Gareth Parker is right: the refugee issue is about to flare up again. However he’s wrong if he believes that the disgraceful actions of the Indonesian government absolve Australia of its responsibility to treat asylum seekers humanely.
According to The Australian, the Indonesian authorities assisted a boatful of suspected asylum seekers and “pushed them back into the sea without enough fuel to reach Australia”. Somehow, Gareth thinks this should negate claims by the refugee lobby of our “moral culpability for and responibility to these people”.
I disagree. It depends, of course, on the course of action the Australian government decides to take if and when the boat reaches Australia’s territorial waters. Sadly, its track record and Philip Ruddock’s recent suggestion that “the boats could be turned back” suggest that we wish to be involved in the potential deaths of these asylum seekers.
If, as Gareth points out, we know that they are riding in unseaworthy vessels without enough fuel for the journey, we have a moral responsibility to rescue them from their predicament. It would be an outrage to simply point them in the other direction and then, when their boat sinks, say “they drowned in Indonesian waters so it’s not our problem”.
It’s not a matter of absolving the Indonesians and blaming Australia. If both parties fail to respond humanely to the asylum seekers, then both parties should be condemned in the event of a catastrophe.
It is interesting to see what The Australian — the journal which reported Indonesia’s failure to adequately supply the boat — has to say about “the ragbag of mean-spirited tactics” that Gareth seeks to justify:
Nor can Australia rely on the Indonesians to stop these or other craft. We can hope for their co-operation on illegal migrants transiting through their ports, but they cannot prevent the passengers and crew of apparently seaworthy vessels, who have broken no local law, from leaving their ports. This problem belongs to the Australian Government alone, and if either of these boats reaches our coasts the Government must treat the passengers far differently to the reception provided for the boatpeople of 2001. The navy must be allowed to follow its traditions and honour the law of the sea. Boats that are unfit for the ocean should be brought into our ports. Their passengers should have their claims for residency promptly assessed. Those who turn out to be “economic migrants” seeking a better life and who do not meet our immigration criteria should be returned home. Australia does not and cannot accept all comers. But any who have a well-founded fear of persecution if they are returned should receive the asylum that is theirs by moral and legal right under the international law that Australia has freely endorsed. And we should not consign any of those who constitute no threat to Australia to prisons — be they in the outback or on Pacific islands — while their claims are considered. Whatever the case of these and any other boatpeople who reach our shores, locking them up is not a practice any Australian should welcome.
Passing the buck is not acceptable. Australia should take the lead in treating asylum seekers with dignity. Maybe then Indonesia would follow.
