Chasing Asylum: A short history of why it is you need to see this film

Over the past fifteen years I've felt at times furious, hopeful, depressed, exhausted, aghast, shocked, mournful, appalled, sorrowful, despairing - and ashamed- at the depths Australia has sunk to. We alone in the world imprison children for indefinite periods of time. We have the harshest and most inhumane policy towards refugees, even those whose countries we're actively militarily involved in. Our politicians are proud of this. Even when they are refugees at risk of persecution, torture or death, because they, or their family member, translated for the Australian army in Afghanistan. We are *that* country. If you are not ashamed of how we treat refugees then you simply are not paying attention.

Fifteen years takes us back the Tampa and children overboard, the Howard government that wanted us to believe, ludicrously, that refugees somehow loved their children less than Australians did. That they were the sort of people who would hurt their own children, people Australia needed to be 'protected from'. But the people harming children aren't refugees. They're employees and contractors, doing it with the Australian government's blessing and the logic of deterrence.

After that, the shame of ALP bipartisanship, Rudd and Gillard falling over themselves to promise that there would be no hope of a better life for anyone who came by boat. The bodies broken on the rocks of Christmas Island. Instead of seeing that if we'd processed their claims and flown them here safely like we've done in the past,we blamed them for the manner in which they fled persecution. Politicians made sport with their corpses to reinforce that stopping the boats with cruelty, with violence, and with torture was somehow the only ethical choice. We had to stop the boats in the name of compassion, never mind that we were only condemning them to a different death on other shores. Never mind that our message to asylum seekers of the world was being spelt out with the bodies of the ones unfortunate enough to have arrived here to ostensible safety.

Then in more recent years, the deaths of Reza Barati, Hamid Kazai, the Moss report - the children being abused and damaged, the sexual assault of women and children in our care, the UN finding us in breach of an international convention against torture - and Abbott saying we're 'tired' of being 'lectured to'. and the self-immolations Dutton wants to lay at the feet of advocates for asylum seekers. I realised tonight I've been fighting this, one way or another, for more than half my life now.

Fighting for human beings to be treated with dignity and respect. It seems absurd that this could be controversial. We get tiny steps forward towards humanity- we feel something when we see little Aylan, who could be a three year old from anywhere, dead on the shore. We feel something when Germany opens up its arms and shows what compassion and humanity looks like. We promise to take 12,000 Syrian refugees.* ) We surround a hospital to save a child from being sent back into hell. But there are massive retrograde steps, too. Australia deals with revelations about the abuse of children by making it a crime to report the abuse. Fifteen years is a dreadfully long time for something like this to have continued and gotten worse.

I know there are people who are sick of hearing about this. I'd very much love to no longer have anything that needed to be said. We need a solution that is humane, that respects human dignity - respecting the humanity of refugees and asylum seekers, and acknowledging the humanity within Australians. I am tired of having to be ashamed of the human rights abuses my country is perpetrating.

If this was TL;DR, then go and see this film.

If you're sick of hearing about this from me, go and see this film.

If you have ever wanted to know what your tax dollars are funding on Manus and Nauru, go and see this film.

It's not didactic, it's not lecturing, it's not going to do anything more than let you see what is being done in your name. What it does to people, children, families, that are not so very different from your friends, families, colleagues - excepting in what they have already had to survive, and what we are putting them through now.

Go and see this film.
http://www.chasingasylum.com.au/




----------
* although a better part of a year on, we've actually processed about ten per cent of that cohort- slower even than if they'd come through the normal humanitarian intake, like we're punishing them for making us feel something

Standing Room Only - Cures for a Compassion Fatigued Populace

It was the most crowded I had seen Manning Clark Lecture Theatre 6 at the ANU - more crowded than Intro International Relations. There were so many people stuffed in that they were four deep standing at the back, and perched on the stairs. It has been a movement that has at times been deeply inspirational, and deeply frustrating, as only a cause that has been suffering setback after setback since 2001 can be, but Canberra has been steadily coming out for refugees in the past few weeks after the M68 judgment was handed down. Canberra - and the rest of the country.

For a battle-weary social justice warrior, worn down with a politics that keeps sinking deeper and deeper until we are at a point where Michael Pezzullo, Secretary for the Department of Border Protection, can think he is scoring a legitimate political point when he fingers the ABC for confusing the stories of two children who were abused on Nauru, crowing that the five year old wasn't raped (but a ten year old was?) and maybe it was 'just skin-to-skin' contact (what is that supposed to mean? and would Pezzullo be so nonchalant about it if it were happening to his child?) and perpetrated by another young detainee (read: another child that we have locked up and brutalised, who may well be an abuse victim himself..?)... Wait, where was I? Oh yes. Pezzullo is a contender for worst human being in the world history of ever, and compassion fatigue is, I am pretty sure, where I was up to.

Then something like this happens, and damned if you don't all show me that Australians ARE better than this and we can say "It'll be right" and we can find it within ourselves to turn up and demand to be heard. It has been heart-fillingly beautiful to watch the Churches come out and call for sanctuary for refugees our Government wants to condemn to Nauru, and the states and territories, and the unions. It looks like all it took were some baby photos, really, for us to remember that these refugees are people and that a decent country does not treat people the way that we have treated them. Australia may be reluctant to celebrate their difference, but they might be ready to understand that we have much more in common with these people than we don't.

So this is a long delayed return to this blog, and blogging more generally, and it has not been my style to talk about my own reflections and moments. Snark is more entertaining to read and to write, and I know my earnest pursuit of People Being Less Shit To Each Other is tiresome and doesn't generate clicks. But if you've stumbled across this page for whatever reason; here are the two ideas that tonight's panel discussion on media and spin pulled from me.

Firstly, the control that government has exercised over media and information about asylum seekers in this country is unprecedented in any democratic country during peacetime.
Despite a department full of pencil pushers and mailroom boys and girls who have to wear a military uniform to go to their jobs in the old public service department of Customs, we aren't at war. Operation Sovereign Borders is one of the most insulting things done to press freedom in this country. We don't talk about stopping the boats or anything that happens on water, including whether or not the Australian government paid money to the people smugglers (whose business model we are trying to smash) to tow people back to Indonesia. People think this means the boats have stopped, which seems unlikely given the resources we continue to put into towing them back.

Paul Bongiorno talked about difficulties running stories on asylum seekers, specifically, the example of not being permitted to charter helicopters into the airspace above boats and to take footage of the people, the faces on those boats. It's hard to sell asylum seeker stories to a newsroom with other priorities, and certainly not the story about how part of the worst of what we are doing is that we are slowly but surely draining people of their hopes and their mental health over years and years in detention, where we aren't even processing them. The government kills the story by refusing to comment, by refusing interesting visual.

We don't so much have offshore processing centres for asylum seekers as an awful warning to others made from breaking the spirit of men, women and children, driving already vulnerable people who have already seen too much to depression and post-traumatic stress. Kids are jumping off buildings to die, or be injured badly enough to escape Nauru for medical treatment. We can't let them go to a more compassionate country because that will 'encourage people smugglers' - notwithstanding that the logic of that is that these people are condemned to indefinite detention in appalling conditions practically forever, simply to provide a warning to others. If we were to process and re-settle them, then they might keep coming, because that's better than a warzone or the Taliban. The logic of this kind of deterrence is to break people, to make children wish they had died at sea because at least then this nightmare would be over - because only then can we stop people maybe attempting to get here by boat and maybe drowning.

Well, if the churches can stand up against child abuse and the Victorian Premier can take some refugee children and some media to the zoo ,why can't media organisations run footage of the photos of the 37 babies on Nauru under running audio, explaining that they can't show any other visual footage because there's an $8000 non-refundable application fee for a journalist to try to get a visa for Nauru, and journalists covering the beat for years have been almost as long denied the opportunity to get past the gate and talk to anyone locked up on our behalf. There is no other vision, but here - we have some photos of the people we are doing it too. Look closely.

I understand this is an idea that is unlikely to gain any traction - that it is anathema to objectivity and impartial reporting, but there's also an obligation as the fourth estate. We are not dealing with a political climate where our media outlets are given access to the information to report, and there is no legitimate excuse for it. I think it calls for something more drastic. The media wields this massive capacity to shine a light on what is happening and to pressure the government to be more accountable. Instead it seems like what we get is 'there's no visual, or no departmental comment, so there's no story'. Surely it would be beautiful and defining moment of modern media if there was a stand to tell the stories anyway, visuals be damned, and let the absence of the visuals and the departmental comment stand as testimony to the contempt our government has for the rights of a democratic citizenry to know what is being done in our name.

Secondly, that the freedoms we take for granted are meaningless if we can't or won't use them to defend those without voices, those without freedom. 
I studied journalism for two years, transferred to law, and, as you may have noticed, I have opinions about lots of things, particularly about the crappy things that our government is doing or has done or suggests it might contemplate doing. I am not always diplomatic or restrained in expressing my views, I attend rallies and sign petitions, write blogs and argue with trolls on Facebook, and in terms of consequences I risk at most annoying some slightly bigoted Facebook friends who defriend me because I engage them in spirited and informed debate when they're being bigots.

There are definitely countries in the world where I would not exist. Where, even if that society were to let me go to university and study journalism or law, there would be rules in place which criminalised having opinions about or ridiculing those in power. And that's if I'm lucky enough to be in the sort of hellhole where the government bothers with the rule of law to restrain criticism, and not the other sort where I am just disappeared and dumped in a mass grave along with anyone else who looked sideways at the wrong person.

We believe strongly in free speech in this country, even if our laws don't really enshrine it with any real vigor. We believe it so much that angry bogans on the internet will get incandescent with bogan-rage at you if you dare to challenge their right to their opinion with facts and substance, as though having your ideas tested by reality is somehow synonymous with  censorship. We have people who are fleeing here, who are in border refugee camps around the world and on Nauru and Manus - who have not had that freedom, who are fleeing the sort of world where you don't sign petitions and attend rallies because the risk of the state police knocking on your door and taking someone from your family away is a real and terrifying one.

I have a voice and the freedom to express my opinions (so long as those opinions were not obtained in working in the offshore detention camps Australia is a little bit vague about its responsibility for). If I can speak out without fear of repercussions, then that surely creates an obligation on me, on all of us in that position, to use what power I have where I can to try to improve the situation of those who have no choice but silence.

Movements like this sometimes have to wait a long and painful time for their moment, but I am proud to stand with this movement, and I can only hope it continues to grow until it can't be contained in a lecture theatre or a rally, and the world we are protecting is one where we understand that there is more that unites us than divides us, and the greatest strengths of our society are not lessened by sharing them with those who come  to us for safety.

Election Retrospective:- The Feminist Vote

The suffragettes knew what I’m talking about. They faced, in their fight for the right for women to vote, the fear that women given the vote would vote in a conservative bloc. That it would be effectively giving married men twice the vote of single men. That women were frail and delicate creatures not capable of rational consideration. Oh dear me no. If we had the vote, something something ovaries overheating, something something end of civilisation.

As a woman, I am surrounded by men and women who think they are better placed to tell me what my feminism should mean. People like Australia’s new Minister Assisting the Prime Minister on Women - [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BD1Lvds3N9g] - who think feminism is a stick to beat other women with. Our Cabinet representation is now a man who has said that he believes women are maybe just physiologically unsuited to being equally represented in high office - and he has demonstrated this by being unable to appoint more than one female colleague to his Cabinet. Because apparently the Liberal Party is entirely filled with women who are merit-less hacks (aside from their rampant sex appeal).

Faced with the claim that women especially should not have voted for Tony Abbott, given the constitution of his Cabinet and his well-known views on the role and status of women, I find myself perplexed. As a woman, I’d like the freedom to have voted against the LNP because I am terrified of what their immigration policy is going to mean, or because I want my gay and lesbian friends to be able to have the same rights I have. I’d like to be allowed to make up my mind based on the proposed defunding of the community legal sector, on which party will leave indigenous defendants in front of hostile and confusing courts without representation. I’d even like to be able to be like the whingey half of the internet who apparently voted exclusively on the issue of FTTH versus FTTP.

Election 2013 fortunately did not force me to decide between voting for a candidate who respected feminism and one who was going to support other values dear to my heart. It is luck that my feminism got to align with the other things that matter - rather than having to trump my compassion for stateless refugees or people from LSE backgrounds whose choices have been so much more limited than my own.

I think voting purely on self interest when you know it will disadvantage others is heinous. I must acknowledge that the pay differential between men and women, the difficulties in career progression, the chances of discrimination and assault, the ongoing challenge to the right to terminate a pregnancy - whilst all things women in Australia need to continue to fight for - are surely less urgent battles than fighting for something better for refugees. We’re offering them a lottery where the best possible outcome is a favourable first-instance administrative decision that says they can stay in limbo and reapply for a safe place to live every three years, and the worst outcome is being deported to the persecution and death they were fleeing. The plight of women in Australia may be difficult at times, but it is not desperate.

Thanks to my suffragette forebears, I had a choice. I could choose between the conservative white male candidate who undermined our first female prime minister and only begrudgingly acknowledged her contribution to the party and the nation - or the even more conservative white male candidate who thinks my whole gender is physiologically unsuited for high office. I could vote informally in disgust at the whole system, if I wanted to, and draw a phallus on my ballot paper like a surprisingly high number of my compatriots. Yet another dick option.

The right that was fought for was mine to exercise, and if I choose to be like the rest of the country and rank my genders’ equality well below my views on immigration, climate change, public education and access to justice - then have I betrayed feminism? Or is it when we let someone else’s idea of female self-actualisation dictate how women should exercise their right in fact the betrayal? We are not a monolith and we may well vote against our own interests with nary an incident of overheated ovary or internalised misogyny.

P.S - Anyone who thinks Sophie Mirabella's electoral defeat was celebrated primarily because she is a woman clearly doesn't remember  the much more substantial reasons for rejoicing in her defeat, like the views on public record, the comparison of Gillard's pricing carbon with Colonel Gaddafi slaughtering Libyan citizens,  that time she was the darling of the No Carbon Tax rally crowd and followed men with signs saying "Ditch the Witch" around the country. and the fact she wasn't actually much good as a local member for Indi.

The Australian gets it wrong on science journalism

 

The Australian this morning made science journalist baby Jesus cry.

Thankfully, the Guardian has done the best part of the necessary analysis of this for me, because clearly like News Corp websites, no one is coming to Blogspot (or tumblr) for scientific exposition from the largely unqualified. Thankfully.

Journalism struggles with technical fields. It seems like as the resources for print and investigative journalism have declined, the level of expertise required to cover the science and technology beats has only increased. For the average punter, this means a higher proportion of  press-releases making it barely altered into the mass media, it means more break-through stories about obscure foods curing cancer, and it means more science debate/proclamation by media release. It means more thinly-veiled advertorial posing as breaking scientific news.

Science journalism also suffers from the infliction of journalistic ideals which are appropriate only for other beats. I want objectivity in my news and current affairs. I want equal time given to equally weighted but alternate viewpoints. I don't, however, need to see a flat-earther on the program every time someone makes the point that the Earth is spherical in the pursuit of mythical balance. Some controversies are well and truly resolved. Being objective in a scientific field means being able to adhere to the scientific method, considering the weight of peer-reviewed evidence, and coming to a view informed by these things.

The Australian suffered more from agenda than ignorance. We know this because frankly, even the under-resourced science beat writers know citing the Daily Mail as your primary source for some kind of credible science analysis is at best, a crude circle-jerk of ignorance. Putting "according to the Daily Mail" might be appropriate attribution, but you may as well put "according to my abusive drunken uncle who thinks the moon landing was faked and that women belong on page six and in the kitchen"... If you quote an idiot, you're responsible for giving an idiot further undue prominence. It does not absolve you of a duty to ensure what you're reporting actually bears some slim relation to the truth. Nor does it absolve you of seeking some comment directly from the people you're quoting as confessing they're wrong. You can do it here alarmingly easily.

"The IPCC was forced to deny it was locked in crisis talks" - because it wasn't in crisis talks.  This is the journalistic equivalent of beating your sister with her own fist, shrieking gleefully "stop hitting yourself, why are you hitting yourself!?" The writer of the Oz article is presumably forced to deny his paper is made predominantly from the excrement of rabid swine mixed with the leavings of mining magnates, or he would be if I put this question to him and it was not in fact the case.

If you didn't go there at the start of this article, go read what the 97% have to say about the tropes of climate denialism that have been on rampant display in failed science journalism across the globe this week, crudely and uncritically rehashed by the Australian.

The Australian (and the writers of the media releases uncritically reproduced by the Daily Mail and then republished to support the Oz's confirmation bias) achieved the linkbait success it was after. Since we all know the Strine's take on science is pretty clearly that it is a thing which can be won or lost by media prominence and not through any objective empirical method, today's climate denialism linkbait is the Australian's WIN FOR SIENS!

Zoe's Law: What Cost Extending Personhood Pre-natally?

A potential victim of crime.

Zoe's Law is a bill currently before the New South Wales Parliament to amend the section of the Crimes Act dealing with grievous bodily harm, adding a specific definition of 'unborn child' (being a foetus of twenty weeks or more gestation, or a mass of at least 400g).

Most troubling for pro-choice advocates, it includes this provision:-

(2) For the purposes of an applicable offence:                                         
(a) an unborn child is taken to be a living person despite any rule of law to      
                          the contrary, and                                                           
(b) grievous bodily harm to an unborn child is taken to include the                
                          destruction of the unborn child. 

(full text)

There are savings provisions to the effect that the section does not apply to medical procedures or acts by consent of the woman concerned. These exist to placate women worried about the erosion of their right to decide to legally terminate an unwanted pregnancy. Why we might be worried by this type of reform? We only have to look to Georgia, USA in 2011 - when a representative tried to pass a bill that put the onus on women who miscarried to prove they weren't guilty of murder. NSW Liberal MP Chris Spence, who introduced the bill, should be able to understand why women's advocacy groups are touchy on this subject. Granting personhood to a foetus is traditionally a legal position that has not boded well for a woman's right to choose to take a pregnancy to full term or not.

Mr. Spence has beseeched anyone with doubts about the intent of Crimes Amendment (Zoe's Law) Bill 2 (2013) to go read the second reading speech. Heavily doubt-laden, I did just that. I learned that the bill is a response to a case where a woman (Brodie) was crossing a road when she was hit by a drug and alcohol affected motorist. She was thirty-two weeks pregnant at the time.  The force of the impact caused extensive injury to her - shattering some of her bones. The previously healthy foetus, which she had named Zoe, was stillborn. The driver responsible was charged, and served jail time for the offence of grievous bodily harm of Brodie. Zoe was listed as an injury to Brodie, not a death in and of herself. The core part of this issue seems to be that the parents felt less vindicated in their grief because their unborn child was not treated as a person for the purposes of the Crimes Act.

Mr. Spence refers to a variety of legal mechanisms which apply only to a foetus lost after 20 weeks. The loss must be recorded with Births, Deaths & Marriages and certificates issued. The baby bonus is available. Maternity/grief leave is available. It seems an arbitrary line. In circumstances where a birth is happily anticipated by a mother, if the pregnancy fails at 19 weeks and two days we don't extend the baby bonus or maternity leave, and this feels arbitrary and wrong.  Does a matter of days or weeks make that much difference between the grief felt over a miscarriage? I suspect not. Drawing the line at 20 weeks for the state to include vengeance into criminal statute is similarly arbitrary and insufficient, if the goal is to give grieving parents satisfaction. It is an area which I think must be deeply personal and deeply subjective, and in such fields the law is an indelicate instrument.

Caveat Emptor: Team Abbott Confused Between Election Campaign and Guthy-Renker Infomercial

Source: Opposition Leader Tony Abbott revealed on Thursday evening that he would not be providing final costings and a full budget impact statement until deep into the last week of the campaign. [SMH]



$200 for relationship counselling for heterosexuals looking to legally marry? Thanks Tony! But wait, there’s more! Bailouts to the chocolate industry in Tasmania? Hey, Tasmania likes chocolate, *and* jobs! What a top bloke! But wait, there’s more! How would you like to be paid your actual wage to stay at home and have children, women who are usually on quite a good wage? How do you get this shiny, shiny, life-changing deal, I hear you ask…?

There can be no real sensible reason to refuse to price policy announcements, particularly in light of a promise to return to surplus with deadline. It seems like a sales tactic, an emotional mugging. Do they really think that voters will be so emotionally invested with, say, the prospect that they can start a family sooner without having to tighten the purse strings - that by the time the cost is announced they won’t even care how much it costs, and won’t be rationally linking it with job cuts in the public service, reduced infrastructure in health and education, and another long delay before Australia gets up to a global standard with internet speeds?

Does Australia want a puppy? C’mon, hold the puppy. Love the puppy. Give the puppy a name. Oh, look, the puppy loves you! How much for the puppy? Let’s not talk about that just yet, we haven’t told you yet that you’ll get a free lead! In *any colour* you choose. But wait, there’s more! Book now and get 50% more cute for *free*! How do you get this fabulous, life-changing deal that may also cure cancer and make you attractive to the opposite sex? Do you even care at this stage? Look at the cute puppy. You want the cute puppy? You *need* the cute puppy. Okay, for the low low price of 26 easy installments of $899.99, (what a steal!) the puppy is yours! If you call in the next fifteen minutes, we’ll throw in some plastic stuff that also looks pretty good at the moment. And another free puppy! And because no exciting infomercial package is complete without them, handy-dandy steak knives! They cut things! How can you live with yourself if you don’t take up this offer RIGHT NOW?

Worse, though - at least at 3am when you cave to the hypnotic tones of the Lifestyle channel and concede that you need a puppy, your 26 easy instalments are a capped and predictable final fee. Policy costings like vouchers for marriage counselling cannot really be subject to an accurate and finite figure. Costs sometimes blow out, and if the costings are not done independently and with sufficient time that they can be subject to critique - they are more likely to do so.

If nothing else, a group hoping to run the country should be expected to demonstrate that they are able to be upfront with the electorate about the realities of their policies, including the costs, in a timely manner that doesn’t look like a sales technique - so that rational decisions can play some part in the ridiculous circus that is the election campaign.

After all, unlike exercise equipment and beauty treatment pseudoscience, an election result can’t be mailed back within 14 days for a full refund.

The Biggest Bastards in the Bastardry Competition

Dear Major Australian Political Parties,

Refugees are real human beings fleeing awful and terrifying things. You seem to have mistaken them for child molesters, people who don’t turn their phones off during live performances, and Nickelback fans.

It is not okay to threaten/promise that, if elected, you will ensure people who are desperate enough to risk their lives to escape persecution, will be, variously, shipped off to developing nations which have their own issues, towed back out to sea to drown, or denied access to the protection of the legal system against wrongly decided administrative decisions (because “too many” people are being found to be genuine refugees). It’s not okay to bung them on Temporary Protection Visas, force them onto work for the dole schemes, and put more families onto unseaworthy boats because family reunification is impossible under legitimate means.

It’s not okay because we as a nation agreed to obligations under the UN Convention on Refugees to not be a douchebag of a global citizen, and it’s not okay because it goes far beyond what should decently be done in the names of an Australian public that can be better than this - that can be generous and kind to those in need, that believes in at least the rhetoric of a fair go.

If the best way to judge a society is by how it treats the least amongst it - how it treats the poor, the frightened, the huddled masses - then the politics played with refugees in the belief that it will score votes is an indictment on us all.

After all, if you wouldn’t do it to a Nickelback fan, why should you do it to a member of an ethnic minority, or a child whose parents risked everything to send them somewhere they would be able to grow up safe?

Enough racing to the bottom. No party that is determined to sell itself as being biggest bastards in the bastard competition when it comes to kicking some of the most vulnerable and defenseless people in the world deserves to win government and lead this country.
 
Yours sincerely,
CisforCurmudgeon