PROFESSOR MARY CROCK (UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY) – 1st November 2009
Well, call it what you will - "the Indonesian solution", "the
Rudd solution" or "the not-in-my-backyard policy" - the bunfight
preoccupying both the Government and the Opposition of late has had an
on-the-nose whiff of the 2001 'Tampa' affair about it. It seems that,
eight years on, Australia's politicians still find the issue of 'boat
people' a little too tricky to touch. Some have gone so far as to
suggest you might be able to get a cigarette paper between Kevin Rudd
and John Howard on this issue, but only just! One of a growing chorus
of critical reactions to the debate raging around the 78 Sri Lankans on
the 'Oceanic Viking' has come from Sydney University's migration law
expert Professor Mary Crock. Earlier she joined George Negus here in
the studio.
GEORGE NEGUS: Professor, it's good to see you, because this
obsession,
as you call it, this expedient obsession that Australian politicians
have got with boat people and the like is engulfing the country at the
moment. What is it about leaky boats - as distinct from any other way
of coming to this country - that has us all preoccupied?
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK, UNIVERSITY OF SYDNEY: I think there's a very deep
historical fear of invasion, in Australia, by the sea. We're not unique
in that respect. Many countries around the world overreact when people
come by boat and seek asylum.
GEORGE NEGUS: Right! I hadn't thought of that. So it's because
countries are usually invaded by boat that people seem to be so worried
and preoccupied by this?
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK: Well, there are prehistoric precedents for that.
GEORGE NEGUS: Yeah. Even though there are a lot of people who
come here
by plane - a lot more by plane - and apply for political asylum and
quite often get it.
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK: This is not a question of numbers. We've had
many, many people coming here and claiming asylum over many years. We
don't get concerned about that. There are a number of reasons why
governments are concerned about boat arrivals. People who come by plane
are at least processed to some extent - they present their passports to
get into the country and so on. Whereas, people who come by boat come
without any documentation of any kind and they haven't had any health
or character checking at all. So, there are obvious concerns that are
very valid for governments.
GEORGE NEGUS: Let me put it to you this way. The situation
that the
Rudd Government has got itself into and this boat that's still floating
around like the 'Marie Celeste' with these Tamil people on it - is it
legal, is it moral and is it good politics?
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK: The situation is a complex one. The boat was in
the Indonesian search-and-rescue zone. It was approached by an
Australian Government vessel - that's true - and we took the
asylum-seekers on board, but we did so at the behest of Indonesia. It's
very different from other situations, where asylum-seekers are on the
high seas and closer to Australia - for example, the 'Tampa', it was
within four hours of Australia, 12 hours of Indonesia.
GEORGE NEGUS: Let me interrupt you there. So, seeing that we
agreed to
that - the Indonesians asked us for help and we picked up the people
from this boat - does that make it our responsibility or their
responsibility? Because words like 'duck shove' and 'not in my
backyard' spring to my mind every time I hear this story. We appear to
be avoiding this issue and not taking our international responsibility.
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK: Well, this is a very complex situation. You have
two countries in close proximity. We have people-smugglers who've
established a route through Indonesia to Australia. These people are
asylum-seekers. Some of them will be genuine refugees, to which both
Australia and Indonesia owes obligations. The complication in our
region is that Australia is a signatory to the refugee convention, but
Indonesia isn't.
GEORGE NEGUS: That's very significant, isn't it? Because if we
- to use
the term, and some people have - 'dump' those people on Indonesian
territory we've got no guarantee of how they're going to be treated as
refugees.
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK: Well, it is and it isn't. I think what is
significant is that Indonesia has invited UNHCR - the United Nations
body responsible for refugees - into its territory and does allow UNHCR
to do processing there. It's not as if we are in a complete vacuum from
the point of view of international law. The problem is that nobody on
earth really wants to encourage people to go by these leaking boats -
they're extraordinarily dangerous, we've had an enormous amount of loss
of life at sea in recent years. Before the 2001 election we had 353
people die in one single incident. Nobody wants that to happen again.
So you have to try and devise a policy that is going to stop people
from taking to the boats and at the same time handle sensitively the
people, the refugees, who are on board the boats. With respect, I think
the biggest problem here is we have a complex international political
situation, where we have a country in our region - Sri Lanka - with a
huge volume of asylum-seekers - and they ARE refugees …..
GEORGE NEGUS: After 25 years of civil war.
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK:….. who want to leave the country. They
are going to do so by any means. Until we actually go to the source and
not just talk to Indonesia but talk to Sri Lanka, with other countries
- we're not the only country receiving these asylum-seekers. What we
need here is a comprehensive plan of action that allows for the orderly
departure of people who've got relatives in countries like Australia
and Canada so that they do not have to resort to the people-smugglers.
You have to try to beat the people-smugglers at their game.
GEORGE NEGUS: To your knowledge, has the Australian Government
been
speaking to the Sri Lankan Government? Is that what Kevin Rudd should
be doing? More than engaging himself in this circumlocutory debate with
Malcolm Turnbull, shouldn't he actually be on the phone - or on the
boat, if you like, on the plane - to Sri Lanka to say, "We are
suffering from the end result of this. "What are you doing here to
allow this to happen?"
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK: I do feel some sympathy for the Rudd Government
because I think the Opposition is playing ridiculous domestic politics.
When the 'Tampa' affair was at its height, the Opposition stood
shoulder to shoulder with the Government and tried not to make politics
out of it. What we have here that's so different if you've got the
Opposition trying to play domestic politics with an international
situation, and it's like putting free advertising on the internet
saying, "Australia is in chaos. "Asylum-seekers of the world come
here."
GEORGE NEGUS: Why isn't the United Nations High Commission for
Refugees
talking to us - instructing us, if you like, encouraging us - on what
our obligations are and how we fulfil them? It seems to me that they're
sitting on the sideline watching this idiotic situation unravel.
Shouldn't they be putting the heavies on us?
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK: Look, UNHCR has very good relations with the
Australian Government. They are in discussions - there's no doubt about
that. The point is, though, that these asylum-seekers were picked up in
Indonesian waters and if Australia backs down with these it actually
really weakens their position relative to Indonesia and the sharing
that has to go on there. They are also playing a double game of
politics with Australia and politics versus asylum-seekers because
neither Australia nor Indonesia wants to get flooded with
asylum-seekers and the more that they play this game the more people -
they hope - are going to be discouraged.
GEORGE NEGUS: Had Australia NOT when they picked up those
Tamil people
off that boat, the 78, had they not headed to Indonesia - because they
were in Indonesian search and rescue waters - had they headed for
Christmas Island instead where would we be at now? Would we be talking
now about this situation if Australia had done that - said, "We know
it's not legally or necessarily our job to do this "but we'll take them
to Christmas Island and process them, "find out whether they're
asylum-seekers "and keep them in Australia or send them back home." We
wouldn't be talking now if they had have done that.
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK: Of course not, but the problem is when you make
one decision it's like a domino effect and you often can't go back to
undo it. My great disappointment is that the Rudd Government didn't do
more when they could have at the start before all of this blew up to
dismantle the whole of the Christmas Island processing regime, which is
not working - it's a waste of time a huge waste of money and it's not
deterring a single person. We shouldn't be processing people on
Christmas Island. Everybody's been saying it. We have, still, two
different regimes for the determination of refugee status in Australia
- one for people who make it to the mainland and one for people who are
stopped before they come here. That sits uneasily under international
law. As a matter of cost, as a matter of law, of humanity, we should
just have one system - it would be cheaper, easier, to bring everyone
to Australia and have done with it.
GEORGE NEGUS: If we can erase the term 'boat people' from our
mind and
our mentality they might be a lot better off.
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK: I think the point to make here is that boat
people are not going to go away. We've been talking about people
fleeing from a civil conflict here. Part of this whole debate has been
to distract our attention from the environment debate. If we don't do
something in the environment, we are going to have a lot of people
coming.
GEORGE NEGUS: If we think we've got a problem now, watch out!
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK: That's right.
GEORGE NEGUS: So we'd better get ourselves prepared for that.
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK: Particularly in the Pacific - Kiribati, Tuvalu,
they're going down.
GEORGE NEGUS: Stay tuned, folks - it hasn't finished yet.
Thanks for
talking to us, Professor. Thank you very much.
PROFESSOR MARY CROCK: Pleasure. How depressing.