Malcolm Fraser the unsung hero of humane refugee policy MIKE STEKETEE THE AUSTRALIAN JANUARY 02, 2010 12:00AM 12 COMMENTS THERE are 22 million surreal festive season stories in the naked Australian continent. This is one of them. WATCHING politics at close hand creates the impression of forward motion: governments working through issues one after the other, Kevin Rudd at hand to tick off the list. Trawling through 30-year-old cabinet papers leaves a different image: more like going around in circles or running on the spot. Some matters just seem too hard for politics to resolve. Such as nuclear waste, which the Fraser cabinet tackled in 1979 by deciding there was an urgent need for a long-term disposal facility for which we are still waiting. Such as a second Sydney airport, the need for which was being debated in the 1960s and a decision on which finally was made in the 80s, only to be unmade in the noughties with the recent decision to scrap the site at Badgerys Creek. Some issues defy resolution. With indigenous unemployment at 40 per cent and rising, the Fraser government decided in 1979 to encourage employers to hire indigenous people. So thats where Rudd got the idea. Then there are the issues that arise with seasonal regularity. Such as refugees. Ministers in Malcolm Frasers cabinet discussing how to cope with boatloads of Vietnamese refugees ran through the same questions as the Keating, Howard and Rudd cabinets subsequently. How could they square the governments obligations as a signatory to the UN refugee convention with the reaction from Australians to large numbers of people arriving from Asia? How could they deter people coming to Australia by boat, given the paranoia this stirs up among Australians about the security of our borders? The Fraser cabinet considered some options that sound familiar: turning the boats back, offshore processing, a detention centre in Australia and temporary visas. The difference was Fraser rejected them all, while the Keating government pioneered the use of detention centres in remote areas and the Howard government adopted the rest. The Fraser government did introduce legislation to outlaw people smuggling but applied it for only a year so as, in the words of immigration minister Michael MacKellar, to provide flexibility and help defuse public criticism. People smugglers were not demonised as the lowest form of human life, to use Rudds description. Indeed, many were recognised as saving lives. The Fraser government also looked for an Indonesian solution, offering the UN High Commissioner for Refugees $250,000 towards the cost of a holding centre. The biggest difference between then and later was one of scale. If we think we have a problem now, it looks trivial beside the issues confronting Canberra in 1979. In my view, this was the only real refugee crisis we have faced, says Mary Crock, professor of public law at the University of Sydney and a specialist on immigration law. The 1979 cabinet papers bear her out. Andrew Peacock as foreign affairs minister warned of a regional crisis of major dimensions, not to mention the danger of very serious strains on the unity and character of Australian society given traditional Australian fears about the yellow peril. The numbers leaving Vietnam by boat reached 55,000 in May. There were predictions of up to three million fleeing Indochina. Between 100,000 and 150,000 boat refugees could arrive in Australia over the next few years, Peacock said in a memorandum for cabinet. Just imagine if that had actually happened, given the fuss we have made over the fewer than 2500 who have arrived by boat in the past year. Yet the Fraser government took almost 250,000 Vietnamese as refugees and immigrants. Most were processed by Australian officials offshore, in holding centres in Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia, and then flown to Australia. They were no different from the 2029 Vietnamese who arrived by boat between 1975 and 1979 and were accepted as refugees, but they were less visible and satisfied Australian concerns about not turning up uninvited. The seriousness of the crisis, including the horrific estimates that up to 70 per cent of those fleeing were perishing at sea, helped drive measures to staunch the flow, with Southeast Asian countries agreeing not to push boats back to sea, Western countries agreeing to process them overseas and Vietnam eventually agreeing to stop forcing people to leave. That so many came to Australia without a big controversy seems remarkable in hindsight. Crock argues the courage of Fraser on this issue has been overlooked. This is a program that literally changed the face of Australia, she says. Her point is that it was the first real test of the abolition of the White Australia policy. Liberals often argue it was abandoned in the 60s under Menzies. Absolute, arrant nonsense, says Crock, who says there was a colour bar until the election of Whitlam. Up until 1972, we had the White Australia Policy for everybody except a narrow band of close family members. It was Fraser who gave practical effect to the implementation by the Whitlam government of this latter policy by initiating the largest influx of people from Asia into Australia since the gold rush, people who in most cases have made model citizens. He did so in the face of hostile public opinion (according to a Morgan Gallup poll 61 per cent wanted to limit the refugee intake and 28 per cent wanted to stop it) and initial Labor Party opposition. Gough Whitlam told colleagues following the fall of Saigon in 1975, that Im not having hundreds of f . . king Vietnamese Balts coming into this country with their political and religious hatreds. In opposition under the Fraser government, Whitlam supported the policy after Vietnam expelled mainly ethnic Chinese citizens and following a concerted effort by Fraser and immigration minister Ian Macphee, MacKellars successor, to achieve a bipartisan policy. This extended to the trade unions, whose leaders such as Bob Hawke had opposed accepting early Vietnamese boat arrivals. Fraser tells Inquirer he took the attitude that the White Australia Policy had been killed off by Menzies immigration minister Hubert Oppenheimer, although he acknowledges it was Whitlam who removed the legal remnants. He adds: One mistake I made in politics was to make a speech, I think in 1980, in which I said these battles have been won for all time. As it turned out, you only needed the redneck arguments to be put for the redneck nerve to be scratched and fears aroused. Then you realise that each generation has to fight the battle. A few factors worked in Frasers favour. One was the sentiment that Australia had a moral obligation to help the victims of a war in which we had fought. It was an argument he put forcefully, together with his admiration for the refugees. If you embrace a positive view and embrace the courage of the people who are prepared to try and get a better life for themselves and their families, I think the political pressure starts to diminish, he says. The contrast, of course, is with the Howard government, which pandered to the fear following 9/11 that Iraqis and Afghans fleeing by boat included terrorists (ASIO did not reject a single person on these grounds). Yet Australias moral obligation was as strong as that following the Vietnam war: the refugees were fleeing Saddam Hussein and the Taliban, who the Howard government thought sufficiently reprehensible to wage war against. But the government never put the argument. The key factor in resolving the issue in the 70s was an international agreement that stemmed the flow from Vietnam but allowed large numbers of refugees to go to Western countries. Such co-operation, combined with humane treatment of asylum-seekers, is the best way to cut boat arrivals.
Posted on: Thu, 05 Jun 2014 06:09:51 +0000
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