Prominent refugee advocate Julian Burnside has rejected claims offshore detention of asylum seekers is about saving lives.
Speaking at a forum at Victoria University’s Footscray Park campus on Thursday, Mr Burnside accused both major parties of whipping up anti-asylum seeker sentiment for political ends.
He said the last federal election was the first in Australia’s political history in which both parties tried to outpromise each other in the cruelty with which they would deal with a group of human beings.
“I hope we never see it again, we really should be ashamed of this country. Imagine if they had promised cruelty to animals; they would lose. What does that say about this community? It’s a very unsettling thought.”
Mr Burnside traced the issue back to the use of the word illegal at the time of the Tampa incident.
“John Howard [then Prime Minister] called boat people illegals, he also called them queue jumpers and said they had thrown their children in the sea which was false. Scott Morrison [now Immigration Minister] has been particularly vigorous on this,” he said.
“All of this is calculated in the mind of the average person that these are dangerous criminals.”
Mr Burnside said the term ‘illegals’ had “very shabby origins” in being used to describe the Jews leaving Germany under the shadow of the Nazis.
“The idea is that if you demonise a group for long enough you can brutalise them as much as you wish and if you can pitch it as you are protecting the community from them, then you will win their support.”
Mr Burnside floated two solutions he said would improve our international standing and save Australia billions of dollars.
“If the politicians are genuine in their concern about asylum seekers drowning, what they need to do is start cooperating with Indonesia and Malaysia as well establishing a genuine processing centre in those countries, and then offer them swift, safe resettlement to another country once they are accepted as refugees.”
The other part of the plan is settling asylum seekers in rural and regional areas while their claims are processed and allowing them to work.
VU student Gabriel Auyen also spoke, sharing the story of his long and dangerous journey from war-torn South Sudan to Australia.
He said he did not want children to go through what he went through, describing life in a refugee camp as “hell on earth”.
“Being a refugee you have no difference with a prisoner. If you asked an unaccompanied minor today ‘how is his life in immigration detention’ they would tell you definitely it is hell on earth.”
Western suburbs Greens MP Colleen Hartland told the forum she was a “Tampa Green”.
“I joined the Greens in the week that Prime Minister John Howard said ‘we will decide who comes into this country’; I decided that I could not take the shame as an Australian of accepting that statement in my name.”
