Desperation, Displacement and Detention: Australia’s Treatment of Asylum Seekers Past and Present The Hon Judi Moylan MP (Liberal Party) was elected to the Australian House of Representatives in 1993. She is currently the Deputy Chair of the Standing Committee on Social Policy and Legal Affairs1. Few matters have been more fiercely debated in the Australian Parliament or more unsparingly ventilated in the media than the recent and ongoing treatment of asylum seekers arriving by boat. To understand what motivates a democratic government in peacetime to implement policies that imprison indefinitely thousands of men, women and children who have not been charged with or convicted of any crime we must turn to historical, social and political attitudes. Though countries around the world guard their sovereign powers jealously to determine who may enter, the treatment of asylum seekers in Australia has been particularly high profile and divisive. This article seeks to understand why. The White Australia Policy Immigration has been contentious in Australia since the early days of European settlement. It was an issue during the establishment of the Federal Parliament in 1901 when two early bills underpinned what became known as the ‘White Australia Policy’. The Pacific Islanders Act prohibited islanders from entering Australia and the Immigration Restriction Act imposed an English language test, effectively barring entry for most non-English speaking people. One Member of Parliament (MP) said: ‘No matter what measures are necessary, Australia must be kept pure for the British race who have begun to inhabit it.’2 Between 1945 and 1955 one million immigrants came to Australia. Even after the Menzies government signed up to the 1951 UN Convention (the Convention), refugees continued to be selected according to the colour of their skin. It took another seven years for the controversial English language test to be abolished by the passage of The Migration Act 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 16 1958, and over a decade before skilled Asian immigrants had the same rights as Europeans to settle in Australia.3 In 1972, newly elected Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam took the final legal steps to dismantle the ‘White Australia Policy,’ although he had shown little sympathy for Indo-Chinese refugees.4 As waves of Indo-Chinese refugees arrived, concerns grew about porous borders. Following the double dissolution that ended Whitlam’s prime-ministership and led to fresh national elections, the incoming Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, was determined that IndoChinese refugees would not be incarcerated longterm in camps. For the next decade, regional cooperation between prospective host countries with Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam saw these refugees resettled in the USA, Canada and Australia.5 The government and the Labor opposition forged bi-partisan cooperation on a non-racial immigration and multicultural policy. That cooperation evaporated when the Labor party expressed hostility to large intakes of Indo-Chinese, colloquially referred to as ‘boat people’ during the 1977 election campaign. The debate foreshadowed views expressed 25 years later — that ‘boat people’ were avoiding the proper channels, that they were merely economic migrants, and that they needed to be deterred by harsh policies. 6 Nevertheless, mature leadership ensured that at this time Indo-Chinese ‘boat people’ were sympathetically received by the public as ‘genuine’ refugees.7 Asylum seekers arriving by boat were not in locked detention centres although they were held in a facility where they had to attend rollcall each day and which they could not leave until their case was resolved. They were processed by the Immigration Department and provided permanent residence without delay.8 The Hon Judi Moylan is a former Minister for Family Services, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on the Status of Women and former Chair of the Joint Standing Committee on Public Works (1999-2007). The Hon William McMillan MP, Member for Wentworth, Immigration Restriction Bill, Hansard, September 6, 1901, Australian Parliament. Communications Branch, Department of Immigration, Fact Sheet 8, Australian Government 2009. Fr. Frank Brennan, Tampering With Asylum, p74, University of Queensland 2006. The Australian Government pressed the UN to hold international conferences, which then developed these plans to deal with the problem of Indo-Chinese refugees. Senator Mulvihill, argued that ‘if a person wants to get into this country quickly he should not line up at an Embassy; he should be one of the artful dodgers.’ Hansard, 22nd March, 1977, Australian Parliament. Fr. Frank Brennan, Tampering With Asylum, p32, University of Queensland 2006. Janet Phillips and Harriet Spinks, Immigration Detention in Australia, January 23, 2012, p3 of 43, Social Policy Section Parliament of Australia. Prison Service Journal Issue 205