Find More Stories The problem with Nauru: a Christmas reflection

The Opposition is obsessed about re-opening Nauru as a place of offshore processing.

The Government has signalled the possibility of using Nauru, as long as the Opposition agrees to the use of Malaysia as well.

Asylum seekers continue to provide a useful political football. there are a few questions which have to be answered if we are to resolve the problem of dealing with boat people.

The first is: What is the problem we are trying to solve? is it that boat people might come to harm on the way here, or is it just that they get here?

It is tempting to think that the Opposition’s expressed concern for the safety of boat people is feigned: that their real concern is to show the electorate that they can stop boat people from getting here at all. Talk of deterrents suggests that they do not want boat people arriving here. but if you want deterrents, the risk of drowning on the way has got to be about as powerful a deterrent as you can get. So let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that their true concern is the safety and well-being of boat people.

If the safety of boat people is the issue, then the second question is: What is the best way of preventing asylum seekers from risking their lives by getting onto leaky, over-crowded boats? the answer is some form of offshore processing. but what does that mean, and where should it happen?

“Offshore processing” is a phrase which has been used to mislead the public. the proposal was not simply to send people off to Malaysia so their claims for protection could be processed: it was to send them to Malaysia and close the door behind them. Refusing to even consider their claim for protection is hardly consistent with a concern for their well-being. So, the Malaysian Solution as currently envisaged is not the answer.

Neither is Nauru the answer. this is so for a number of reasons. first, people do not get to Nauru unless they first get on a boat, to be intercepted by the Australian Navy as they approach Australian territorial waters. this does nothing to protect them from the perils of the boats. the SIEV-X, which sank with the loss of 353 lives, sank on October 19, 2001 – weeks after Nauru had been commissioned as a place of detention and the Pacific Solution had begun.

In addition, Nauru is too small to be a place of permanent settlement of asylum seekers who are taken there and are assessed as refugees. it has a population of about 10,000 people; it does not have a local supply of food or water sufficient for its own people; it does not even have a stable electricity supply or telephone service. Asylum seekers taken there and assessed as refugees would have to be resettled somewhere, and quickly. That would almost certainly mean in Australia. All the use of Nauru does is make the process unbelievably expensive. Tony Abbott’s insistence on using Nauru as a place for offshore processing is simply a way of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.

Sending people to Malaysia for processing after they have arrived here is not the answer, because (by definition) the people caught up in the Malaysian Solution have already arrived in Australia safely. this model is simply intended as a deterrent.

Any offshore processing which has the interests of refugees in mind must involve not only fair processing but also resettlement of those who are found to be refugees.

One possibility is to process protection claims while people are in Indonesia. Those who are assessed as refugees would be resettled, in Australia or elsewhere, in the order in which they have been accepted as refugees. if Australia increased its annual refugee intake, with a guarantee of at least 10,000 places for those processed in Indonesia, the incentive to get on a boat would disappear overnight. at present, people assessed by the UNHCR in Indonesia face a wait of 10 or 20 years before they have a prospect of being resettled. during that time, they are not allowed to work, and can’t send their kids to school. no wonder they chance their luck by getting on a boat. this proposal would reduce the waiting time to one or two years, and Australian officials would have an ample chance to warn people of the dangers of a trip with people smugglers.

Genuine offshore processing, with a guarantee of swift resettlement, was the means by which the Fraser government managed to bring about 80,000 Vietnamese boat people to Australia in the late 1970s. it worked, but it was crucially different from the manner of offshore processing being proposed by both major parties.

Unless offshore processing is done fairly and is coupled with swift resettlement, it is nothing but a sham to mask a desire to keep refugees out.

Christmas is a good time to reflect on whether we are, as a nation, genuinely concerned about the welfare of asylum seekers. if we are, then offshore processing can work, and would avoid the hazards of unscrupulous people smugglers and leaky boats. but only if it is done fairly, in Indonesia, and with a guarantee of swift resettlement.

Julian Burnside AO QC is an Australian Barrister and an advocate for human rights and fair treatment of refugees.

The problem with Nauru: a Christmas reflection – The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)