They’ve got DVDs and classes in flower arrangement!” It’s a neat cover for the more basic things that make life difficult in the centres.
Read the rest of this entry…
I’m heading off now for an orientation afternoon, for Senator Chris Evans’ Labour Movement Work Experience Program. I’ve got five weeks full-time work experience in union and political offices, starting next Monday. It should be great.
The closest Gareth Parker’s been to a career in journalism is a letter to the editor, published earlier this week. It was one of those right-wing crank letters that portrays life behind the razor-wire of a detention centre as some kind of holiday camp that they’re itching to send their children to for the Easter holidays.
But the conclusion of Gareth’s letter was that “[i]f detainees feel so strongly about being detained, why don’t they leave, as they are free to do at any time?” Gareth knew this was misleading at the time he wrote the letter, as he revealed on his blog:
The letter is not perfect, because it fails to address the scenario where a rejected asylum seeker will not be re-admitted by his home country. That situation is a puzzle to the government, as it is to me. I’m not entirely sure where we go with it. But it is not a situation that arises regularly, certainly not in the majority of cases that would make it the largest contributing factor to long-term detention.
Well, the problem is quite significant:
Mr Ruddock said … “Most of the people we are holding are available to go home.”
Mr Ruddock said of the 1,200 people currently in Australian detention centres 920 were available to go home.
“You can only remove people to countries if the country will give them a travel document.”
That is, almost 77% of people in the detention centres are here because Australia can’t deport them. Hardly an insignificant problem.
I understand that Iran will let them go home if they “volunteer” to go, but I don’t think its unreasonable that they would refuse to do so. Although Australia has rejected their claims for asylum, the vast majority would have a genuine fear of persecution in Iran — it’s not exactly known for its glowing human rights record, is it? If you thought your family was in danger of torture or death, would you “volunteer” to return to that situation, even if some judge half way across the world thought you were wrong?
I know I wouldn’t. I’d stay in detention, but I’d do everything in my power to show the Australian public I wasn’t happy about it. Yes, I’d go on hunger strike. Yes, I’d sew my lips together. Yes, I’d set fire to the demountable that Gareth and his like compare to a five star hotel. And I’d feel justified doing so.
Never underestimate the power of fear to drive otherwise average people to do extraordinary things.
UPDATE [3:38pm]: In the comments, Ken Parish thinks I’m advocating an open-door refugee policy. Not so: there are very few countries that refuse forced repatriation. Ken offers Iran and Afghanistan as examples. Afghanistan is struggling to cope with the pressure of millions of refugees returning to a country almost totally devoid of infrastructure, and it wouldn’t hurt Australia to offer temporary visas to rejected claimants until things are sorted out there.
In the case of Iran, is it such a bad thing that we would allow a few hundred of them to stay? It could be presented as a statement that Australia does not support undemocratic (indeed antidemocratic) regimes, and is not going to force people to return to such regimes against their will. This is only a half-baked opinion, mind you. I’m going to do some more reading on involuntary repatriation and come back to it.
UPDATE [4:23]: The other country that refuses repatriation is Iraq. Obviously we think Saddam’s regime is a good one, and we should be encouraging people to head back there.
My thoughts on the death penalty, neatly summed up in one short line by Demosthenes: “The business of the state is not blood feud.”
