Speaker – Rhonda Evans GOVERNMENT<\/p>\n
By using a combination of boat turn-backs, offshore detention and processing, and a refusal to ever accept refugees who have tried to reach its shores by boat, Australia has emerged as a world leader in deterrence. The staggering costs and ineffable human suffering inflicted by these policies have led critics to condemn them as \u201cfiscally irresponsible, morally bankrupt, and increasingly unsustainable politically.\u201d This lecture, however, will argue that Australia\u2019s expensive and inhumane approach is politically self-sustaining. Dr. Rhonda Evans, J.D., directs the Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies at UT-Austin and is a Senior Lecturer in the Government Department. She is a principal investigator for the Australian and New Zealand Policy Agendas Projects. Her research on courts and human rights appears in the Australian Journal of Political Science, Congress and the Presidency, Osgoode Hall Law Review, and Journal of Common Market Studies. She co-authored Legislating Equality published by Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Speaker – Rhonda Evans GOVERNMENT By using a combination of boat turn-backs, offshore detention and processing, and a refusal to ever accept refugees who have tried to reach its shores by boat, Australia has emerged as a world leader in deterrence. The staggering costs and ineffable human suffering inflicted by these policies have led critics […]","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","episode_type":"audio","audio_file":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2018\/11\/18-10-05-BSLS.mp3","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"47.34M","filesize_raw":"49640240","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":""},"tags":[64,53,47,40,46,66,65,63],"categories":[],"series":[2],"class_list":{"0":"post-70","1":"podcast","2":"type-podcast","3":"status-publish","5":"tag-australia","6":"tag-british-studies","7":"tag-british-studies-lecture","8":"tag-british-studies-lecture-series","9":"tag-dr-roger-louis","10":"tag-laits","11":"tag-refugees","12":"tag-rhonda-evans","13":"series-bsls","14":"entry"},"acf":{"related_episodes":"","hosts":[{"ID":949,"post_author":"10","post_date":"2021-01-20 19:50:06","post_date_gmt":"2021-01-20 19:50:06","post_content":"\n
Wm. Roger Louis is head of the British Studies Lecture Series. He is an American historian and a professor at the University of Texas at Austin<\/a>. Louis is the editor-in-chief of The Oxford History of the British Empire<\/a><\/em>, a former president of the American Historical Association<\/a> (AHA), a former chairman of the U.S. Department of State's Historical Advisory Committee, and a founding director of the AHA's National History Center in Washington, D. C.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Wm. Roger Louis","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"wm-roger-louis","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2021-01-20 19:50:06","post_modified_gmt":"2021-01-20 19:50:06","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/?post_type=speaker&p=949","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"guests":[{"ID":817,"post_author":"40","post_date":"2020-06-23 19:31:19","post_date_gmt":"2020-06-23 19:31:19","post_content":"\n Dr. Rhonda Evans, J.D., directs the Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies at UT-Austin and is a Senior Lecturer in the Government Department. She is a principal investigator for the Australian and New Zealand Policy Agendas Projects. Her research on courts and human rights appears in the Australian Journal of Political Science, Congress and the Presidency, Osgoode Hall Law Review, and Journal of Common Market Studies. She co-authored Legislating Equality published by Oxford University Press.<\/p>\n","post_title":"Rhonda Evans","post_excerpt":"","post_status":"publish","comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","post_password":"","post_name":"rhonda-evans","to_ping":"","pinged":"","post_modified":"2020-06-23 19:31:19","post_modified_gmt":"2020-06-23 19:31:19","post_content_filtered":"","post_parent":0,"guid":"http:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/?post_type=speaker&p=817","menu_order":0,"post_type":"speaker","post_mime_type":"","comment_count":"0","filter":"raw"}],"transcript":" David Lee, all is going to introduce our speaker today. The main thing that I
\nwant to do is to welcome back Dr. Woolcock.
\nAnd we understand that Walter Wetzel’s is now doing OK as well. David. All
\nright. Thank you. Well, as the grandson of a coal miner, I am very happy to introduce
\nthe daughter of the coal miner, Rhonda Evans, although from a different part of the world, originally from Ohio.
\nRhonda is the director of the Edward A Clark Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies,
\nalso a senior lecturer in the Department of Government. She was previously a tenured professor
\nin the Department of Political Science at East Carolina University before receiving
\nher p._h._d from Utah’s Department of Government. She received a law degree from Pittsburgh
\nand was a practicing attorney for two years in Ohio. Her most
\nrecent publication is a book with Oxford University Press, coauthored with Terry Gibbons
\nand called Legislating Equality The Politics of Anti-Discrimination Policy in Europe.
\nAnd she’s also published articles in journals such as the Journal of Common Market Studies, the Australian
\nJournal of Political Science and the Journal of Democracy.
\nHer most recent projects are two book manuscripts, one of which is the Australian Human Rights Commission
\nBringing International Human Rights Home, and also an edited volume with Jock Collins, Contemporary
\nAustralian and US Immigration Unsettling Transformations.
\nHer classes include Introduction to Australia, Australian Society
\nand politics and human rights and world politics. And she is also the recipient
\nof several teaching awards. So without further ado, Rhonda, thank you
\nfor speaking with.
\nWell, thank you, David, for that lovely introduction. Thanks to Roger for the invitation to be here today
\nand thank you all for giving up some of your Friday afternoon for this talk. I’m grateful
\nfor this opportunity because this is a project that’s actually been sitting on my desk for a little while. So I was able
\nto pick it up and dusted off and see what you think of these ideas that I’ve been chewing
\non with regard to Australia’s non-acceptance of refugees. And I’ve got a PowerPoints
\nset of slides here, so. This quote
\nis from currently Prime Minister Scott Morrison, at least he
\nwas the last time I checked the newsfeed. He’s been prime minister
\nsince August 24th. He made these comments when he was treasurer, but privvy
\nprevious to that role, he had been minister for immigration and border control. And so he made these
\ncomments on a radio program operated by shock jock Ray Hadley
\nin Sydney. Since essentially saying that Australia is the envy of the
\nworld and other countries would love to have Australia’s refugee policies, so the suite
\nof policies to which he’s referring are known internationally as the Australian model.
\nAnd I’ll just elaborate the three key elements, then I’ll unpack those a little bit more as we go along.
\nSo the Australian model consists of boat turn backs. Sorry,
\nI don’t. I need better glasses here. I can’t see you when these are up and I can’t read without them on.
\nBut I’ll do my best. Boat turn backs offshore detention and processing on
\nislands such as Nauru and on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. Although that has since
\ncome to an end. But there are still asylum seekers on Manus Island there just no longer detained
\nin an Australian detention center. So boat turn backs, offshore detention and processing
\nand a refusal to ever settle in Australia. Anyone who has tried to reach Australia
\nby boat, even if that person has been deemed to be a refugee according
\nto Australia’s own determination, process and standards. So
\nstopping the boats became a mantra of Australian politics in the last dozen years or so.
\nAs you might imagine, this model has its critics. They contend that the
\npolicy is neither stable nor viable, not nor a viable long term policy,
\nand that it’s bound to encounter some legitimacy crisis at some point in time.
\nAnd so just to go through the boat, turn backs, they use the military to actually turn
\nback the refugee boats that are encountered on the water. In
\nsome instances, they actually put people into non submersible
\ncrafts like this in order to get them back to safety. There have been a lot of issues as
\nto whether Australia has been into Indonesian waters or not, and on some occasions they have been.
\nThis is just to give you an orientation geographically of where these
\ndetention centers are located with respect to Australia. Essentially, Australia legislated to remove
\nthe continent from its own migration zone. So you can’t actually claim asylum
\nin Australia and you are processed offshore in these detention centers prior to this. Detention centers
\nwere generally located in very remote places in Western Australia or in South Australia,
\nalthough there were some around Sydney and Melbourne, but the main ones were in more remote areas.
\nAnd then this last. And this is an actual newspaper that was published
\nas part of the Rudd Labor government’s effort to indicate that you will not be
\nallowed to settle in Australia. And so these are really the three main components of the Australian
\nmodel. We could also talk about its approach to temporary protection visas, which is quite
\nstingy and comes under criticism. But when we talk about the Australian model, we’re generally talking about these
\nmain policy areas. So as you might imagine, the policy has its critics
\nand Human Rights Watch is probably foremost among that. And so
\nit’s been said that the model is fiscally irresponsible, morally bankrupt and increasingly
\npolitically unsustainable. So it’s certainly expensive.
\nAnd I’ve just got a few slides here with some information that shows you the cost of processing
\nasylum seekers offshore relative to processing people onshore in
\nAustralia. And this is one of many reports that have been done not simply
\nby advocates and their organisations, but also by entities within the Australian
\ngovernment. It’s quite an expensive process. You can also
\nnote that the process has been quite distorted. So there have been several reports that have
\ntalked about problems in the contract tendering process. These detention centers are operated
\nby private companies. Often the tendering process isn’t that transparent
\nand their potential conflicts of interest in the Australian National Audit Office in January 2017
\nreleased a report that documented that fact. Commentators such as Michelle Grattan,
\na renowned journalist in Australia, have commented a lot on all
\nof the lack of transparency in this entire policy area,
\nespecially the boat turnbacks where the government’s able to invoke the idea of military operations on the.
\nAs a way of trying to prevent sharing information about what’s happening out there
\nnow, there are also a lot of reports that document
\nthe human suffering that happens in the offshore detention centers. And so
\nI’ve just got a few copies here of reports that have been published. And this is just the tip
\nof the iceberg. Australia’s own Human Rights Commission held an inquiry. Human Rights
\nWatch has done work. Amnesty International, The Guardian, actually obtained
\na lot of files that were secret files, classified files, and released those that showed the
\nproblems with the conditions on these detention centers. And then
\nrecently, there was a documentary called Chasing Asylum. The director said that was her goal with
\nthis film to actually try to shame Australia into changing its policies. And of course, shaming
\ncountries is an important tactic for human rights advocates. Now,
\nthese miserable conditions have actually driven some detainees to end their indefinite detentions
\nin these centers through suicide, as did a 23 year old Iranian man who self-immolated
\nin 2016. And more recently, in June of this year, another young Iranian man
\ntook his own life on Nauru. He’d been there since 2013 and had repeatedly
\nasked for assistance with his deteriorating mental health conditions.
\nRight now, one hundred and eighty nine people still languish in the processing center on Nauru.
\nSo these are just facts that it’s a very expensive policy, that there are a lot of distortions in how
\nthe policy is implemented and funded and that there’s a lot of human suffering that’s inflicted.
\nAnd so we might agree with Human Rights Watch that the policy would seem to be politically unsustainable
\nor headed for a legitimacy crisis, as other critics have have argued, however,
\nrather than arguing rather than concluding that it’s politically sustainable. I
\nreach the contrary conclusion that it’s actually politically self-sustaining.
\nAnd I do that for three main reasons that I’ll go through here today. One
\nis that the policy actually actually serves the political interests
\nof Australia’s major parties. There’s a certain political logic in place that just
\nseems to make it very difficult to get them to change course. And if they don’t change course,
\nthe policy will remain. Second, as I’ll show you here today, Australia
\neffectively conducted a real world policy experiment with the Australian model. And
\nif you look at the numbers, there is a case to be made that it worked.
\nIt’s hard to argue against that against that case. You can, but you’ve got to get people to listen to that argument.
\nAnd that’s hard to do. And last, I think that the politics of the situation makes
\nit largely impervious to a lot of the tactics that human rights advocates have been using
\nand try to use to prod the government to make changes. And so I reached the conclusion
\nthat this policy is going to be around for quite some time does not mean I endorse
\nit, but I just think it’s politically self-sustaining.
\nSo I want to talk a little bit about the political origins and development of the model for those
\nof you who aren’t that familiar with it. Well, then talk about the real world policy
\nexperience, the political dynamics that sustain it. And the reasons why see advocacy
\nefforts is largely futile. So we all know that the problem in the world is we have about 65
\nmillion displaced people who want to go somewhere else. And the countries that the most that are the most appealing destinations
\ndon’t necessarily want these people. What what are we to do in this situation?
\nAustralia is fairly lucky country geographically because it’s able to assert real control
\nover its borders by virtue of where it’s located and that it’s surrounded by open ocean.
\nIn the late 1970s, early 1980s, Australia encountered its first of
\nexperience with people arriving by boat. They were fleeing the conflicts of Southeast Asia.
\nI think roughly two thousand people arrived. It was perceived as a crisis. The then coalition
\ngovernment, the coalition, as a conservative government of Malcolm Fraser,
\nresponded by largely accepting these people, working to resettle them and trying
\nto work for a regional solution to deal with the flows that were coming
\nto Australia. It was quite controversial. People were worried about how it would go, and it’s generally regarded
\nas a real policy success for Australia. And indeed, Malcolm Fraser, until his
\ndeath, was a vociferous critic of the governments and their policies
\ntowards asylum seekers in the last couple of decades. So what happens is that
\nyou get a lull in the boats from the early 1980s until the early 1990s, which point you have
\na Labor government in power. The Labor government decides to take a hard line and institutes
\na policy of mandatory detention whereby people who arrive by boat and claim asylum
\nare detained until their asylum application is either accepted or if rejected,
\nthey can be deported. That was a real problem for people who could not be deported because they were essentially stateless
\npersons. In nineteen ninety six, Australians went to the polls and that’s an important
\nelection because Labor lost power to the conservative coalition led
\nby John Howard. It’s also important because Pauline Hanson,
\nwho’s a populist politician in Australia, she was a fish and chip shop owner in
\nQueensland, and she was able to win a seat in parliament. And
\nshe pursued rhetoric that the major parties did not engage in, largely focusing
\non indigenous people and race. She said what a lot of people were thinking, but what a lot of people weren’t
\nsaying and gave voice to that. And I don’t think in today’s world we have to imagine
\ntoo much what that sounds like. That was important because she started
\nto draw. She posed a threat to the major parties, to the coalition parties,
\nmainly at that time today, equally arguably to Labor
\nand the coalition parties drawing their supporters for her being a voice against
\nglobalisation and a voice against immigration and indigenous people.
\nIn 2001, John Howard was up for. His government was up for reelection,
\nwas lagging. He was lagging in the polls. And a Norwegian freighter, the M.B. Tampa,
\nrescued about 430 some asylum seekers from a sinking boat
\nwants to deposit them in Australia, as would have been standard practice. And Howard uses that as an opportunity
\nto say we will decide who comes here and the circumstances in which they come. And he’s able to win the 2001
\nelection, throwing Labor a real curveball as to how to respond on this issue.
\nHoward essentially defined the issue in terms of one of border control and border
\nprotection. The boats
\neventually came to pretty much a stop and this allowed
\nlabor when it came to power. John Howard is the second
\nlongest serving prime minister in Australia. No prime minister served a full term since
\nhe lost power in 2007, so he was there from 96 to 2007.
\nAnd the issue had sort of faded from Australian politics and created some space
\nfor labor to say, look, we’ll pursue a less draconian policy. And so
\nlabor rolls back. What had been the policy of the Howard government, which was offshore
\nprocessing, some boat turn backs and they begin to
\npretty quickly see boats start arriving again in quite large numbers to
\nAustralia carrying asylum seekers. And the coalition parties make the case that
\nthis is exactly what we said would follow if you lifted the policies that we’d had in place and that had
\nreally kept the boats in check. This throws Labor
\ninto a real quandary because the boats keep increasing in number
\nand there are a number of stopgap measures trying to put an end to this.
\nThe coalition as the opposition is not willing to help with that because they’re getting political
\nmileage out of labor floundering with this issue. The 2010 election
\nis run in large part on the issue of asylum seekers with Tony Abbott, the leader of
\nthe Coalition, making stopping the boats, his policy
\nor one of his main policies. And the result winds
\nup with a hung parliament. Julia Gillard, who by then is leader of the Labor
\nParty, is able to forge a minority government and is able to govern
\nfairly effectively. But the boats continue to come in the lead up to the 2013
\nelection. Kevin Rudd, who she had deposed in a party room spill,
\nresurrects himself and returns the favor to her, arguing that he
\ncan lead Labor to reelection at 2013 or at least save the furniture
\nand the party goes with that. So Rudd is now up against Abbott, who wants to stop
\nthe boats. Rudd decides he must do one better. And that is where we get that third
\npillar of the Australian model, which is if you try to come to Australia by boat
\nand claim asylum, you will never be allowed to settle here. So we have Rudd
\nto thank for that. Course, Abbott actually wins that election, wins a 17 seat
\nmajority and implements what’s called Operation Sovereign
\nBorders, which is essentially a beefed up boat turn back operation
\nthat further militarizes the policy and maintains the offshore processing
\nand boats fairly quickly come to a stop.
\nAnd so this is what drives the politics of it, is
\nthis effort. This idea that Australians don’t like the visual image of
\nboats arriving without invitation and provokes this visceral response
\nfrom voters in this idea that you have to appeal to that and come out
\neven tougher on border control leads us to this Australian model
\nnow. It also gives us a pretty neat policy experience.
\nAnd so here you can see numbers of boat arrivals.
\nGot it by financial year in calendar year. You can see the
\nFraser government’s small numbers that they were dealing with in the late 70s, early
\nunder the Labor government that institutes mandatory detention. And then you can see the ratcheting up
\naround this period of time dealing with the Tampa. And during this time, Pauline Hanson, our populist
\nvoice, was there arguing, well, we ought to turn back people at sea
\nbefore she articulated that or initially when she articulated that
\nother voices in mainstream politics were saying, that’s absurd, we can’t actually do that. Later, that will become part
\nof Australia’s policy. She actually proposed several ideas that were initially said
\nby others that they were beyond the pale but would become adopted. We can see
\nthat boats virtually come to an end here. Boat arrivals after the Pacific Solution is instituted
\nby Howard in the wake of the M.B. Tampa affair. And then with the lifting of
\nthe Pacific Solution, we see the numbers go up and then come back down.
\nAnd so essentially, this begets a conventional wisdom
\nthat this suite of policies actually works. And I should add that during that time period, there were
\nseveral instances where boats carrying refugees, asylum seekers
\nthat weren’t seaworthy, crashed onto the shores. And where there’s footage of children drowning,
\npeople drowning. And this provoked a very strong reaction among the Australian people.
\nNow, quite paradoxically, it led them to to support these policies
\neven more as a way of preventing that sorts of the lesser of two evils. These policies prevent
\nthat sort of suffering that they had witnessed through video footage. So just
\nto give you an idea of the change in attitude that occurs during this time, I’ve got two quotes
\nfrom The Australian newspaper. This one is around the 2001
\nelection. And the Australian newspaper is not a left
\nleaning rag. As many of you may know, it’s a paper owned by NewsCorp.
\nAnd so there was a real reaction against the Pacific Solution. But by 2016,
\nthe paper had changed its tune and it reflects a larger shift in public thinking.
\nAnd I have a little more elaborate quote here. The paper opined that dismantling
\nthe Pacific Solution, Labor’s action was arguably the greatest public policy
\nfailure in the nation’s history. It was a hard reality. The paper concluded
\nthat any weakening in the policy would lead to a resumption of the boats.
\nEven some refugee advocates have have admitted that they think
\nthat the policy actually stopped the boats and that there is some good to come from that if it prevents
\nboats from going down at sea.
\nSo. These. That
\ncreates a willingness to believe that the policy is the better of two evils.
\nBut there are other dynamics that I think reinforce Australia’s commitment to this policy.
\nOne is simply the imperative for reelection that governments face. Governments
\nin Australia have a three year term. That’s not a lot of time to get things done. Asylum
\nseekers are not really a pocketbook issue for Australians. When they’re confronted
\nwith the issue, they’ll think about it. But it’s not something that governments that seek reelection
\nare going to lead with. It’s not something they want to devote their scarce time, resources
\nand political capital to. And it’s not an easy problem to describe.
\nAnd there aren’t a lot of policy solutions just sitting around there shovel ready to
\nuse. So it’s a tricky issue. There’s an incentive for partisan power,
\npartisan government to try to keep this issue off of the agenda.
\nA second issue is that there’s been a lot of leadership instability in Australia since 2007.
\nWe go from Rudd to Guillard to Rudd to Abbott to Turnbull
\nnow to Morrison. And this creates risk and uncertainty in
\nAustralian politics. And so the idea that you would put a bet on
\nconfronting this really difficult issue seems to me quite unlikely
\nin the current Australian political context. Now, if we
\nespecially when you’ve got a policy that seems to be working and that many people, not all but many
\npeople seem to be satisfied with. So there are also reasons why the coalition
\nhas no incentive to get rid of this policy. One is that Pauline
\nHanson and minor parties and independents on the right
\nof the conservative Liberal Party and National Party that comprise the coalition,
\nthose parties to their right are a threat for draining their votes. And in fact,
\nthe number of primary votes that Labor and the Liberals and Nationals
\nget from voters is continually going down, which essentially means that Australian voters are increasingly
\nwilling to give their first preference on their ballots to minor parties and independents.
\nAnd so the coalition has an interest in trying to retain those voters
\nwho they might lose to parties on the right. In particular, to Pauline Hanson and
\nher party, One Nation. So to show you the importance of this issue to One Nation voters,
\nthose voters that the coalition wants to retain. I can cite some evidence from
\nthe 2016 Australian Electoral Survey in that survey
\nfor those who respondents who identified with the One Nation
\nParty. Eighty three percent of them regarded immigration as extremely important
\nwhen deciding how to vote. By contrast, immigration was only extremely
\nimportant for 32 percent of the national voters. They’re part of the coalition.
\nTwenty four percent of Liberal Party voters also part of that conservative coalition,
\nand only twenty one percent of Labor voters. In addition,
\nboat turnbacks for the Liberal and National Parties. That figure was 63
\npercent. Are the conservative parties. For labor, it was fifty five percent. So these
\nvoters that the coalition is trying to retain clearly have strong views
\non immigration. It’s an important issue for them and they like the policy as
\nit is. A second reason
\nis that the issue is a great wedge issue for labor,
\nbecause labor is a little more divided on the issue of what to do with asylum seekers.
\nAnd so the Coalition is able to use that issue against
\nLabor. So within Labor, there are some pragmatists who say, look, we
\njust need to win power so we can implement our larger agenda and we’ll deal with the
\nasylum seeker issue later, if at all. There are some within Labor,
\na smaller camp, to be sure, who want the party to take the moral high ground
\non the issue and to confront the issue of asylum seeker policy and to change the policy.
\nAnd periodically when there’s an election and candidates make comments. These get aired in the public
\nand the leaders of the coalition are all over it. When that
\nhappens, and the thing that they say is, see, you can’t trust labor
\nbecause there are people in labor who want to go back to the bad years when all of these people
\narrived. And we you can trust us. We don’t give any ground.
\nYou can’t trust labor. And you can’t trust Bill Shorten, because guess what? In this revolving
\ndoor of party leadership, maybe he won’t be party leader or prime minister. It could be
\nsomeone else who has more sympathy on this policy area. And so it’s
\na great wedge issue for for the Coalition, for Labor. They’ve got to try
\nto maintain that unity. And for Labor, they’re also losing votes to
\ntheir left, to parties like the Green Party for people,
\nfor voters who for whom this asylum seeker policy policy is an important issue and that
\nthey want to see it change. So Labor is trying to talk out of both sides of its mouth.
\nIt wants to retain anyone that it might lose to the right, because there
\nare some conservatives within the Labor Party historically. But it also needs to try
\nto retain these voters that it might lose to the left. And this is becoming an increasingly important
\ndynamic and will be very interesting at the next election as urban
\nelectorates come under threat, which urban electorates that had been previously safe.
\nLabor seats begin to be threatened by voters who are willing
\nto vote for a party that aligns with their interests, not only on asylum seekers. You could also see climate
\nchange and other issues being important to them. But asylum seekers are certainly an issue.
\nSo it’s a wedge issue for the Coalition. It helps them retain those voters for whom this is an important
\nissue. And the strangest dynamic that I have seen is that all news
\nis good news for the coalition. Now, I began this talk by
\nnaming or by identifying a few people who had actually killed themselves in these detention centers
\nat the cost overruns, at the evidence of some sort of if
\nnot corruption, incompetence in the administration of tendering contracts. And
\nyet every time Peter Dutton, who is the minister for Home Affairs,
\nor Scott Morrison when he was minister for immigration and border control, whenever they have to front up to
\nthe media and address these issues, they have a standard script.
\nAnd that is well, the reason we have these problems is because of Labor’s failed
\npolicies. The people who are in detention, the people who are suffering, the people who are self-immolating
\nare doing that. They are there because of labor. We will never go back to
\nthat to what the Labor, Green, Labor and Greens brought you. They always
\nfold the Greens in with labor as if to play it. Another seed of distrust
\namong those. And it’s just amazing how they’re able to just pivot from no matter how bad
\nthe the story is. It is good news for the coalition because
\nthey are there to protect and protect the country. So that’s
\nhow it works for the Coalition for Labor. It’s a little different. I mean, Labor
\nfeels burned by its experiment that it undertook when it got back into power in two thousand
\nin seven. And so I think there is little appetite for reforming
\nthese policies aside from at the margins. So if you listen to Bill Shorten talk about
\nhow their asylum policies differ from those of the coalition, they will say things about,
\nwell, we’ll take a more humanitarian approach or we’ll be more transparent. And I always
\nthink being transparent is the worst thing you could do, because being opaque is what allows the government
\nto do a lot of the things that it’s doing. It’s not getting the sort of scrutiny that it might. So to me, if they’re serious about
\nbeing transparent, they want to stay in power. I would say quit saying that that’s not a good idea. Come up with something
\nelse, but they’ll tinker around the margins. That’s essentially what they promise.
\nAt the same time, try to tamp down on those within the party that do want to push for
\nsome sort of policy reform. It’s hard for me to imagine a first term Labor
\ngovernment doing anything meaningful on asylum seeker policy, especially since boats
\nhave not been reaching and have not been intercepted by Australian
\nships and have been able to be turned back effectively. I can’t see why they would want to
\nadd more people into immigration detention at all.
\nSo this brings me to the last point. Then what about the refugee advocates?
\nAnd what are the prospects for success here? And I think it depends
\non the policy target that they’re choosing. If
\nthey’re choosing the suite of policies that form this Australian model, then I I think it’s tough.
\nIt’ll be tough for them because there is this belief that the policy works and
\nit prevents a greater evil of people dying at sea. There is
\nan argument to be made that boat turnbacks are not what created that dramatic
\ndrop in the number of boat arrivals. There is an argument that is pretty well documented
\nthat it was actually Kevin Rudd’s vow that if you come here by boat and seek asylum, you’ll never
\nbe permitted to settle in Australia. That that is what actually stopped
\nboat arrivals. So there is a little room to perhaps give on boat on on
\nboat turnbacks to convince a government possibly to give that up. I don’t think a government would be for turning
\non that policy at all. But there’s an argument that that might work. In fact, one
\nof the people making this argument is a former secretary of the Immigration Department,
\nand he was very of one of his articles, blog posts. He’s very upset that the Canberra press gallery
\ntotally ignored this report that showed that it was not the
\nboat turnbacks, but rather the fact that you could never settle here that was effective,
\nwhich for him created room to stop the boat turnbacks. Instead, the Canberra press gallery was too
\nconsumed with polls and the leadership horse race in these sorts of things, which I think
\nmakes the point that these sorts of arguments are just too detailed
\nand sophisticated too to leverage politically if you are one of the governing
\nparties that wants to pursue change. How do you get people to tune in enough to understand these things
\nabout this issue, particularly when there are so many other important issues like the royal commission
\ninto banks, like stagnating wages, so many other higher
\norder issues? I think that the the
\nbigger problem that the advocates face is I’ve got a list
\nhere of the political tactics that human rights advocates can use. They can try
\nto redefine a problem. They can use information to try to get
\na government to change a policy or engage in symbolic politics, accountability, politics,
\nleverage politics. When I teach my human rights class, we talk about all of these tactics.
\nThe advocates can use. The problem that I see is whenever they try to redefine the
\nproblem, they always talk about the millions of people who are displaced in the world and who
\nneed somewhere to go. And I think that immediately tells people who are worried about that,
\npeople coming to Australia that, well, my goodness, we don’t want people coming here. This is an insoluble
\nproblem. Maybe we should just leave the status quo policy in
\nplace. They want to shift it in that way. And I think that that undermines
\nwhat they’re what they’re trying to do. There’s also this idea of of evidence based
\npolicy, advocacy and information. But there have literally been dozens
\nof reports documenting the problems in the human suffering. And none of those
\ngets enough traction to bust through this major party consensus. And
\nso I don’t see that working. And in a sense, there’s a bit of empathy fatigue. I think
\nwhen these stories come to light, I just heard on a podcast yesterday of,
\nwell, we need to send a delegation to Nauru to document the problem. And I thought, well, we are the problems and very
\nwell documented. It’s sort of the next step that can’t seem to get traction.
\nThe symbolic politics, you know, there have been moments where particular children have
\nbeen singled out as suffering. And even those moments where we might think that you could humanize
\nthe people who are suffering here and garner some sort of momentum, just
\ndon’t don’t seem to last more than a single news cycle, which is about an hour, I
\nguess, in today’s media landscape, accountability, politics, holding a government
\naccount for its policies, in particular as they relate to international human rights law.
\nAustralia’s been dragged before the Human Rights Council and commission and treaty bodies at the UN
\nnumerous times and criticised and some governments like that of John Howard
\nwhere that as a badge of honor, you’re not going to lose any votes on the right by saying
\nthat you don’t care what they think in Geneva or in New York about your policies
\nfor border defense. So I think in terms of the the problem definition, the
\ngovernment is it is in the driver’s seat in terms of defining the problem as one of.
\nBorder control, border protection. If you read newspaper articles about asylum
\nseekers, the government’s representatives are always quoted. Advocates are often quoted,
\nif at all, later in the piece, they are setting the framework and the
\nalternative ways of defining the problem in terms of human suffering or this larger global
\nproblem don’t seem to make any traction in terms of leverage. There doesn’t
\nreally seem to be any leverage against the Australian government to get it to change its policies.
\nUsually for leverage you need an international institution like the UN to exercise moral
\nleverage or a benefactor. While the US is not going to call Australia
\nout on its policies, particularly under the current US administration, I mean this is a problem
\nthat Western countries around the world are grappling with. And so
\nessentially we have a really difficult setting in which
\nto advocate for this reason. There is some division among human rights advocates
\nin Australia as to what is the proper approach. Some have said, look, we need to stop targeting the Australian
\nmodel as a whole and instead try to deal with the people
\nwho are remaining on Manus Island and who are remaining in the immigration detention center
\nat Nauru. How can we deal with them? New Zealand has offered
\nto take many of these people. However, the government of Turnbull
\nand now Morrison refused to send and Abbott refused to send
\nthese folks to New Zealand because they worry that these people will simply cross
\nthe Tasman through the open migration channel that exists between New Zealand and
\nAustralia. And this idea that they will never be allowed to settle in Australia
\nis seen as you can’t even make a concession on that.
\nIt used to be in the Howard era, there were a few moderates in the Liberal Party that would sort of push Howard a
\nlittle bit to lighten up the policy’s implementation. But those moderates are largely gone
\nand those that remain don’t speak up very much. The parties largely moved to the right
\nand also by keeping these people in offshore detention. You sort of isolate them
\nin the Howard era and the mid 2000s. Some of those people who arrived were actually resettled
\nin agricultural areas. Asylum seekers were resettled there and began working and became part of the community.
\nAnd so you actually had some rural constituencies, members of parliament, advocating on their behalf
\nbecause their communities had gotten to know these people and understood the issues. But
\nthe offshore processing largely removes that because these people are very far away. They’re not in
\nthe Australian community.
\nIt’s interesting if you look back at the Fraser era in the late 70s when they were
\nfirst confronted with the issue of boat arrivals. There’s a wonderful book I’d recommend to you if you’re interested
\nin this issue area by Claire Higgins. It’s a 2017 book and she
\nlooks at how the Fraser government responded to that. And what’s so compelling about her
\nbook is that she finds that all of the issues that are on
\npart of the Australian model today were given to the government, the Fraser government,
\nand said here are policy. They were among the policy options presented to the government.
\nAnd the Fraser government said, well, we can’t do that or we won’t do that, will
\nwe’ll do something else. And actually saw its its approach to receiving
\nthese people as a badge of honor on the international stage.
\nAnd I think that speaks volumes about the change in Australian political
\nculture. And really what we’re seeing around the world is that there is this
\nview that societies won’t wear that anymore. This hyper competitiveness between the parties
\nor this tribalism, all of these political dynamics that seem to reinforce
\nthese more commitment to these more draconian policies and a fear of the risk of
\nhaving to explain policy choices to people that maybe we should try something
\nelse. And I really can’t fault politicians who seek to stay in power for charting a more
\nconservative course on that front. So to wrap
\nup, you were looking for an optimistic feel good talk. This certainly wasn’t it, to kick
\noff your weekend. But, you know, you’re one of the things that I often think about is that I read a
\nlot in the news about these these particular policy issues is it seems there’s so much to
\nwork with here to try to get a government to change the policies. And yet it
\ndoesn’t seem to change. And so what I’ve tried to do in this paper is to unpack the
\ndynamics that are reinforcing this status quo and I think
\nare impediments to to the sort of change that many people in Australia and particularly
\nhuman rights advocates would like to see. And with that, I’ll I’ll wrap up. So there’s
\nplenty of time for questions.<\/p>\n"},"episode_featured_image":false,"episode_player_image":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/4\/2017\/09\/british-studies.png","download_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/podcast-download\/70\/australia-and-the-non-acceptance-of-refugees.mp3","player_link":"https:\/\/podcasts.la.utexas.edu\/british-studies-lecture-series\/podcast-player\/70\/australia-and-the-non-acceptance-of-refugees.mp3","audio_player":"