Media Release
For release: Monday July 25, 2011
The Australian Christian Lobby has welcomed the Australian Government’s asylum seeker swap arrangement announced today.
“This agreement means Australia will be more generous with its humanitarian intake, give priority to people already assessed as refugees by the United Nations High Commission on Refugees but who don’t have the money to pay a people smuggler, and discourages the activities of criminal people smugglers,” ACL Managing Director Jim Wallace said today.
Mr Wallace welcomed assurances by Prime Minister Julia Gillard that those returned to Malaysia would have their welfare monitored by an oversight committee that would include representatives from the UNHCR.
“However, the welfare of these people once returned to Malaysia will require continued monitoring by Australian officials to ensure that the Australian community’s expectations of humane treatment is met.”
Mr Wallace said that nonetheless it was disappointing that the people smuggling trade had re-started when all that was needed was some fine-tuning of aspects the Howard Government’s successful anti-people smuggling policies to make them fairer and more compassionate.
Your support for the “Malaysia” policy is surprising in two respects.
First, your willingness to accept that the Malaysian authorities will keep their word – an unlikely outcome.
Secondly, that you think this will solve the boat arrivals problem. In fact, it will only exacerbate the situation. Any sensible person will now catch a boat to Australia, hoping to be intercepted. They will then be transferred to Malaysia, where they will be allowed to have a job and have their family health and education paid for by the Australian Government.
While not as good as being held in Australia, it is the next best thing. These new arrivals will be treated much better than the many tens of thousands already in camps in Indonesia and Malaysia. Those people have none of the new “Australian” privileges and will feel deep resentment towards these new arrivals (in Malaysia) who are treated much better.
So you should expect boat arrivals to increase sharply, with no benefit to Australia at all.
While you are correct that this policy is good for the 4,000 people coming to Australia, its overall adverse consequences are negative.
There is also the Christian question of trading people (for whatever reason). Overall, this does not seem to be morally correct.
I’m not sure why you are chiming in on this issue, and the side you are taking.
Surely the best result is just increasing the numbers we take, rather than sending asylum seekers away (many of whom were already assessed as refugees by UNHCR) to a country that has had 1200 asylum seeker deaths from 2002-2008, and who still won’t sign up to the convention. Surely this is like sending a child to an abusive foster parent.
I really don’t agree that the Malaysia asylum seeker swap arrangement is a good outcome for anybody, least of all the refugees. It is common knowledge that Malaysia has a dreadful human rights record and there is NO guarantee that these folk will be singled out for special humanitarian treatment by the Malaysian authorities. They can easily tell the Australian government one thing whilst these people are swallowed up in a sea of exploitation and abuse, especially vulnerable children, particularly girls.
It would appear to be another case of “passing the buck” by this weak Government!
I was stunned to read the response of the ACL to the Government’s deal with Malaysia concerning asylum seekers. Yes, it’s good that we are accepting those refugees, but shocking that future asylum seekers will be processes overseas, kept for goodness knows how long, and sent who knows where?
I have been visiting the unaccompanied boys in the detention centre at Broadmeadows for some months – mostly boys about 17, and the majority from Afghanistan. I am aware of the awful depression of many of them, at the months of doubt about their future & their families in bad situations back home – and that’s in the well-cared for centre in Melbourne! One boy’s family sold their house so that he could come here. And as he said
“The Taliban would probably take it from them anyhow..
Some people at our church are visitors, have boys living with them, & in some cases have become foster parents.
So much is talked about the people smugglers, but not enough about the people living in such dangerous & stressful situations, who have no Embassy to appeal to for help to leave their country.