When the chips are down, Australia’s compassion dries up
We’re not all in this together — just ask students, prisoners or poor migrants, writes Greg Barns
OVER the course of the COVID-19 crisis the federal and state governments have been busily stitching together billions of dollars in corporate and personal welfare programs. The media has been lauding them for their efforts. Politicians trip over themselves to appear compassionate and empathetic. But let us not delude ourselves. Nothing has really changed. If you are in detention, or living on a bridging visa, there is no “hand up” or “hand out” for you. That is because governments, both Labor and Coalition, regard you as less than human. And if you are an international student, the Australian community, which has treated you to racist abuse at worst and a cold resentment at best, is now leaving you to fend for yourself. If you are a migrant worker, ditto. The Australia that John Howard unleashed when he was prime minister, a mean place, lives on even while we pretend that we are all in this together.
The treatment of asylumseekers is particularly abusive. So many young men and women who live in our community while they wait a cruelly interminable amount of time for the Department of Home Affairs to decide their fate, scrape by on the generosity of decent people and some employers who have a heart. But now employers have shed jobs, there is no income available. While Australians are being wrapped in welfare payments and other funding to protect them from destitution, those who are on bridging visas are, apparently, not worthy of government largesse. As Paul Power from the Refugee Council of Australia observed on March 23, “With the international movement of people grinding to a halt, we need to take care of everyone now in Australia, knowing that the health of all of us is directly connected to how we treat the most vulnerable. We cannot collectively afford to have people destitute, homeless and with no access to affordable medical help. The risk to public health is too great.”
Asylum-seekers on bridging visas are among the more than 1 million workers in Australia who are migrants. International students, backpackers and other shortterm migrants meet demand for labour in sectors such as agriculture, construction and bars and restaurants. We are happy to take their labour but when the chips are down, we turn our backs because they are not “Australians”. The
Howard legacy.
As Peter Mares, a researcher and writer on immigration, rightly observed last week, “I would argue temporary visa holders need to get some sort of support if they are stuck in Australia and they can’t go home and can’t find work. People cannot be left with nothing, with no income to survive. People also need to be supported as a public health issue.”
Oh, but can’t they just go back to their home country, say the ignorant and racist among us. Answer, no. Borders are shut. That is why, for
example, University of Tasmania international students are desperately trying to access income support from that institution. One student told this columnist they were told to go and see Anglicare for financial counselling! If you have no money not much point, is there?
And what of the thousands we detain in immigration detention and prisons? What do our politicians with their faux compassion worn on their shiny sleeves think they can do to protect them from the plague? Nothing. With the exception of the NSW government which passed a law to allow release of prisoners, every other jurisdiction thinks it’s OK to leave people living in a petri dish. Governments have a clear duty of care to those they detain. They must keep them safe and provide an environment where the health risk is manageable. In the UK and in many US states detainees and prisoners are being released because those governments understand their duty of care. In Australia they ignore it because they are driven by inflicting as much pain on detainees and prisoners as they can. So the foot is not going to come off the throat now (disclaimer: this columnist chairs the Prisoners Legal Service in Tasmania). Deaths, serious harm and completely predictable riots and violence in detention will be the result of this callous disregard for humanity.
It is amazing that in all the blanket media coverage this plague is getting there is so little emphasis on the hypocrisy of the political class. The media has been seduced into a dangerous mindset where propaganda and the lauding of our brave politicians is the order of the day. Never mind that the leadership of Australia is deliberately excluding from its “all of us” psyche anyone who has lost their liberty or who is not an Australian citizen.
Nothing has really changed at all. The “them versus us” culture that seeped into the skin of this nation 20 years ago with the rise of Howard is being seen today for what it is — ugly and judgmental.