In his Australia Day address on January 26, Labor opposition leader Simon Crean argued that women and children asylum seekers should be released from refugee detention centres. He called for a "solution that is lasting, bi-partisan and firm, but compassionate.".
He spelt out what it should mean: "Where children seeking asylum are unaccompanied by family members, they should be fostered out in the community, as quickly as possible. Where children are accompanied, we should allow them and their mothers to be released from the centres into ordinary style housing under appropriate supervision."
Crean also advocated faster processing of refugee claims, a coastguard and new mechanisms to enable refugees to apply for asylum in countries where they currently can't.
Some have hailed this as a major shift in Labor Party policy, and a significant step towards defeating the government's mandatory detention regime.
But it's not.
Calling for the release of women and children from detention is a "safe" issue for the ALP to take up because it doesn't challenge mandatory detention or the "Pacific solution" — it doesn't challenge the basic framework of refugee policy.
The supervised release of women and children from detention centres is not a new policy — the ALP supported it in the lead up to the November federal election.
In fact, it's a bi-partisan position. In August, the government initiated a "trial release" in Woomera. A number of "family groups" of women and children (under twelve) are housed in vacant homes, kept under 24-hour guard. Immigration minister Philip Ruddock has argued for the program to be extended, but not many women volunteer to be separated from male members of their family.
Women and children make up a small proportion, at most a third, of asylum seekers held in detention. The majority of detainees are young single men. Psychological experts have indicated that detention has an adverse effect on all those locked up for six months or more — regardless of whether they are male or female, single or in a family group.
Many are angered by the Labor Party's failure to take a stronger position in defence of refugees. Anne Summers, former adviser to ALP prime minister Paul Keating, wrote a column in the January 28 Sydney Morning Herald condemning Labor's "dithering" over the issue. She is so angry, she admits, that she may never vote for Labor again.
"[Julia] Gillard is the new shadow minister [for immigration] and she initially seemed to show promise of a more humane and intelligent approach", Summers writes. "But in the past couple of weeks she has been merely muttering about 'reforms' and 'reviews' while Woomera burnt."
"What price will Labor pay", Summers asks, "for failing to oppose a policy that more and more Australians are becoming distinctly uncomfortable with?".
Some ALP politicians are also uneasy. Carmen Lawrence, who wrote an article in the January 25 Sydney Morning Herald calling for the release of women and children, sponsored a February 2 rally in Perth to free the refugees.
Some ALP leaders however, oppose any compromise. ALP frontbencher Mark Latham wrote to NSW Labor Council secretary John Robertson after Robertson wrote to politicians on behalf of NSW Labor for Refugees.
In the letter, Latham attacked the Labor Council, saying: "To claim that people who oppose an open door policy are ignorant, racist and emotive is a massive slur against the working class." Latham strongly supports the retention of mandatory detention "to avoid chaos in the processing of asylum seekers in this country".
No-one should be fooled by Labor's "new" position. It's a desperate grab at an issue that they hope might differentiate the ALP from the Coalition enough to win back disaffected, pro-refugee voters. But it will change little for the refugees.
If we can escalate the campaign to free the refugees by bringing more people onto the streets, Labor will be put under the sort of pressure it can't ignore.
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, February 6, 2002.
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