Australia is now a proper rogue state, deserving universal condemnation not tourist dollars
If you’re outside Australia, you’ve probably seen our Prime Minister Tony Abbott made fun of on international news (or US satirical tv). These included his promise to ‘shirtfront’ Putin over MH17, putting his foot in his mouth over the Scottish independence referendum, his deliberate obstructionism of any climate change progress at G20, his grin and wink at a woman who said she worked in phone sex to make ends meet, his resurrection of terra nullius etc etc.
One problem with such coverage is that it overplays the buffoon-like nature of Abbott as a personality. This comes at the expense of focusing on how much the policies of his government are harming people (including killing them). In the last few days things have reached a new low with the passing of the Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (Resolving the Asylum Legacy Caseload) Bill 2014. This Guardian article sums up the details best, from which I extract a few choice bits:
Scott Morrison is now the most powerful person in the Australian government.
[…]
He can detain people without charge, or deport them to any country he chooses even if it is known they’ll be tortured there.
Morrison’s decisions cannot be challenged.
[…]
Critics – and they are a formidable group, including the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the UN’s Committee Against Torture and parliament’s own human rights committee – say the bill strips the checks and balances that have always existed in Australia’s immigration system, and removes basic protections for those who arrive seeking asylum.
Australia now regards itself as free from the bonds of the Refugees Convention – a treaty Australia helped write, and willingly signed up to, more than half a century ago. All references to it have been removed from Australian law.
[…]
Australian law now says: “it is irrelevant whether Australia has non-refoulement obligations in respect of an unlawful non-citizen”.
Stripped of the legalese, that paragraph says Australia is now entitled to return an asylum seeker to a country where they have been, or it is known they will be, tortured.
The bill has been condemned by pretty much all advocacy groups (more here) and it represents yet another episode in the race to the bottom of how much we can torture people who are already fleeing torture. It should be impossible to fathom and yet we have already begun handing victims back to their torturers. We are the traitor who turns you in and comparisons with Nazi Germany and the MS St Louis are just and necessary.
Here’s where you come in. If you’re planning to come to Australia for travel/leisure, I urge you to reconsider and postpone the trip. Travel is a case of discretionary spending and I’m sure there are plenty of other countries you would enjoy. Tourism is a major part of the Australia, not just in terms of revenue but also our perception of ourselves. We deserve neither international warmth nor your tourist dollars. It would be easy to place the blame on the Minister of Immigration Scott Morrison and the Abbot government. However, these policies are not an accident. Both major parties have been capitalising on anti-refugee racism for political gain for over a decade.
It’s the Australian public that wants us to torture refugees. Morrison’s policies are just the outer pus that signals the deeper infection. In this respect we are a sick society. Polls earlier this year show 60% of us wanted even harsher treatment and now this is what we’ve got.
This is an indictment on all of us, on our racism as a society and either our glee to do this or for those who disagree our inability to stop it. It’s unlikely we’ll all end up at the Hague but at the very least we can and should be international pariahs. It’s pretty clear our society won’t cure itself without significant international condenation.
Please don’t give us your tourist dollars.
I know it’s impossible to boycott consistently. I recognise the problem with such a boycott now given our society’s human rights abuses against Indigenous Australians all the time. I know how many countries do things that are just as bad or worse. And yet, coming to Australia as a tourist does provide tacit recognition that everything is ok.
If you’re an international traveller, I urge you to research the refugee issue (here’s a good start) and don’t come to Australia.
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