GRUESOME protests, riots, brawls, self-harm, destruction of property and overcrowding have all returned to our immigration detention network.
If there are shoes to be thrown, then this government must take responsibility for the humanitarian consequences of its failed decisions on asylum policy.
The rolling crisis in immigration detention is the product of Labor's decision to dismantle the strong policy regime it inherited from the Coalition. Stopping the boats is not a slogan for the Coalition. It is the proven record and stated objective of our border protection and immigration policies.
Last week I addressed the Lowy Institute to discuss these issues. My purpose was not to announce new policy, but place the Coalition's proven policies in a broader international and regional context. My intention was to foster debate about where international refugee policy should be heading.
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The responses are not simple. Nor are they confined to any one measure. To focus on any one measure, as some have done, misses the more important point.
Refugee policy has become distracted by a myopic and misplaced global focus on developed country resettlement. We need to get the focus off resettlement and on to providing support to people in more desperate situations in countries of first asylum and to help people return safely home.
Domestic policies that encourage secondary movement of people, beyond their country of first asylum, to seek resettlement in countries such as Australia, work against this objective. They divert resources, policy effort and attention from the more desperate.
Western attention is too focused on the few presenting on our shores, at the expense of the many in greater need elsewhere.
Fewer than 1 per cent of the world's refugees will gain access to resettlement and 80 per cent of them live in developing countries. Furthermore, the reason more and more people will find themselves in this situation in the future will not be due to a specific fear of persecution, as defined by the UN Refugee Convention, but because of more general mortal threats, including war, famine, disease, corruption, natural disaster, economic collapse or any combination of the above.
Our international system, underpinned by the UN Refugee Convention and Protocol, is not designed or interpreted to address these threats and challenges. Our response must exist at three levels. First, domestic policy should not encourage or reward secondary movement or people smuggling. The policies we took to the last election remain our primary response and first line of defence.
Temporary protection visas, third-country processing in Nauru, safe return of boats where it can be done, presumption against refugee status for those who discard their documentation, tighter appeals processes consistent with UNHCR global practice, return of failed asylum-seekers and priority processing for off-shore humanitarian applications are the suite of measures the Coalition will employ to put our domestic settings in order.
At a regional level, we must continue the co-operative enforcement, security and intelligence work we commenced when last in government to frustrate people smuggling. We should not, however, set up a regional processing centre that draws more people to our region, as proposed by the Gillard government.
To make my point, I suggested that any genuine regional solution should not focus on Asia Pacific, where we do not have a regional refugee crisis, but on central Asia, where we do.
Afghanistan accounts for one in four of the world's refugees. About 2.4 million Afghans are living in Pakistan and Iran.
Such a solution should be driven by the international community, in particular the UNHCR, not unilaterally by Australia.
The agreement should seek to deliver greater support to countries of first asylum, such as Pakistan and Iran, from the international community to improve living conditions in the camps. It should facilitate an orderly return program for safe transfer back to Afghanistan and it should work to prevent secondary movement to other parts of the world.
This is not a new idea. It is modelled on the successful arrangements put in place in the late 1970s and late 80s to deal with the Indochinese refugee crisis at that time.
Australia's response was to increase our resettlement intake to 20,000 a year and to support the establishment of offshore processing centres, including at Galang in Indonesia.
Between 1976 and 1989, just over 2000 people arrived in Australia by boat. We have had more people arrive by boat since the election.
Australia's involvement in any internationally agreed refugee solution for central Asia should involve increasing our intake of Afghan refugees from processing centres established by the UNHCR and returning any Afghan asylum-seekers who have sought to enter Australia, to those or other centres established in central Asia for that purpose.
This suggestion is put forward to highlight the approach the UNHCR should be taking more broadly to address the issue of irregular people movement, and to demonstrate the misdirected nature of the Gillard government's proposal for East Timor.
There is also the issue of the Refugee Convention and Protocol. Our commitment should be to the world's refugees, not to an imperfect document written post World War II and updated in the 60s, struggling to meet contemporary demands.
The convention's great success is to have established the principle of non-refoulement in international law. Its great failure is to advantage those who present in a signatory country, over those who languish in camps in countries of first asylum.
The victims of this inequity are the immobile, those without the resources, strength or flexibility to make the journey and pay the smuggler. In most cases this means women and children.
This inequity can only be addressed by taking on the issue of secondary movement. That is where we must now focus the refugee debate.
Scott Morrison is opposition spokesman on immigration.
Reporter: Scott Morrison
The Australian
Hazara News Western Australia Established since 2008
www.hazarawa.blogspot.com
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HAZARA NEWS WESTERN AUSTRALIA
www.hazarawa.blogspot.com
hazaranewswa@yahoo.com
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