Australia offers first world governments a template on how to brutally deal with the coming climate change refugee crisis. The bipartisan Australian policy of indefinite detention of asylum seekers in inhumane detention camps has caught the eye of right wing governments and political parties across the first world. The Australian media works hard to steer the Australian sentiment against foreigners coming to Australia. Meanwhile, the Australian government is allowed to pursue their “Pacific Solution” due to a pacified Australian populace.

As the effects of climate change lead to a dramatic increase in refugees the world over, first world governments will look to the Australian example. They will do so safe in the knowledge that they can brutalize refugees without the hinderance of popular opinion.

Immigration policy

Australia has always had a fraught relationship with foreigners coming to their fatal shore. From its inception, Australia was terrified by the so called “Yellow Peril” or what they viewed as the threat to a white Australia from mass migration from Asia directly to their north.

Arthur Calwell, Australian Minister of Racism (National Library of Australia)

In 1947, Arthur Calwell, then Australian Minister for Immigration, once despicably remarked in Parliament that “two wongs don’t make a white”. The White Australia Policy was used to disallow immigration by non-Europeans as recently as 1973. Australia, a country of 25 million people with ten times the arable land as a nation like Japan with 125m, has always had an immigration policy that can best be described by the classic Australian bumper sticker Fuck off we’re full.

An Australian immigration policy document

Australian xenophobic immigration policy took a hard right turn in the late 1990’s. In 1996, A former fish and chip shop owner, Pauline Hanson, sprang from obscurity into the Australian Parliament winning on an outright xenophobic immigration platform. Hanson’s maiden speech to parliament criticised Australian multiculturalism, entitlements to Aboriginals, and her fear that Australia would be “swamped by asians”.

Fellow racists congratulate Pauline Hanson on her maiden speech (Sydney Morning Herald)

In 1997, Hanson, concerned about the “Asianization of Australia” formed the One Nation political party. One Nations main platform was xenophobic — being both anti-immigrant and anti-multicultural. One Nation experienced some success on the state level in 1998. On the Federal level, One Nation toiled in the obscurity of the second tier parties like the Greens. However Hanson and One Nations impact was felt more in the conversation around immigration. Its xenophobic platform pushed the governing conservative Liberal party further to the right on immigration.

The Tampa Affair

It was in 2001 that Australian immigration policy set itself apart from other first world democracies. The years preceding 2001 had seen an increase in asylum seekers trying to reach Australia by boat. In August 2001 a Norwegian freighter the MV Tampa rescued 433 asylum seekers from a sinking vessel just outside of Australian waters. In what would soon become known as the Tampa Affair, conservative Australian Prime Minister John Howard refused the Tampa permission to enter Australian waters. The Norwegian captain of the Tampa was so concerned about the health of the asylum seekers, who were in various stages of malnourishment and dehydration, and included four pregnant women, continued into Australian waters.

Some of the 433 asylum seekers rescued by the Tampa (Wallenius Wilhelmsen/AAP)

In response, Prime Minister Howard ordered the Australian special forces, SASR, onto the ship to force it to turn around. The Tampa Affair increased the popularity of the Howard Government in the months preceding the November 2001 election. Prime Minister Howard’s first speech at the outset of the election campaign took a hardline against asylum seekers trying to reach Australia by boat. It would be this hardline against refugees that would make the center piece of the Howard governments successful re-election in November 2001. The Tampa Affair marks a sad irony, in that the rescued refugees were an Afghani minority fleeing the Taliban, a government with whom the Howard government would soon be at war against under the pre-text of spreading human rights and democracy.

A Pacific Solution

The ailing refugees rescued by the Tampa were taken to an offshore detention camp in the neighbouring island nation of Nauru. The “Pacific Solution”, the indefinite detaining of refugees in offshore detention camps then became bipartisan government policy for the next 18 years. Politicians of both major parties, the conservative Liberal party, and nominally progressive Labor party, have both pursued a refugee deterrent policy centered around the Pacific Solution. One Labor government successfully closed the camps in 2006. However as the number of refugees arriving by boat subsequently increased, the boat arrivals became a devastating political issue and the camps were reopened.

The “Pacific Solution” today continues. Recently deposed Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told US President Donald Trump:

If you try to come to Australia by boat, even if we think you are the best person in the world, even if you are a Nobel Prize — winning genius, we will not let you in.

President Trumps response was damning for Australia:

That is a good idea. We should do that too. You are worse than I am.

Any refugee caught entering Australia by boat will be detained at the camp on Nauru. Thousands of refugee, many of whom are women and children, have languished in the detention camps.

Detainees protest their indefinite detention on Nauru (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

In 2018, Australia spent $1b on their offshore immigrant detention camps. However, the conditions within the detention camps are deplorable. The sexual abuse of women and children is rampant. The mental health of children detained on Nauru has left them in a “semi-comatose state”.Asylum seekers self-immolated in protest at their living conditions. Suicide is an epidemic. Various international NGO’s such as United Nations, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International, have condemned the Australian immigration detention system.Asylum seekers can expect to spend between 1.5 and 2 years at the camp before being processed. After processing, most asylum seekers never set foot in Australia.

Broad support

The attitude of the Australian public toward their violent and inhumane immigration system ranges from full blooded support to collective indifference. Worse still, the Pacific Solution is the immigration policy of both major political parties. The policy was instituted under a Liberal government, briefly halted under a Labor government, and then reinstated by a subsequent Labor government.

In 2019, Australia will have a Federal election. Both parties have clearly stated that they still support the Pacific Solution. The immigration platform of Labor, the nominally progressive party, is as follows:

Labor believes in strong borders, offshore processing, regional resettlement, and turnbacks…

The Liberals, the conservative party, immigration platform is identical, touting offshore processing and turnbacks. It is no surprise that both major parties back brutal immigration policies. The majority of Australians believe that the total number of migrants coming to Australia is too high. A plurality of Australians believe that the immigration detention centers should remain open and the immigrant detainees should not come to Australia. In 2018, one third of Australians reported experiencing racial discrimination.

Manufacturing consent, mate.

How does anti-immigrant sentiment and support for inhumane treatment of asylum seekers receive support in a nominally liberal democracy like Australia? The Australian media and political class work in tandem to build consent for the brutal immigration policy by demonizing immigrants and asylum seekers.

Articles that portray immigrants as lazy foreigners trying to get onto the Australian welfare system regularly go viral. For example, a recent article on News.Com.Au about the New Zealand woman “thanking” Australia for the generous welfare she has received. The article focuses solely on the immigrants use of the Australian welfare system, whereas the majority of the immigrants thanks was pointed toward the broader Australian standard of living. Compare the News.Com.Au article to a UK media outlet article that more accurately represents the immigrants message.

The Murdoch owned News.Com.Au is particularly aggrieved at the presence of foreigners in Australia:

Complaining that Indian taxi drivers will soon outnumber Australian born taxi drivers.

Claiming that Sydney residents are “fleeing” immigrants.

Innocently wondering what happens when immigrants move to your suburb.

Framing assistance to new immigrants as “Middle Eastern migrants are piling on to the dole queue”.

Nightly news media shows like A Current Affair, watched by 900,000 Australians, have been accused of inciting racial violence owing to their anti-immigrant reporting. A Current Affair’s nightly competitor, Today Tonight, was slammed for misleading and inflammatory “journalism” when it claimed refugees in Australia were living in “four star luxury”.

Worse still is the Australian medias obsession with an unfounded crisis of African gang violence in Victoria. The media has portrayed the Sudanese immigrant population of Victoria as violent gang members. Sensationalist news media claim that a rise in violence was related to “African gangs” and that Victorian residents are scared to go out at night. The inflammatory news coverage has resulted in an 50% increase in racially motivated hate crimes in Victoria.

Australian politicians have joined in the inflammatory rhetoric toward African immigrants in Australia. Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton claimed “people are scared to go out to restaurants of a night time because they are followed home by these gangs”. Then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull weighed in that there was “real concern about Sudanese gangs”.

Current Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison recently claimed that immigrants were to blame for traffic congestion experienced in Australian cities, and that traffic congestion could only be eased by limiting immigration. However, Minister Dutton has recently been pushing for the easing of immigration rules for white South African farmers, a favourite topic of outrage amongst the far-right.

Peter Dutton, punisher of brown refugees, saviour of white refugees. (David Clark/AAP)

The Australian government has worked to prevent media from portraying asylum seekers in detention as human. Media visitors to the offshore immigration camps are required to sign an agreement pledging:

NOT to interview, talk to or communicate with detainees

NOT to film, record or photograph detainees who try to talk to you

And NOT to film faces or profiles

Journalists are required to submit their footage prior to departure from the immigrant detention camps.

A lone immigrant is assaulted by an Australian mob during the 2005 Cronulla race riots (Andrew Meares)

The Australian media and political class are de-humanizing foreigners through their sensational and inflammatory claims. The Australian political class is also working to ensure the full brutality of the Pacific Solution is obscured from the public. With both politics and media pushing anti-immigrant sentiment, it is no wonder that such sentiment is on the rise in Australia, or that Australia’s brutal immigration policy has bipartisan support.

Why this matters to the world

Despite being a small and far-flung country, Australia’s brutal immigration system supported by the political and media class is cause for grave concern. The Australian political and media class have shown how to manipulate popular opinion in order to impose what should be a roundly reviled policy of brutalizing asylum seekers via the Pacific Solution. The Australian immigration policy has inspired right wing politicians across the world.

In the US, President Trump has expressed admiration of Australia’s immigration policy. In the call with then Prime Minister Turnbull, both Trump and Turnbull lamented that Germany did not follow Australia’s example of brutal immigration enforcement, instead allowing an influx of Syrian refugees into Germany.

Turnbull and Trump — two very big boys (Time)

The ultra right wing Danish People’s Party has copied the Australian Pacific Solution as their immigration policy platform. The UK right wing anti-immigrant political party, UKIP, has called the Australian policy innovative and wants Europe to adopt a similar policy.

Then Australian Immigration Minister, Peter Dutton, provided advice to his counterparts in European nations on how to deter asylum seekers using Australia’s brutal immigration system. Italy’s far right government evidently took that advice as the Italian navy has been turning back boats packed with African and Middle Eastern asylum seekers. The Italian Interior Minister, sounding like an Australian Prime Minister, was quoted as saying:

They will only see Italy on a postcard

The European nations have been dealing with a refugee crisis far worse than anything experienced in Australia. However, far right politicians understand that there is something much bigger at stake than current crises.

The coming crisis

White nationalist and far right politicians understand that a climate change instigated refugee crisis is on the horizon and they are setting the terms for how the first world will react. Progressives and the broader public fail to see how there already exists a brutal infrastructure for dealing with the coming crisis.

It is estimated that in the next decade alone, climate change will create tens of millions of refugees. The current migrant crises across the world will look trivial in comparison to the havoc climate change will wreak. Over the next hundred years ecological catastrophe will uproot the lives of tens, if not hundreds, of millions most of whom live in the Global South.

The coming climate refugee crisis is the reason for the impetus for “The Wall” along the US Mexico border. It is the reason that India has put an armed fence around Bangladesh. It is the reason why Hungary has militarized its borders. It is the reason why billionaires are buying citizenship and property in New Zealand.

Hungarian army patrolling its militarized border

The political class and the far right elements that currently have their ear, are preparing for the desperate human wave caused by ecological collapse. Sadly, that preparation involves the raising of border walls, militarization of those border walls, and the priming of the public by demonizing asylum seekers and immigrants.

The Australian asylum seeker crisis will seem miniscule to what will happen when the worst effects of climate change are wrought on Bangladesh. It is estimated that a 3 foot rise in sea levels would create 30 million refugees in Bangladesh. It’s not a far fetched thought that millions, even tens of millions, of Bangladesh’s 140m people will look at a map of their region and see the big empty first world country to their south and think it is worth the risk to get there.

India’s militarized border with Bangladesh (Al Jazeera)

The world is facing ecological catastrophe, and the political classes understand that. Ecological catastrophe is going to create hundreds of millions of refugees that are going to look at first world countries as their only prospect for survival. The world has a choice, we can save those hundreds of millions of potential refugees by restructuring the global economy in such a way that will mitigate the worst effects of climate change. In all likelihood restructuring the global economy will require massive raising of public revenue, the decommodification of markets and nationalizing of industry to fulfill supply and demand unable/unwilling to be provided by capital markets, the creation of comprehensive social safety nets, and the disempowerment of the massive carbon emitters who currently control the political economy. In short, restructuring the global will require redistribution and disarmament of the capital class.

Without restructuring the global economy, the world will continue on its current path and allow a horrific climate disaster that will result in hundreds of millions in the Global South. Without a redistributive restructure of the global economy, the result will be genocide. For many of the right wing governments and their political supporters, they will choose genocide over redistribution.

If we take the Australian, European and US immigration policies to their logical conclusion, the end result will be the climate genocide of the Global South. A hardened border with brutal consequences for anyone caught trying to enter the country, when faced with hundreds of millions of refugees can only result in mass death. It traps refugees in the countries suffering from ecological catastrophe, while anyone lucky enough to make it to a first world country will end up in an inhumane detention camp. Take those detention camps to their logical conclusions. Current immigration detention camps with a few hundred inmates are abhorrent. Imagine those camps in a few decades when they will be filled with hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of refugee inmates.

The images of migrants being tear gassed at the US Mexico border will become a regular occurrence across the world. Stories of refugee children's death in immigration detention camps will become common place. If the Australian experience has anything to tell us, those images of the brutal border world will be pacified in the first world public consciousness by accompanying news media reports on welfare abusing immigrants or terrorists hiding in refugee boats.

What is to be done

Progressives the world over need to bring down the brutal immigration systems currently being built in the first world. Through the ballot box and direct action, we must take the reigns of power to build up a humane and just immigration system. Justice can only be achieved if built into this immigration system is the understanding that climate change is largely the first worlds doing.

It is imperative that Australian progressives stand up to their country’s brutal immigration system. Australian progressives must refute the political and media classes who build consent within the Australian public to perpetuate their brutal immigration system. If Australian progressives can bring down their brutal immigration system, they can correct the example it has given to the world.

Australia is an incredibly affluent country. It survived 2008 largely unscathed, thanks almost solely to its carbon output. Australia provided the resources to China as they undertook their historically large fiscal stimulus that was a response to global financial crisis. China’s carbon output, fed by Australian coal, rapidly rose as part of the 2008 fiscal stimulus. Australia is one of the highest carbon emitters on a per capita basis. Australians have been living well for decades now, and they have done so in a way that has contributed to the coming climate disaster. When climate refugees flood Australian shores, it will be a crisis that Australia helped create.

An open-cut mine in Australia (Dean Sewell)

The broader Australian progressive public has been sleeping on Australia’s brutal immigration system. Australian progressives recently had success in achieving broad based support for same-sex marriage. In 2017, after massive protests and viral social media campaign, progressives succeeded in legalizing gay marriage. While more active Australian progressives have been working hard to end Australia’s brutal immigration system, it has not received the broad base of support that gay marriage managed to achieve.

Perhaps the biggest impediment to the destruction of the Australian immigration system is the nominally progressive , Australian Labor Party (“ALP”). The ALP had one brief moment of ending the Pacific Solution. However it has been ALP policy ever since. There can be no success without a major political party fighting to humanize Australian immigration policy. Australian progressives need to look to the United Kingdom, and potentially the United States for example.

Progressives in the UK have been fighting, and largely successful in reclaiming the British Labour party for the working class and disempowering elements of the capital class within Labour. In the United States, Bernie Sanders and a cohort of democratic socialists have been fighting for power in the Democratic party. Insurrectionist Democratic representatives like Alexandria Occasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar have been instrumental in pushing the Democratic party platform to the Left on a number of policies. Australian progressives need to reclaim the ALP in much the same way. Fight to push the party platform to the Left, and remove any party members who refuse to cooperate.

End the Pacific Solution, now.

The Australian immigration system has been widely condemned by international organizations as brutal and inhumae. The Australian political and media classes have worked in tandem to manufacture consent for this policy by demonizing foreigners. Far right political parties and governments have used the Australian model as a template for their own brutal and inhumane immigration policies.

With the coming wave of human suffering that will hit first world shores in the future, these brutal and inhumane immigration policies will lead to the genocide of the Global South. First world governments can rest assured that they will not be troubled by their public will not rise up in horror as the Australian publics acquiescence has set a troubling example.

It is up to Australian progressives to reclaim their political voice on this issue and build a broad base of support for a humane immigration policy. This issue must be fought in the hearts and minds of the Australian public in the same way that Australian progressives won the battle for gay marriage. Australian progressives must also fight to take the reigns of power away from the craven politicians who currently run the ALP.

Australia has set the world a troubling example. It is time progressive Australian’s showed the world how to dismantle its brutal immigration system. It won’t be long before it is too late, and tragedy befalls hundreds of millions.