The federal election campaign of 2013 was the first time in our political history that both major parties explicitly campaigned on a promise to be cruel to asylum seekers. They promised to treat asylum seekers so harshly that others would be deterred from seeking our help.



Since the election, we have witnessed our treatment of asylum seekers increase in brutality. This has been done, in large part, by Scott Morrison repeatedly referring to boat people as “illegal arrivals”. It is the great lie on which his campaign of cruelty is based. It ignores article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: “Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.” It ignores the fact that it is not an offence to come here, without papers, without an invitation, seeking asylum.

It is based on an alleged (but not genuine) concern about people drowning in their attempt to reach safety. When Morrison and Tony Abbott express a humanitarian concern about boat people drowning, they are lying. Their stance demonstrates a complete lack of concern for the lives of persecuted people who are unable to escape.

While it is undoubtedly tragic that people drown trying to escape persecution, if they do not escape, and are killed by their persecutors, they are just as dead as if they had drowned. For those unable to seek protection, Abbott and Morrison show no concern whatever; the argument is over.

I do not believe Abbott and Morrison have any genuine humanitarian concern about asylum seekers. They say they have stopped the boats. That is largely true; with a couple of exceptions, boats have stopped arriving. But we know they have not stopped setting out from Indonesia. We have been pushing them back. We are not allowed to know how many have drowned on those boats. It is an “on-water matter”, and so remains a secret.

Boat people who have managed to get here without drowning are treated with unparalleled harshness. They are treated as subhumans, in needlessly dreadful conditions in Nauru and Manus Island. Reza Barati was killed in the Manus Island detention centre by the people responsible for him; two guards have been charged with murder. Hamid Kehazaei died of septicaemia after cutting his foot in Manus Island, because the medical care for asylum seekers in detention centres run by Australia is hopelessly compromised.

Let us face the plain facts: innocent men, women and children are suffering terribly in detention centres, and their suffering is the intended result of Australia’s policy. As a nation, Australia is responsible for the misery and harm deliberately inflicted on boat people by our government.

Morrison bulldozed his refugee amendments through the Senate late last week, giving him unprecedented power. He said would remove children from detention if the Senate passed his amendments, but he already had the power to do so. His strategy, in any other context, would be the conduct of a kidnapper: “I will release the children, but only if you do what I demand.”

Under Morrison’s amendments, the principle of natural justice is removed, the supervisory role of the courts is removed, references to the convention in the migration act are removed. The minister now has the power to send a person to any country he chooses, even if that may involve a breach of our international obligations.

In the aftermath of the second world war, when the Nazi concentration camps were opened, the world drew breath in horror at what had happened. The great international human rights instruments – the UN refugee convention among them – were created. Most civilised nations resolved that such a horror should never happen again.

The point of the convention was to share the load of people fleeing persecution. Before the convention, countries adjacent to trouble spots bore the main burden of refugee movement. During the years leading up to the second world war, many Jews had tried to escape persecution. Notoriously, many countries turned them away. They tried all manner of desperate measures to get to safety.

Countries which have signed the convention are obliged to consider whether a person is a refugee if they claim to be before they may send that person back to the place they came from. Otherwise they may breach their “non-refoulement” obligation.

For Australia, this is significant. For nearly all boat people, Australia is the first country they reach which has signed the convention. Importantly, Malaysia and Indonesia have not signed it, and do not offer protection.

Under Morrison’s amendments, Australia will almost certainly breach its non-refoulement obligations. Under Morrison’s amendments, Australia appears to have abandoned its commitment to the convention, without actually withdrawing from it.

This Christmas, Abbott and Morrison are no doubt celebrating their policy “success”. These two men – supposedly devout Christians – have used deliberate cruelty to harm innocent people, including hundreds of children, and have turned their backs on the lessons of the Holocaust. It is no cause for celebration.