'There Never Was a Plan'

Why offshore processing is causing problems and how we can move forward.

Photo source: Angela Wylie

New book ‘Offshore’ By Madeline Gleeson gives us the facts about offshore detention and invites us to form our own opinions about what Australia’s policy should look like going forwards.

I was excited to attend the book launch of ‘Offshore’ by Madeline Gleeson last Monday night. Gleeson is a researcher with the UNSW Kaldor Centre for Refugee Law, and I always find her work to be objective, factual, informative and thought provoking. This book, from what I have read so far, is no exception.

Terrorism, Refugees and the End of Human Rights

Julian Burnside QC gave the opening speech at the launch. He is a renowned human rights lawyer and advocate for refugee rights, and was awarded the 2014 Sydney Peace Prize for his work with refugees. Burnside’s speech focused on the link between refugees and terrorism that sprung up after 11 September 2001: “suddenly, we didn’t have terrorists, only Muslim terrorists. We didn’t have boat people, only Muslim boat people”. Burnside stated that John Howard ran his election campaign on this artificially constructed issue. There is no evidence that a terrorist has ever posed as a refugee; however, it has been a popular, albeit false, narrative in Australian politics ever since.

Burnside reflected on the fact that Australia was instrumental in developing the Human Rights framework after WWII and expressed his fear that human rights were becoming ‘a thing of the past’, as we now flout the very provisions we helped to draft. One instance is the use of the phrase “illegal asylum seeker” - Article 14 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights clearly states that people have a right to come into a country, by whatever means available, and to seek asylum there.

Burnside reminded us to think about the impact that our vote in the upcoming election could have on shaping Australia’s future relationship with human rights. Burnside concluded that “we need a leader who will stand up and say: unpopular though it may be, mistreating innocent people is a bad idea, and we need not do it”’.

Gleeson’s book, released months before the election, is set to serve as a talking point about alternatives to current offshore processing and a tool to help Australians to find a humane way through the current situation.

Finding a Solution Based on the Facts

At the launch, Gleeson explained to us her reasons for writing the book. First, she wanted the facts to be available – to policy makers and to the public. It is notoriously difficult to access factual accurate information about what is occurring inside offshore detention centres, due to their remote locations, the lack of access to journalists and the new Australian Border Force Act, which makes it an offence for workers to reveal anything they have witnessed inside an offshore detention centre. Indeed, Gleeson emphasised commented that the people who had spoken up in her book risked facing jail time to do so. Gleeson’s book contains the most comprehensive account of verifiable facts about what is occurring inside offshore detention centres.

Secondly, Gleeson was searching for clues about how offshore detention policies had been determined and what the long-term plan for people in offshore detention centres was. After reading through over ten thousand pages of Hansard going back five years, only one conclusion was possible: there never was a plan. No government had thought this policy through to the end. There was no plan for how or when asylum seekers would be processed or where those granted refugee status would go. The inescapable conclusion that Gleeson has come to is that these policies were “only ever designed to break people”, so that they would give up on their search for safety and go home.

Gleeson emphasised that it is no easy task designing policy to respond to the needs of asylum seekers and to address the problems that offshore detention has created. Her book provides the facts, free from rhetoric, spin or judgement, that can underpin a constructive conversation about “where to now”.

‘Offshore’ is available online, or if you want to meet the author, Gleeson is launching her book at several upcoming events in Glebe, Mona Vale, and the University of NSW.