Racist "One Nation" vision reinforces "fortress Australia"
The plight of the 438 Afghan refugees stranded on a freighter in appalling conditions while the Australian government refused to allow them to even land on its soil rightly gained a good deal of media attention.
The inhumanity of Australian Prime Minister John Howard has been roundly condemned, as the refugees now face many thousands of miles more travel to New Zealand and to the remote Pacific island of Nauru.
On Sunday August 26, a boat carrying the refugees broke down in international waters. A Norwegian freighter received the distress calls and picked up the refugees. The captain of the freighter decided to take the refugees to Christmas Island which was the nearest port, as required by International Maritime Law.
Howard called an emergency cabinet meeting and banned the freighter from entering Australian waters, thereby preventing the refugees landing on the Australian territory of Christmas Island, in opposition to the views of those on the island.
Councillor Gordon Thompson, who is also the secretary of the island’s workers’ union, says residents are ashamed of the military action taken to prevent the ship from coming to port. He says community leaders have met and are unanimously behind welcoming the boat people.
Instead, as some of the refugees started a hunger strike, Australian Special Armed Forces (SAS), boarded the freighter and tried to force the captain to start moving the boat away from Christmas Island in an act of blatant piracy. Captain Rinnan refused to take orders from the SAS and condemned the boarding party.
The crew described the panic on deck as the Afghans watched two high-speed boats close on the Tampa.. One said: "A lot of them were screaming they were going to be shot or arrested. Some looked as if they were going to jump overboard as the uniformed troops got closer."
Desperate crewmen shouted warnings that the waters were shark-infested and pulled some young men back from the ship’s rails.
The inhuman policies carried out in this case by the Howard administration are not dissimilar to the views about refugees and asylum seekers carried through by the governments of most rich nations. Many of the difficulties faced by those trying to reach Australia are familiar to anti-racist campaigners in Britain and elsewhere in Europe..
Afghanis fleeing the Taliban face persecution - public hangings and stonings are a daily reality. Any opposition to the fundamentalist regime is enough to be killed.
The exodus from Afghanistan has been one of the biggest ever – 6.3 million since 1979, with 4 million of these ending up either in Pakistan or Iraq. Women are not allowed to work, male unemployment is rife, adult literacy is just 30% and life expectancy only 45 years.
The Afghans aboard the freighter are part of a new exodus which began last year as a devastating drought compounded the existing situation.
Howard’s actions over the Tampa are part of a process in which he has adopted more and more of the "One Nation" agenda put forward by Pauline Hanson in an attempt to maintain his electoral base. Hanson came to prominence in 1996 when she was elected to the Federal Parliament.
In the early years of the Howard government, the Coalition relied on One Nation to do the racist scapegoating of refugees for them. The emergence of One Nation from within the Liberal Party provided a perfect vehicle for the dissemination and propagation of racist ideas.
By blaming the current economic misery on isolated sections of the population – both on migrants and indigenous Australians - One Nation distracted attention from the growing gap between the wealthy and working class people.
However, One Nation was only useful as long as it did not provoke a movement capable of challenging its racist ideas. As rallies in support of indigenous rights and multiculturalism grew larger, the Coalition and the Labor parties moved to limit and destroy One Nation – without challenging the racist ideas it represented.
The Coalition merrily pinched many of One Nation’s policies and racist rhetoric and continued the scapegoating of migrants, indigenous Australians and the unemployed. This mostly went unopposed by the Labor opposition, which supported many of the worst attacks.
Over the last five years under Howard and Immigration Minister Ruddock have presided over massive and unprecedented restrictions on refugees and asylum seeker, in the context where Howard’s coaltion already inherited a mandatory detention policy from the previous Labor government..
Migrants have lost the right to all social security benefits for their first two years in the country. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission has had its budget cut by more than 40%, and local migrant resource centres have faced funding cuts of up to 100%.
While immigration levels have remained relatively stable, the family reunion program has been slashed and refugee places frozen at 12,000.
The ability of skilled migrants to enter Australia, the numbers of whom have increased, has become increasingly dependent on their English language skills and their belonging to a tighter set of occupational categories.
The harshest attacks however have been inflicted on asylum seekers who arrive in Australia without proper documentation. Ruddock has introduced legislation preventing human rights organisations from accessing the camps where refugees are detained.
He has introduced regulations that ensure the immediate return of any arrivals who do not clearly ask for asylum.
The powers of coast guards to stop and board ships outside Australian waters and search for potential asylum seekers have been increased. Ruddock has ensured the passage of laws that deny asylum to anyone who may be able to get asylum in another country
He introduced legislation that prevents arrivals who manage to prove their refugee status from accessing English language classes and migrant resource centres. Asylum seekers whose appeals for refugee status are rejected face heavy financial penalties for losing and are forbidden to work or receive any government payments while their cases are pending.
Ruddock’s rabid attacks are not just excessive displays of bigotry but the spearhead of a concerted ideological campaign to justify major changes in Australia’s immigration policy.
The end result has been a dramatic increase in the number of British and white South African migrants coming to Australia, and a dramatic decrease in migrants from the Third World.
The land of opportunity has become fortress Australia. Such a dramatic shift would have been impossible without the ideological shift that the Liberals have worked hand in glove with One Nation to bring about.
In response to this assault there have been increasingly desperate protests in the detention centres, including mass breakouts from three centres when detainees decided to take their cause to nearby towns.
Anti-racists and socialists across the world have rightly seen the case of the Tampa as a focus for solidarity and opposition to the policies of the Australian government.
At the same time as pursuing this course, we also need to step up both the battles against similar policies carried through by our own governments and strengthen international co-ordination to develop a clearer picture of the way in which denial of rights to asylum seekers is at the centre of the process of capitalist globalisation.