‘Moral’ policy urged for refugees

Governments and communities trying to deal with the problem of refugees and asylum seekers should focus less on the minutiae of international laws and conventions and more on working out what was the “decent” and “moral” thing to do, an Australian professor of law and immigration expert suggested last night.

Prof Frank Brennan said that the United Nations refugee convention had become a substitute, for both governments and what he described as the refugee lobby, for a necessary discussion on appropriate ethical, moral and legal ways of dealing with the problem. “This is not just about the letter of the law,” he said. “It is about finding out what is decent.”

He was delivering the annual Keith Cameron Lecture at the UCD School of History and Archives. Prof Brennan, who is a Jesuit, comes from Australian immigrant stock. An Irish predecessor, a widow named Annie Brennan, left Ireland in 1863 for Queensland with her five children. Prof Brennan told how two aboriginal people helped her ship, and its immigrant passengers, find safe port when they arrived.

Less helpful welcome

He was not sure that illegal immigrants arriving in

Australia

today would be given as helpful a welcome. More likely they would be transported to offshore islands, there to languish while their claims to asylum were processed.

Responding to a question about the direct provision system here, he said his understanding of its origin was that people were to be housed for perhaps six months while their applications were dealt with. In that regard, it was better than the Australian system of detaining people. However, he said, when people were left in limbo for indeterminate periods, it was unjust. “When it goes on for five years, you are actually starting to destroy people’s lives.”

At the same time, governments faced real problems with mass movements of people fleeing war or persecution, or seeking better lives.

“When dealing with this issue, what we have seen in Australia is that, particularly at election time, governments see that it is very easy to demonise these people and to demonise the political leaders who have created a policy situation which resulted in this sort of situation,” he said. “But when it comes to what is to be done, my general advice to refugee groups has been ‘softly, softly. . .’”