A dangerous moral high ground on Manus
As Gerry Brownlee says, we should be looking carefully at our readiness to take 150 refugees embroiled in the ugly stand-off on Manus Island.
The Government’s main reason for offering to take the contingent is – or was – that we are responding to a humanitarian crisis and at the same time helping out our neighbour caught in a terrible bind, with its reputation bleeding like a stuck pig.
Of course repeating our offer endlessly and knowing (and hoping like hell) that Australia won’t accept it – but getting Brownie points internationally anyway – is not exactly helping the relationship with our neighbour. We are having our cake and eating it and it won’t be forgotten.
Politically Jacinda Ardern will be hoping the issue will go away but Andrew Little’s rash statements about the situation and her bleeding heart Greens mean she can’t back away just yet.
We should distinguish between the humanitarian aspect of this debacle and the Australian policy of overseas detention of asylum seekers. New Zealand can afford to look holier than thou on the latter because of distance but I wonder what would happen if people smugglers invested in better boats and made their way across the Tasman?
If it is truly a humanitarian crisis we should be offering to take all the refugees at the centre who want to come. If people are really suffering we should be seeking to end it immediately.
We can afford it but taking even just 150 men will be a costly exercise. They have to be accommodated, orientated and integrated without overburdening services in New Zealand, where we know there is a homeless crisis. Some will have physical and mental health problems and understandably they will want to join communities of their country people, so sending them out to the sticks is probably not an option.
Then we have the opportunity cost. There are plenty of worse humanitarian crises around the world. If we want to make 150 lives better maybe we should be looking further afield or be spending more money on legal refugees. We should not forget the 750 women and children refugees camped on Nauru.
The Australian Government’s line is that, as required by the PNG Supreme Court, it has provided a perfectly acceptable $8.1 million facility for the asylum seekers to move to. It accuses the men of staging a political stunt, helped by their advocates, to gain world attention so they will be allowed on to the Australian mainland.
So no immediate humanitarian crisis, although given some of the men have been trapped on Manus Island for several years, underlying human rights issues clearly exist.
We should be distrustful of any government statement in a public relations disaster. So let’s see what the Australian media is saying.
The Sydney Morning Herald‘s political editor, Peter Hartcher, wrote an interesting article last week in which he argues the refugees’ advocates are irresponsibly raising hopes that the Australian Government will buckle. He also sets out some hard and pertinent facts.
Manus Island, by the way, is well to the north of the PNG mainland, is about 100km by 30km and has a population of about 50,000. Its capital is Lorengau, which has housed asylum seekers between 2001–04 and since 2012.
The current crisis involves about 420 men who are refusing to leave the decommissioned regional processing centre at the Lombrum naval base near Lorengau. The men say they will not leave one ‘‘prison’’ for another, and fear for their safety in Lorengau, where locals are not especially friendly. About 100 of the initial group who refused to move have agreed to locate to Lorengau, where three centres are ready for them.
These centres are not prisons and the residents are free to come and go. Two of the centres are for people who have had their refugee status confirmed. The East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre can house 400 people and the other can take 300. Confirmed refugees receive an allowance from the PNG Government for food and other necessities but they have to cook their own meals. Healthcare and security are provided.
The third facility is for those whose refugee claims have failed. They get catered meals.
Of the 420 left at the naval base, most are confirmed refugees but some have been assessed as nonrefugees.
Hartcher is puzzled by the current stance of activists and the Australian Greens, who, he says, have been amplifying every complaint about Lombrum and demanding for years that it be closed. ‘‘Now it’s closed. The activists and the Greens are claiming that closing it is an abuse of their human rights to close it.’’
Hartcher further explains that for Australia to take the refugees, the Turnbull government would have to reverse its policy: no one who arrives by boat without a visa will ever be allowed to settle in Australia. ‘‘There is simply no prospect that the federal government will reverse its policy. None,’’ he says.
To do so would ensure an electoral wipe-out. After Labour relaxed its policy in 2010, it cost the party its majority and 51,000 people arrived by boat in short order. About 1100 others drowned while trying.
He points out the US has resumed interviewing refugees and, on top of the 54 from Manus Island, is expected to take 200 from Nauru in this financial year.
Hartcher accepts Australia’s refusal to accept people by boat has damaged its international reputation but says this obscures the fact that Australia this year will accept 16,000 refugees and next year another 18,750. That’s in addition to the special Australian quota for 12,000 Syrian refugees.
New Zealand has a quota of 1000 refugees a year and has budgeted about $100m, which doesn’t look too flash against Australia’s totals.
In other words, the moral high ground is a great place to be but its rarefied air often obscures complexity.