Christians seeking to find their moral compass in a time of
fear created by both major political parties in their race to the bottom as to
who can devise the “toughest”, translation “cruellest” policy, need to return
to the teaching of Jesus to get oriented. Reflection on the Parable of the Good
Samaritan will provide a bracing and challenging point of departure to guide us
in our approach to current debates over the treatment of asylum seekers. If we
wish to dismiss it on the grounds that it is not “practical” then we should
reconsider our decision to describe ourselves as followers of Jesus. In the
longer term it may be the most “practical” approach there is. But that’s an
argument for another time.
The recent announcements by the Australian Government on the
treatment of asylum seekers http://www.minister.immi.gov.au/media/cb/2012/cb191883.htm and http://www.minister.immi.gov.au/media/cb/2012/cb191155.htm has
been accompanied by much hand wringing over the moral difficulty of needing to
be “tough” to save lives and prevent people from risking their lives on
dangerous boat journeys and to send a “signal” to people arranging the boat
travel, a group otherwise referred to, as “people smugglers”.
The Government policy seems to be directed almost
exclusively at the “people smugglers” if you listened to the exchanges on a
recent episode of Q &A. If the “people smugglers” would only go away the
suggestion is that the “problem” would be solved. And perhaps as viewed by the
political parties it would. The continued arrival of refugees is a reminder
that there is a world out there that we in Australia are part of. Indeed they
remind us, should anyone care to think about it, that Australia is deeply
implicated through its involvement in warfare in Iraq and Afghanistan as an
ally of the United States in the creation of the circumstances that is the
source of much of the flow of refugees.
Out of sight, out of mind seems to be
our motto, and so we can continue the path of denial of responsibility as long
as those pesky refugees don’t keep turning up to disturb our bubble of comfort.
As Jack Waterford from the Canberra Times observed: What shames me most, I guess, is that a good many of these refugees have
fled to places such as Australia only because of the miseries we Australians
have heaped upon their countries in the name of liberating them from tyranny. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/opinion/leaders-wallow-in-gutter-20121124-2a0qy.html
Leaving aside the reality that policy debate has focussed on
a symptom, “people smuggling” rather than the central issue of the humane and
effective handling of asylum seekers throughout South-East Asia, the moral
assessments of the policy changes need more analysis than they have so far
received.
Let me see if I can unpack the government’s logic of
deterrence: 400 people seeking refugee status are held on Nauru in detention,
that is by coercion, not because they have done anything wrong, but to try and
influence the behaviour of people unknown, to try prevent them undertaking an
activity that is grounded in international la, seeking asylum. Holding people
under duress to try and influence the behaviour of other actors normally falls
within the category of an activity that we would normally label hostage taking.
What the Government is saying in its policy of deterrence is
that we are going to cause cruelty to people, to try and save the lives of
others. So what are the harms that the Government will cause by this policy,
and what are the evils that they wish to prevent?
The evil they wish to prevent are the deaths of some unknown
proportion of people who take a risky and dangerous voyage to Australia to seek
asylum from persecution.
So on the one side of the ledger we have if the policy is
successful, a reduced number of deaths in transit. But notice something
interesting here; the choice taken by people who risk their lives is their
choice, presumably taken with some knowledge of the risks. The Government
without knowledge of their specific circumstances is seeking to substitute its
judgement as to the balance between the risks of loss of their lives and the
risks that they face if they do not take the boat journey. The government is
essentially saying, we know better than you how much risk you should take. The
government policy is based on a presumption that nothing bad will happen to
them if they do not take the risk of the sea voyage. The judgement from an
air-conditioned office in Canberra as to what that calculation looks like may
be very different from the point of view of a refugee.
On the other side of the ledger we have some information
based on experience in recent years as to the harms that will be done by the
Government’s policy. We can expect a number of suicides, attempted suicides and
mental health problems for those detained on Nauru and Manus Island, that will
affect many individuals and their families for the rest of their lives. The
inability to work for those on the Australian mainland while waiting for the
granting of protection will have similar affects on self esteem and self
confidence as well as creating an alienated economically deprived group within
Australia over the longer term.
To knowingly cause mental health problems that may lead to
suicide and self harm, and to actively prevent by force of law people from
exercising their human vocation to work and to contribute to family livelihood
and to the community welfare as well as to actively maintain people in abject
poverty are all outcomes which are evil. The Government and opposition are both
committed to these outcomes as a matter of policy. How do these weigh in the
balance against the objective of saving people’s lives? What we are saying to
asylum seekers who come is that you must pay the price in your bodies and
family lives to try and prevent other people making a choice that might result
in the loss of their life.
On its own terms, that is a somewhat doubtful moral
position, in that we are putting in the balance certain harm to some people
against an uncertain number of deaths that are prevented if the policy is
successful in its goals. But what if the policy does not succeed in preventing
people from taking the risk? In that case we will have succeeded in being cruel
for no possible, even vaguely arguable moral gain. We will not have stopped the
deaths of those in transit, and the admitted cruelty to those refugees will
have been undertaken without any arguable moral benefit.
What is the evidence to suggest that the policy will
be successful? The only study that I can find was undertaken back in 2009
suggested that push factors tended to override pull factors in driving people
seeking asylum by boat. The Pacific solution did not stop the boats from
coming. The author explains that … it diddled the stats by redefinition. Boats still made the attempt to enter
Australia – which is a point worth noting as many of the proponents of Pull
Factors cite reducing the risk of death from reducing the number of people
attempting the voyage by boat, as one of their key rationales. Yet we know that
SIEV(s) 5,7,11 and 12 in 2002 attempted to make the journey and were returned
to Indonesia while SIEV(s) 4,6 and 10 actually sank. That was in very late 2001
through late 2002. In 2003 we know that boats were still attempting to make the
voyage such as SIEV 14, but were again towed back from whence they came.
The UNHCR estimates that 1600 people
were diverted throughout the time of the Pacific Solution, but hard numbers are
difficult to come by.http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/2009/10/19/push-vs-pull-asylum-seeker-numbers-and-statistics/
In summary, the policy is an attempt to use a form of
hostage taking and causing a range of cruelty and harms to people with the
intention of trying to discourage people from making a choice that involves the
risk of death in pursuit of asylum. If the policy works we have a situation in
which the most vulnerable have borne the burden of the Government’s achievement
of its policy goals. If the policy doesn’t work and the odds are against it,
then the Government will have caused substantial harm to a vulnerable group of
people for no outcome at all. Evil will have been done for no good at all. On
any moral calculus you like that is a big risk to take.
In the meantime the implications for Christians of the
Parable of the Good Samaritan are pretty clear. We need to get involved in
those community groups that will do what they can to act as neigbours to the
vulnerable strangers in our midst. We can also begin to conduct a guerrilla
warfare of polite, respectful correspondence with our local members and
political leaders on the moral and policy incoherence of the policy.
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