SYDNEY LETTER:Following last week's sinking of a refugee boat off Australia, the prime minister has been accused of having blood on his hands, writes PADRAIG COLLINS
THE VAST majority of asylum seekers coming to Australia arrive on commercial flights armed with tourist or student visas, not on rickety wooden boats armed only with the shirts on their backs.
Not that you would know it from the base rhetoric following last week’s sinking of a refugee boat and the deaths of five of those onboard. Yesterday, another boat carrying 32 asylum seekers was intercepted off the northwest coast.
Shadow immigration minister Sharman Stone last week immediately accused prime minister Kevin Rudd and his government of having blood on its hands.
“You can’t slash funds, you can’t take your eye off the ball, you can’t announce a softer policy and then expect people not to lose their lives through people-smuggling efforts,” she said.
But the latest UN high commissioner for refugees’ report says only 179 of the 4,750 asylum applicants in Australia last year came by boat.
The numbers are increasing, with the latest boat being the seventh to arrive in Australian waters this year, bringing some 200 refugees in all, but this is minuscule in comparison with the 290,000 asylum claims made in Europe last year, including 3,870 in Ireland.
An investigation into how a boat containing 49 Afghanis exploded and sank last week is now under way. Western Australia’s premier Colin Barnett had not been prepared to wait for an inquiry – saying within hours of the boat’s sinking that it had been deliberately doused in petrol. “It is understood that persons on the boat spread petrol and that ignited, causing an explosion,” he said.
While this may turn out to be the case, Western Australia is not in charge of the investigation, despite being the closest state to where the incident happened in Ashmore Reef, 240 nautical miles from the mainland.
Instead, an obscure 1930s law means the Northern Territory has jurisdiction over the reef. Northern Territory, like Australia’s federal government, is controlled by Labor, while Western Australia has a Liberal/ National coalition government.
With more than 40 survivors, many suffering serious burns, being treated at hospitals in Perth, Brisbane and Darwin, the Northern Territory’s chief minister, Paul Henderson, has appealed for speculation to stop until the police complete their inquiries.
But 29 of these survivors will have fewer rights than their fellow asylum seekers because they were first taken to an oil rig after their boat sank.
As the rig is not considered part of Australia’s migration zone, they are not entitled to the same assistance as those who were brought directly to the mainland for treatment.
David Manne of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre says they will be precluded from accessing Australian law if they claim refugee status. “We are not talking about a fencing dispute here,” he told ABC radio. “We are talking about people who are coming here seeking protection from persecution, from brutality, from torture, from tyranny.
“The stakes could hardly be higher, and in that context, one would hope that at very least the basic safeguards were put in place that ordinarily apply to the Australian legal system, to ensure that the decision that is made is fair and is correct.”
Some Liberal MPs say they want a return to the type of immigration policy the party held while in government under John Howard. In 2001, when Norwegian boat the Tampa rescued 438 Afghan refugees but was refused entry into Australian waters, Mr Howard famously said: “We will decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances in which they come.”
But there has been no clear, uniform line from the Liberals on what should be done. While some MPs called for a return of the Howard-era temporary protection visas which deprived holders of the rights to travel or bring their families to Australia, others argued vehemently against this.
This led Mr Rudd to label the opposition a shambles. “Chaos, confusion and opportunism. That’s what we see from dawn till night with every statement by the Liberal Party on border protection policy,” he said.
Amid all the mud-slinging by politicians from all sides, the doctors and nurses treating the injured refugees are getting on with their job.
At the National Critical Care and Trauma Centre, established at Royal Darwin Hospital after the 2002 Bali bombing, Dr Len Notaras said: “The staff on this site will never lose sight of what we are about, and that is the human being.”
One patient in particular had an effect on Dr Notaras. “He was wearing a tattered T-shirt, and burnt and tattered shorts. I felt very sad. I don’t know the man, I don’t know his background, but all I could think of this person is: been on a small boat, been in an explosion, been transported and now he’s here in circumstances [in which] he has no idea what’s going to happen next.”
Whatever happens to the asylum seekers, there is no doubt the political point scoring will continue.