I have experienced Australia’s detention policy first-hand — it’s time to end it
A police officer stands by a slogan on the wall outside the Park Hotel, used as an immigration detention hotel. Picture: AP Photo/Mark Baker
The world’s attention was focused on Australia’s immigration detention regime in January when a wealthy athlete got a court challenge to his detention. Novak Djokovic was ultimately released and sent home, with the court affirming the minister’s decision to cancel his visa because of his stance on Covid vaccines. But still 32 men languish in the Park Hotel, each of them desperate to leave.
Australia successfully “stopped the boats”, but it forgot that there were people on those boats whose lives they stopped with them. These same people have been suffering for nearly nine years, unable to move on with their lives, unable to find peace of mind, stability or certainty.
It is a crushing blow to one’s confidence when held in such a position by forces beyond their control. You find you begin to question yourself. Am I really good enough? Do I deserve to have anything good? Am I a human being like everyone else?
Even for those of us who have been resettled in the US, due to the infamous “deal” between the Australian government and then US president Barack Obama in 2016, the psychological effects of years of prolonged uncertainty has stayed with every one of us. Even so, I could not imagine what I would be going through right now if I was still on Nauru.
Yet this is the reality for the more than 200 still trapped in Australia’s offshore detention regime, those still detained in Australia, and the thousands more who are living in limbo in the community on short-term visas.
We know this because every independent review of Australia’s offshore detention policy has shown it to be one disastrous failure after another, on every level. An ineffective, impractical, extremely expensive, illegal, and deliberately cruel policy. The human and financial cost of this will not be known for decades to come as the medical problems suffered by both detainees and staff manifest themselves and the compensation cases pile up.
Put simply, it’s a disaster of huge proportions.
Despite the human rights crisis Australia’s offshore detention policy has created, the world is learning the wrong lessons. The UK government is currently debating an indefinite offshore detention bill based on the Australian model. As UK refugee rights advocates and the media have begun examining what that actually looks like, many are walking away shocked and appalled by what they have learned. I hope this will be enough to persuade them that this is not a path they should follow.
The issue in Australia and the UK is it’s never been about the policy. It’s simply a strategy used to propel oneself to electoral victory. But nearly nine years on, surely the political utility of this tactic is now approaching its use-by date. We’re talking about real people’s lives, not chips on a poker table. These are people who simply sought safety, and they have been tortured for it.
Yet even if the plight of refugees does not move you, even if human rights abuses are not a high priority for you, even if you view international laws and obligations as meaningless and only applicable when it suits you – surely you can still agree that if a country like New Zealand has been offering a solution to this mess, any sane government would take it.
The truth is that the New Zealand government has offered to resettle refugees from Australia’s offshore detention regime since 2013, yet the Australian government has still not officially accepted it. How many more people need to lose their lives to this policy? What more will it take?
After nearly nine years, the Australian government needs to let people find safety and move on with their lives. At a minimum, let them go to New Zealand, a country that still observes its international human rights obligations and is ready to accept them with open arms.
As a federal election looms, I call on Australian political leaders to end this shameful chapter in Australia’s history and let the healing begin for these refugees, and for Australia as a nation.
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