By ALENA HIGGINS
WHILE the Coalition’s refugee policy appears to be stopping the boats and Labor’s immigration spokesperson Richard Marles admitted “it has had an impact”, one local asylum advocate has condemned offshore detention and called for his Federal ALP members to take heed.
Queensland Labor Party Stanthorpe and Wallangarra president Peter Burton has created a resolution calling on Labor to reaffirm its commitment to protecting human rights and welcoming people who have fled war, extreme poverty or prosecution.
Tabled and passed at a regional Labor conference in Toowoomba, the motion has gathered steam after it was subsequently carried at a state conference earlier this year.
But the biggest hurdle – getting it adopted during the 2015 ALP National Conference – is yet to come.
“It might be working, but it is totally inhuman,” Mr Burton said of the Abbott government’s Operation Sovereign Borders policy which sees adults and children “virtually imprisoned” in immigration detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island.
“I just think that the two major parties had this race to see who could get to the bottom rather than the top of policy to deal with a problem which is affecting the whole world – there is no compassion at all.
“Politicians are frightened of setting a policy that they think might not get them elected at the next election.”
Mr Burton said that, whoever is in charge, the Federal Government needs to recognise that Australia has to work globally to address the issue of displaced people, commit to building co-operation relationships with regional neighbours rather than attempt to transfer its obligations to them, and significantly increase resources and capacity for processing in countries of primary or secondary origin.
He said the argument that some who sought to live in Australia were economic refugees was “spurious” as economic refugees have come to Australia for “decades and decades”.
“A lot of my ancestors came here because of the potato famine in Ireland and they left because they were starving,” Mr Burton said, who is also a member of human rights group Amnesty International.
“Australia has been built on migrants and most migrants who come to Australia are refugees for religious or economic reasons, through wars or whatever.
“I think Australia needs to think about that and be more compassionate to those people who are in situations like their ancestors would have been in.”
However, Federal Maranoa MP Bruce Scott said the Coalition’s policy deters people from getting on boats and risking their lives at sea.
“There is nothing humane about over 1200 deaths at sea, and that’s only the ones we know about,” the LNP member said.
“Furthermore, we went to the point, which was supported by Labor, that anyone who comes through illegal processes will not be given an opportunity to enter Australia… we take 13,500 (refugees) per year through the front door and that is what we want to encourage.
“If you stop that flow you don’t end up with people detained in detention centres while they are considered for any potential refugee status in Australia.
“We have also stopped the illicit trade in people’s desperation,” he added.
