Eroding democracy
Senator Nick Bolkus, not content with denying basic human rights and dignity to refugees, nor with insulting Australia's Macedonian community, is now bent on devaluing the democratic rights of Australia's elected parliamentarians, and thereby the rest of us.
New South Wales state Labor MP John Newman, whose electorate of Cabramatta has a large Asian community, has gone public over Bolkus' claims that his request to visit the last remaining Cambodian refugees at the Villawood Detention Centre (read prison) was a stunt. Bolkus has refused Newman's request to visit the two Cambodians languishing for their fourth year in detention. The two have not been tried, let alone convicted, for any crime.
Bolkus had previously refused a group of 25 state parliamentarians access to the centre. "I think the community is going to view this in bad terms. They are going to think that the minister has got something to hide", claims Newman, who plans to confront Bolkus over the issue.
Newman has called for the two internees to be released into the care of their community; the federal government has spent $20 million imprisoning refugees, he says.
Australia is the only Western country with mandatory detention for people who enter the country illegally seeking refugee status, a policy criticised by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission in 1992. Even the US State Department, hardly a bastion of humane, caring and democratic principle, has singled out the Labor government's detention of Vietnamese, Cambodian and Chinese for special criticism.
When wearing the responsible pants of cabinet minister, the modern ALP parliamentary left (to which Bolkus claims allegiance) are as reactionary as those from the traditional conservative parties. Bolkus has proved to be no exception to this rule.
But the issue goes beyond this Labor government's appalling human rights record. How fragile is this parliamentary democracy when even a parliamentarian from the minister's own party is denied access to those interned without trial? If fellow politicians can be treated in such a cavalier fashion, then how much more vulnerable are the rest of us to the petty — and not so petty — tyrannies of ministers of the crown?
Bolkus' actions are a further erosion of democratic rights and compound the denial of basic human rights practised against refugees by his department in our name.