BY MARGARET GLEESON
Labor for Refugees was formed in NSW at the end of 2001, giving expression to the frustration of ordinary ALP members who were increasingly disgusted at the party's anti-refugee policies. One of the main aims of the group has been to change ALP policy.
Labor for Refugees was established by activists, including non-ALP members active in the broader refugees' rights movement. Organisationally, however, it has been coordinated through the NSW Labor Council — a body not noted for its support of grassroots organising.
Local Labor for Refugees branches or "affinity groups" have been set up in a few Sydney suburbs, conducting stalls in shopping centres and leafleting for rallies. Labor Council endorsement of Labor for Refugees has not translated into a significant trade union movement involvement, with only one union-based Labor for Refugees group (in the Public Service Association) being formed.
At the outset, Labor for Refugees took up the demands of the burgeoning refugees' rights movement, including the demand to end mandatory detention of asylum seekers.
The strength of the movement forced ALP federal parliamentary leader Simon Crean, in January 2002, to announce a softening of the party's policy to call for the release of children in detention. In February, however, when announcing ALP federal caucus support for a new "policy framework", he insisted that there had been no shift from the party's support for mandatory detention.
The "policy framework" states: "Labor believes that mandatory detention is required to enable identity, security and health checking of asylum seekers. It is also required to ensure that asylum seekers, who have failed the test of being a refugee and are at a high risk of absconding, do not abscond...
"Labor will in its policy review process consider other variations to the current detention model (i.e., secure hostels, community release models, locating detainees in less remote areas), including the nature and duration of detention."
The "policy framework" calls for returning management of the detention centres to the public sector. However, this would not be a return to the earlier model of migrant hostels (as Villawood and Maribyrnong were previously). "Labor believes that the Australian Protective Service, a public sector agency, should manage Australia's detention centres."
While it might provide "variations" to the current detention model, the ALP "policy framework" will not accommodate a shift to meet the demand of the refugees' rights movement to end mandatory detention. "Secure hostels" run by the Australian Protective Service are still prisons.
An article in February 13 Australian headed "ALP rebels urge policy change", reported Crean's statement that Labor remained committed to mandatory detention, plus comments by federal Labor MP Carmen Lawrence to the February 12 refugees' rights rally outside Parliament House in Canberra. She was quoted as saying that detention would only apply "during initial security and health checks and later for asylum seekers who were refused refugee status", and that she described this as a "crucial" loophole for Labor MPs pushing for a "more compassionate policy" on asylum-seekers.
It is apparent that "rebel" MPs such as Lawrence are not prepared to go the full mile in opposing mandatory detention. In an interview published in the February 13 Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, Lawrence said: "Ideally, the checking should be done in centres close to communities to reduce the trauma involved... it shouldn't take more that a few weeks in most cases, maybe a few months, but certainly not years. Asylum seekers should then be allowed to live in the community on a 'humanitarian visa' and report regularly to authorities in a sort of parole-like way."
A campaign strategy based on looking for "loopholes" in what is essentially still a policy of mandatory detention straight jackets the refugees' rights movement.
The movement derives its dynamic from the broad range of activist organisations that have sprung up around the country — including Rural Australians for Refugees, Children Out of Detention (ChilOut), church groups, lawyers' groups, Refugee Action Collectives, the Free the Refugees Campaign, Justice for Refugees, well as Labor for Refugees.
Underlying the growing strength of the movement has been the high level of cooperation between these organisations, but also the movement's accurate assessment of the bipartisan character of the policy of the two major parties.
Labor for Refugees quite rightly sees itself as an important component of the refugee rights movement. The motion which it will put to the May 25-26 annual conference of the NSW branch of the ALP incorporates many of the elements of an alternative policy which have been raised by the rest of the movement. These call for the abolition of temporary protection visas, an increase in the refugee intake, and re-instatement of the right to judicial review of refugee tribunal decisions.
However, the motion deals with the key issues of ending mandatory detention and closing the detention centres by taking the "loophole" approach advocated by Lawrence.
The motion calls for "mandatory processing" of up to three to five weeks to be carried out in processing centres before asylum seekers are moved to supervised accommodation in the general community. Since this would be combined with the provision of free counselling, schools, TAFE English classes, hospital, health and legal services, "supervision" — by way of mandatory reporting to the immigration department — would seem to be redundant.
No mention is made of income support while applications are being processed. Activists in Labor for Refugees had previously sought equal treatment of asylum seekers with applicants for resident's visas — that is, the issuing of bridging visas which allowed asylum seekers to work while their applications for permanent residence are processed.
In what appears to be a further compromise before the debate is even begun on the ALP conference floor, the motion also calls for the immediate closure of only the most isolated detention centres — Woomera, Port Headland and Curtin — rather than presenting the broader movement's demand for the immediate closure of the all the refugee prisons.
If rank and file activists in Labor for Refugees are to succeed in shifting ALP policy, they will need to reflect and rely on the strength and political independence of the mass movement. A strategy based on compromising the movement's demands to conform to what the parliamentary Labor Party is prepared to accept will undermine the refugees' rights movement.
There are obvious parallels between — and lessons to be learnt from — the experience Labor for Refugees and previous ALP rank and file groups within social protest movements. The most recent of these was Labor Against Uranium in the 1980s, a period of much greater activism among ALP members than exists today (at the time, I had had 24 years continuous membership of the ALP).
Labor Against Uranium fought a hard campaign over a number of years to get the ALP, in all states and nationally, to adopt a policy of no uranium mining. However, this victory was overturned by a parliamentary caucus decision in 1983 to grant export licences, thereby giving the go-ahead to mining at Roxby Downs in South Australia.
At the ALP national conference following the caucus decision, the watering down of the "no mining" policy began. A last minute amendment brokered by Labor "left-winger" Bob Hogg rendered the policy inconsistent and ambiguous.
Labor Against Uranium failed to recognise and draw on the strength of the broad anti-uranium mining movement to force the ALP to enact its no uranium mining policy once it came into government. Instead, it rolled over as the "left" Labor MPs began the process of demobilising the movement so as not to embarrass the newly elected federal Labor government.
In an interview published in the March 20 GLW, NSW Labor for Refugees coordinator Amanda Tattersall said: "Mandatory detention has become a symbol of hatred and persecution in the community, a symbol of racism, and Labor for Refugees is committed to it being ended, not compromised or redefined." Commenting on the lessons to be learnt from earlier struggles in the ALP, she said Labor Against Uranium had been "deflated over the ALP's compromise over the three uranium mines, and I think we're particularly conscious of their ability to stop half way and therefore deflate our movement".
"The ALP won't be won over by rational debate", Tattersall continued. "The leadership of the ALP must be convinced by the growth of a political movement that is broad and well represented across the community, that articulates the demands that Labor for Refugees is also articulating...
"Changing policy on refugees ... will be a product of the social movements that are able to represent the community opposition to the current policy and community demands for a more progressive stance."
Tattersall was right. If Labor for Refugees is to succeed where previous rank and file movements in the ALP have failed, members must take their lead, not from the "policy framework" imposed by the MPs, but from the grassroots social movement. That means standing with the rest of the movement and calling for an end to mandatory detention, without compromise.
[Margaret Gleeson is a member of the Socialist Alliance and the Democratic Socialist Party.]
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, May 22, 2002.
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