Revive the Tampa spirit

Amnesty International’s Anna Neistat said “few other countries go to such lengths to deliberately inflict suffering on people seeking safety and freedom”. Yet we, as a country, say nothing. If Fiji leader Frank Bainimarama, who starts an official visit to Auckland today, had done what our Australian cousins are doing to uninvited boat people, I’m sure our Government’s response would have been severe. And rightly so. But with the Australians we’ve turned a blind eye. Worse, the Key Government was afflicted by the same paranoia.

In 2013 it rushed through laws allowing the detention of refugees for six months or more who turned up in groups of 10 or more. The Government had caught the “boat people” panic sweeping Australia, even though the closest a refugee craft came to New Zealand was the Indian Ocean.

This week, as the television news diverts from the horrors of Syrian civilians being targeted by Russian jets, to the plight of citizens of Mosul caught up in the United Statesbacked attempt to seize that Iraqi city from Isis terrorists, we tend to forget the awfulness being inflicted by our Australian neighbours on refugees unlucky enough to have thought escaping to this part of the world would bring an end to their suffering.

Back in 2013, at the height of the panic, New Zealand did offer to help Australia by taking 150 refugees a year from the Manus and/or Nauru camps. The Australians rejected the offer, believing it would provide an incentive for other refugees and the Indonesian people smugglers to restart their activities.

Last month the Australian Government seemed to have weakened slightly, suggesting we make the offer directly to the Nauru Government. But Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse rejected the nudge.

This seems ridiculously nitpicking. If the Government has decided it is willing to rescue some of the Nauru-trapped refugees, then it’s Kafkaesque to refuse to take them indirectly through the Nauru authorities, instead of directly from the Australians. One thing’s for sure, the traumatised refugees won’t care. They just want to get out of the hell the Australians have put them in.

If it means we have to go directly to the Nauruans and ask for some or all of the 410 refugees and asylum seeker then for goodness sake let’s get on with it.

We’ve been happily letting 5500 dependent parents of new citizens into the country each year — recently reduced to 2000 a year — without the welfare system collapsing, so 410 refugees is hardly going to be a problem. If the Tampa exercise is anything to go by, it will be just the reverse.

We all felt good when the Clark government offered homes to 133 of the Afghani boat people refugees — mostly boys — stranded off the Australian coast, and banned from stepping ashore. We gave them citizenship and encouraged family members to join them. We felt pride as they emerged as doctors, civil engineers, police officers and nurses. We felt good for doing the right thing then. It’s time we did it again.