Radio Australia Today Editorial

Australia Day and asylum seekers

26 January 2010

The first thing most us woke up to on this Australia Day was the news that the newly crowned Australian of the Year, Professor Patrick McGorry, has taken it up to the Australian prime minister about asylum seeker detention centres, calling them factories for mental illness.

His argument is that they house people who are, by and large, people who are fleeing persecution. Many fear (at best) reprisals, and at worst, death if returned to their homeland.

Professor McGorry says the absolutely wrong way to treat such people is to put them behind razor wire on isolated islands while their future is being decided by people they don’t know. Professor McGorry says Australia should put asylum seekers into the community as residents while their refugee claims are assessed. This is something not likely to happen in the current political climate, but it is a humane suggestion.

The humanity of our refugee policy certainly is in the Australian media this morning with the reports of the inquest into the explosion of an boat carrying 47 Afghan asylum seekers last April. Five asylum seekers died in the explosion, and many others were seriously burned.

The boat was being towed by a naval vessel to Christmas Island, when someone on-board lit a container of fuel, which exploded. The video shown to the inquest as graophic and quite disturning, showing the moment when the explosion happened.

Here is a Defence Force photo of the aftermath:

The inquest was told, by the Counsel Assisting the Inquest, that the navy made a few errors. It allowed the asylum seekers to keep their cigarette lighters and matches; it did not know that there was spare flammable liquid on-board the boat; and provocatively, had issued the asylum seekers with letters that insisted that they go back to Indonesia. According to the Counsel, it was that clause in this letter that stirred the emotions, and it was a clause that should never have been inserted, since the asylum seekers were in Australian waters anyway.

Whoever lit the fuel may still face charges, if they are discovered, but the final point of this story is that all the asylum seekers that survived the explosion were found to be genuine refugees. They were not ‘queue-jumpers’; they were not ‘economic refugees’. They were fleeing persecution.

This does bring home Professor McGorry’s claims about the mental stress that asylum seekers are under, and makes us question just how carefully such people should be treated. Respect is a good place to start.

- Phil Kafcaloudes