I have just got back from a dinner that I had with a old friend who I was posted with in Costa Rica. Her partner is a lawyer by trade and is also quite supportive of the current Howard government approached to asylum seekers and mandatory detention. I am not so it was quite an interesting evening trying to make sure that I didn’t offend anyone and still have a rational debate about the issue.
Now I do agree that there is a necessity to detain people once they have entered Australia unlawfully. However if you do need to detain asylum seekers, for whatever reason, that this should be kept to an absolute minimum. I do not believe that there is any valid reason to be prolonged detention of asylum seekers.
The first one that is often used is the idea that mandatory detention is necessary to stop people absconding/or escaping. Often the majority of asylum seekers, who apply after arriving with another visa, are allowed to live in the community without health or security checks. They are not considered at risk of absconding even though the proportion of those found to be refugees in need of protection is much lower than those who arrive without a visa i.e. boat arrivals. Since the majority of asylum seekers do not have to be detained, I find that it is illogical to argue that those who have arrived without a visa (and are more likely to be found to be refugees) need to be detained for prolonged periods.
One of the other main reasons that people who are supportive of mandatory detention is that it is necessary Ensure people are available for interviews during processing. People requesting visas have a vested interest in ensuring they are available for interviews. It is ridiculous to say that detention for four years is necessary for the purpose of conducting three 1 hour interviews.
The one that I find the most upsetting is the fact that people believe that mandatory detention is there to send a clear message to people smugglers – Under the Australian constitution, only the courts are allowed to administer punitive detention, so if a purpose of detention is really to “send a clear message to the people smugglers” it constitutes unlawful imprisonment, as it is a clear breach of the constitution. There is also no evidence that the introduction of mandatory detention led to any reduction in the activity of people smugglers. This also doesn’t take into the fact that really what we need to be doing is attacking the people smugglers and not the poor desperate people who are caught up in this horrible industry. It’s very much the same with a drug policy that attacks the users are not the traffickers.
need to have a Human Rights Commissioner? What is wrong with HREOC? Or should I say what does the ACT Human Rights Commissioner add to the situations. I’m a big fan of Human rights protection but I can’t see why we have to duplicate every thing in the ACT to what they we Federal Institutions for, Even some states don’t have them. It would seem to me that it is just an other case of – to many big fish in a small fish bowl. 