On Borrowed Time

by Robert Manne

  PARTY POLITICS: HOWARD’S CURSE

  It is obvious that the Tampa “crisis” of August–September 2001 was the most important moment in the creation of Australia’s contemporary asylum-seeker policies. There is no need to rehearse what happened once again. For obvious reasons, the creation of the offshore processing centres and, even more importantly, the use of the Australian navy to turn back asylum-seeker boats to Indonesia was crucial for the future.

  What, however, is less often discussed is the way in which the prime minister, John Howard, spurned the bipartisanship over asylum-seeker policy offered him by Kim Beazley, and the long-term consequences of his political opportunism. During Tampa, Beazley supported every radical measure taken by the government. The only bridge too far for Beazley was a bill that denied that it would be a criminal offence for a border control official to take the life of an asylum seeker.

  Howard seized on that caveat. For the purpose of the 2001 election and in the election campaigns of 2004, 2010, 2013 and 2016 (with 2007 being the exception), the Coalition has profitably been able to accuse Labor of being weak on border protection. It was not only Tony Abbott who based his prime ministerial credentials on the success of his border control policies. In the 2016 election campaign, Malcolm Turnbull used the trope of Labor’s weakness on border security as the one populist element in what was essentially a non-populist election pitch.

  The consequence of this has been that over the past fifteen years the chance of an even remotely humane reform of the system carries with it the chance of severe electoral punishment for the Labor Party. The only hope now for a return of some humanity to the policy is the willingness of a Coalition government to initiate such reform, or to offer Labor bipartisanship in trying to work together to find a less cruel and ruinous policy. I call the last fifteen years of opportunistic partisan contention over asylum-seeker policy “Howard’s curse”.

  BUREAUCRATIC INERTIA: AUTOMATICITY

  The history of anti–asylum seeker border control policy is a history of deterrence measures. The first two that were tried – mandatory detention and temporary protection – failed, at least as measured by the absolutist standards of the immigration authorities. The second two measures that were introduced by the Howard government in the spring of 2001 – offshore processing and forcible turnback to point of departure – succeeded. Between 2002 and 2007, virtually no boats reached Australia.

  What is interesting about this history is the force of bureaucratic inertia, the continued expansion of the system in a way that was unrelated to evidence or experience. It was clear by the second half of 2002 that the combination of offshore processing and turnback had successfully stopped the arrival of asylum-seeker boats. It was also clear by late 2013 that the combination of offshore processing, naval turnback and Kevin Rudd’s July 2013 addition, no settlement in Australia, ever – which I call “Rudd’s curse” – had once again successfully stopped the boats. Yet in both cases this fact had no influence in softening policy with regard to the earlier deterrent measures – mandatory detention and temporary protection – which had by now been rendered entirely redundant. The ends had been achieved by other means. Yet the earlier means were nonetheless retained.

  How is the purposelessness of this cruelty – which is presently rendering the lives of 30,000 refugees or asylum seekers in Australia miserable – to be explained? In his analysis of post-totalitarian Czechoslovakia, The Power of the Powerless, Vaclav Havel outlines in some detail a system that no longer serves any interest – where within the system both the relation of different measures to each other and the relation of means to ends had long been forgotten by everyone. He calls the engine that drives this system “automaticity”.

  Despite the fact that no asylum-seeker boats now reach Australia, in essence because of the success of the turnback policy, the mandatory detention system is maintained, refugees are granted temporary visas that offer no hope of citizenship or permanent settlement; some asylum seekers who cannot be deported are still locked away indefinitely; refugees and asylum seekers who have been sent to offshore processing centres are left to rot there permanently. The force of bureaucratic inertia, the reign of automaticity, helps explain the purposeless cruelty of so much of the current asylum-seeker system.

  GROUPTHINK

  There has been only one time in the history of the anti–asylum seeker border protection policy where deterrent measures were dismantled. Rudd abandoned both offshore processing and turnback, although his government retained a limited form of mandatory detention. At the time I thought this partial dismantling a risk. I now think it a mistake.

  The consequence of the dismantling of the two most successful dimensions of the deterrent system was the arrival between 2009 and 2013 of some 50,000 asylum seekers by boat and more than 1000 drownings. Because of this experience, a curious mindset, which was already present in the Howard years, came to dominate the key policymakers and immigration public servants during the period of both the Abbott and Turnbull governments.

  The mindset suggested that if even one brick in the asylum seeker–deterrent system was removed, the entire building would collapse. By now the immigration minister, the immigration department and the relevant defence officials all agreed with each other that large numbers of boats would return if even the slightest change was allowed to be made to the anti–asylum seeker edifice that had been constructed over the past twenty-five years.

  Let one example of this strange mindset suffice. In late 2015 doctors and nurses at the Royal Children’s Hospital announced that they would not return the handful of gravely damaged children under their care to a detention centre in Melbourne. The minister, Peter Dutton, responded by saying that the result of their irresponsible behaviour would be naval officers pulling the bodies of dead children from the ocean. The minister apparently sincerely believed that freeing a few children from detention in Melbourne would send an international signal to the people smugglers that would see a return of the boats and the drownings.

  This was telling evidence of how far by now officials in Canberra have lost touch with reality. Officials now believe that one act of human decency will lead to an armada of asylum-seeker boats setting out for Australia. One reason for the purposeless cruelty of the current asylum-seeker policy is, then, the severe case of groupthink – the willingness of intelligent people to still their critical capacities in the interest of conformity – that now afflicts Canberra.

  THE BANALITY OF EVIL

  At present more than 2000 men, women and children are slowly being destroyed in body and spirit. Some are being destroyed because they have been marooned on Nauru and Manus Island for two years or more. A small number of refugees or asylum seekers have been imprisoned for several years in Australia because of the existence of an adverse ASIO file, or because Iran will not accept involuntary repatriation. Among the families of those who were brought from Nauru to Australia for medical treatment, 300 now live in daily, crippling fear of return.

  I am certain that the immigration and defence officials who are responsible for administering the policy are not sadists. There is thus something further about our willingness to inflict such cruelty that needs to be explained.

  The most important idea in Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem is the banality of evil. The idea is usually misunderstood. In essence what Arendt tried to explain was how evil acts might be perpetrated by conventional individuals because of their blindness, their loss of the capacity to see what it was that they were doing. Arendt’s idea helped explain how the atmosphere created within Nazi Germany allowed the most extreme of all state-sponsored acts of political evil to appear to a conventional character like Eichmann to be normal.

  The extreme context from which the idea emerged does not mean, however, that the concept of the banality of evil cannot illuminate far smaller matters. A detailed moral history of Australia’s asylum-seeker policy since the introduction of mandatory detention in 1992 has not yet been written. W
hat it would reveal is the process whereby the arteries of the nation gradually hardened; how as a nation we gradually lost the capacity to see the horror of what it was that we were willing to do to innocent fellow human beings who had fled in fear and sought our help.

  In May 2016 an inmate on Nauru set himself on fire and died. Dutton argued in response that people self-immolate so they can get to Australia. It took thirty years of brutal behaviour for a remark like this to be possible and for Australians not to notice how truly remarkable was the minister’s brutality.

  *

  Our current uniquely harsh anti–asylum seeker policy is grounded in the absolutist ambitions that can, in my view, best be explained by Australia’s long-term migration history and its associated culture of control. It has become entrenched because of the force of bureaucratic inertia that has seen the system grow automatically while any interest in, or understanding of, the relation of means to ends has been lost. And it is presently maintained by an irrational but consensual mindset that has Canberra in its grip: the conviction that even one concession to human kindness will send a message to the people smugglers and bring the whole system crashing down.

  Because of these factors, the prime minister, the minister for immigration and the senior officials of immigration and defence are presently allowing the lives of some 2000 human beings to be destroyed on the basis of faulty but unquestioned speculation, and of another 30,000 in Australia to be rendered acutely insecure and anxious for no purpose. They are willing to allow this to happen because they no longer possess, in the Arendtian sense, the ability to see what it is that they are doing, and because the majority of the nation has become accustomed to thinking of what we are doing as perfectly normal.

  POSTSCRIPT

  A year has passed since this analysis. Shortly after it was written, the Turnbull government announced that a deal had been struck with the Obama administration whereby up to 1250 refugees on Nauru and Manus Island would be settled in the United States. Within the logic of Canberra groupthink – remove one brick and the house will fall down – it was assumed that a signal had been sent that would very likely revive the people-smuggling trade. Accordingly, when the US deal was announced, Malcolm Turnbull mobilised new naval forces in the Indian Ocean to intercept and repel the anticipated armada of asylum seeker boats.

  No asylum seeker boats set sail. This ought to have caused a thorough re-evaluation of refugee policy. As it happened, no policy reconsideration occurred. The refugee groupthink was by now so deeply embedded in the minds of Canberra politicians and public servants that contradictory evidence from the real world was very effectively repelled. Even after the announcement of the Obama-Turnbull deal, supposedly involving 1250 refugees, New Zealand’s more modest offer of 150 refugee places continued to be refused. Irrationally, the government clung to their belief that the New Zealand offer, or indeed even the smallest act of humanity extended to asylum seekers and refugees in Australia or Nauru and Manus Island, would inevitably lead to the revival of the people smuggling trade. The automaticity of policy prevailed. The relation of policy means to ends had long been forgotten. Evidence challenging the raison d’etre of the policy had become irrelevant.

  It was also notable that the Labor Party failed to challenge the by now redundant government position. Once more, the reason is straightforward. It feared that if Shorten Labor announced its willingness to settle any of 2000 refugees and asylum seekers we had sent to Nauru and Manus Island in Australia, its supposed weakness on border security would be ruthlessly exploited by the Turnbull (or Dutton?) Coalition. Both “Howard’s curse” – the full bipartisanship of cruelty – and “Rudd’s curse” – not even one of the refugees who had been despatched to Nauru and Manus Island since 2012 must ever be allowed to settle in Australia – remain firmly (and tragically) in place.

  As everyone knows, shortly after assuming office, the new US president, Donald Trump, spoke to Turnbull by phone. Not long after, the transcript of the Trump-Turnbull conversation was leaked to the Washington Post. Turnbull raised the deal he had struck with Obama. Trump described the Obama offer as “dumb”. Nonetheless, most likely because Australia had been such an unquestioning, lamb-like ally of the United States for such a long time, Trump grudgingly agreed to honour his predecessor’s “dumb” deal. When Prime Minister Turnbull explained the absolutism of Australia’s policy to Trump – the total ban on settling even one asylum seeker who reached our shores by boat – the US president was both somewhat taken aback and mightily impressed. Here was a country whose refugee policy was even nastier than the one he supported.

  In their phone conversation, Turnbull helpfully informed Trump that as long as US officials conducted interviews with at least some asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island, even if none were settled, the United States would have fulfilled their side of the bargain. Most likely, officials in Trump’s America took the hint. A full year after Turnbull announced the Obama deal, a mere fifty refugees of the supposed 1250 from Nauru and Manus Island have been accepted for settlement in the United States.

  On Manus Island and Nauru, most of the refugees have by now been marooned for three or four years. As the American dream has gradually faded, they are now in an even more hopeless situation than before. Irrefutable evidence of their despair has emerged – for example, the Guardian’s publication of the scarifying case notes of social workers on Nauru. The public did not give a damn.

  Over time, Australia’s asylum seeker policy has created a topsy-turvy world. Refugee acts of self-harm and even suicide are now routinely condemned as childish moral blackmail. Cold government indifference to the unspeakable pain that its policies have inflicted is now widely praised as politically wise and even courageous. The majority of Australians have by now become so blind to the suffering their governments have casually inflicted on refugees over the past twenty years – from the barbed wire of Woomera to the detention camps of Nauru and Manus Island – that nothing it seems can restore their sight. Evil-doing has come to seem truly banal.

  It was left to the Port Moresby Supreme Court to try to teach Australia a legal and moral lesson. According to the court, the indefinite imprisonment of innocent people in Papua New Guinea is unlawful. As a result of this decision, the detention centre on Manus Island had to close. When it finally closed on 31 October 2017, its six hundred inmates were so fearful of what might become of them if they were forced to live on Manus Island unprotected that they refused to leave the detention centre. To force them out, food, power, medical supplies and water were cut off. The inmates dug wells so they could remain inside their Manus Island prison.

  Those wells ought to remain forever in our nation’s collective memory, as a symbol of the inhumanity to which our refugee policy has descended.

  The Conversation, 26 October 2016

  ‘Postscript’ from ABC Religion & Ethics, November 2017

  THERE IS A SOLUTION TO AUSTRALIA’S ASYLUM-SEEKER PROBLEM

  In late 2015 I met with a very senior official in the Turnbull government’s Border Force. We discussed the fact that the lives of 32,000 people who had sought asylum after August 2012 were slowly being destroyed despite the fact that not even one asylum-seeker boat had reached our shores during the previous two years. More than 2000 people were marooned on Nauru and Manus Island. Thirty thousand or more were living in Australia, but in a permanent state of fear and existential insecurity.

  The official explained that Australia relied upon its five-pronged system of border control – mandatory detention, temporary protection visas, offshore processing, turnback to point of departure after naval interception and the pledge that no asylum seeker in an offshore processing centre would ever be allowed to settle in Australia. If even one element was softened by even one humanitarian concession the whole system would come crashing down.

  What followed next astonished me. The official expanded on Canberra’s fears. It was the well-developed view of something called “intelligence” that as soon a
s border control policy was humanised in any way, a cabal of people smugglers would most likely conspire together to organise for an armada of perhaps fifty asylum-seeker boats to set out for Australia at the same time, thus overpowering the nation’s naval interception capacity.

  What was rather terrifying was that the official I talked to was both a decent human being and self-evidently sincere. Clearly, officials responsible for border control had been traumatised by the fact that between 2010 and 2013, during the Gillard years, some 50,000 asylum seekers on some 800 boats had reached Australia’s shores. Over the question of border control, “Canberra” had lost its collective mind.

  As we now know, throughout 2016 the Turnbull government recognised that the asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island could not be left to rot indefinitely in a situation certain both to break their spirits and their bodies and to earn for Australia the reputation as a vicious, selfish, ruthless and possibly racist nation among liberal-minded thinkers in every country across the globe. In semi-secret, a diplomat of ambassadorial rank was dispatched in search of a suitable country willing to offer settlement to the refugees on Nauru and Manus Island. In November 2016, the Turnbull government announced that such a country – the United States – had indeed been found.

  Clearly a deal had been done. Australia would settle refugees from Central America. The United States would settle refugees on Nauru and Manus Island. Then and still now, the details – who exactly, how many, when – were not clear. Even more disturbingly, following the election of Donald Trump to the US presidency, no one can be sure whether the United States will honour its side of the bargain.