Back to the future for migrants in Aussie
OUR nearest neighbour, the raffish Anzac cobber, the world’s Waltzing Matilda, is becoming The Ugly Australian.
Australia prides itself on a founding epic of convict exiles from the old world sent to evil penal colonies, rising above it to build a proud nation. Yet today, in a warped rendering of the national myth, Australia exiles new would-be immigrants to dodgy detention centres its own Human Rights Commission can only condemn. Talk about history repeating itself as farce. Among thousands of current detainees – exact numbers vary – there are 200 New Zealanders.
Junior Togatuki, 23, who killed himself in Goulburn’s Supermax jail, wouldn’t have been included in that count because he was still in solitary confinement, with no deportation date to return to New Zealand, well after his prison-release date.
In despair, he cut himself and wrote goodbye messages in blood to his family. He couldn’t use pen and paper because he was denied these, along with a radio, TV, or any personal belongings. For that matter he was deprived of fresh air.
Togatuki begged Immigration Minister Peter Dutton not to deport him because he left New Zealand when he was just four years old, and his family live in Australia.
He said he’d been diagnosed with ‘‘high anxiety, post-traumatic stress, hallucinations and schizophrenia’’ after long periods in (prison) isolation.
His family say they tried numerous times to see him, but were repeatedly told their requests had never arrived.
Togatuki had spent all his adult life and much of his youth in New South Wales prisons, so his fragile mental state was not to be wondered at. It could explain why he repeatedly assaulted guards, and set fire to his cell last year.
Since a law change late last year, anyone who is not an Australian citizen, has served a 12-month sentence, is judged to be of bad character, or has been convicted of child sex offences, can be deported.
As a result, hundreds of New Zealanders’ special category visas have been cancelled, 178 for violent crime, says Adelaide paper The Advertiser.
According to that newspaper, the number of New Zealanders in Australian detention centres is exceeded today only by Iranians.
UNTIL last December we barely featured, but thanks to the new criteria, we’re well ahead of Sri Lankans, Vietnamese, Chinese, Afghans and stateless people, who are next on the list.
In an echo of Donald Trump’s whipped-up paranoia about the Mexican border, Australia has invented a watered-down Guantanamolike solution to what has fast become a global problem.
Its many holding bays for the unwanted, all over Australia, on Christmas Island, Nauru, and in Papua New Guinea, would all seem to be in violation of human rights.
Labour Party leader Andrew Little says the detainees have no access to lawyers, medical care, or their families, and have no idea how long they’ll be detained.
He is thinking especially of New Zealanders. I am thinking of all of them.
Two Australian Human Rights Commission investigations last year found that children held in Nauru were suffering from physical, emotional, psychological and developmental stress.
There have been accusations of children being sexually abused in exchange for marijuana.
Another law change outrageously preempted the visit of a United Nations inspector. It threatens two years’ jail for any whistleblowers among the Nauru staff, so we’ll never know the truth. Understandably, the UN rapporteur cancelled his trip.
Children are plainly held in breach of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Also, as the commission says, ‘‘seeking asylum in Australia is not illegal. It is a basic human right’’.
Good luck with that if you’re of a different skin colour and a non-Christian religion, say if you’re Iranian, Sri Lankan, Vietnamese, Chinese or Afghan.
We don’t have a racial breakdown on New Zealanders being held and deported, but I wonder how many also have brown skin.
Australia dropped its infamous White Australia policy officially only in the 1970s; until then slogans like ‘‘Keep Australia White’’ and ‘‘Australia the White Man’s Land’’ were all the go. Currently there’s a bumper sticker that reads, ‘‘F … Off, We’re Full’’. Maybe that’s Aussie humour. Maybe it’s just plain nasty.