Thursday, July 9, 2009

Election of Rudd officially worth it: part 2.

(yes, I know I'm in a rut of commenting late on issues. This time, I have an excuse; I was briefly posted to an outpost at Lorne)

Earlier this year, I commented that despite his constant me-twoisms during the 07 election, the Rudd Government was officially better than the Howard Government, as Rudd changed our foreign aid laws, allowing funds to go organisations which either terminated pregnancies or referred women to organisations that did.

Recently, Rudd has further improved Australia's human rights record by a) ending mandatory detention to the majority of refugees; only those who pose a threat to their community will remain in detention, and b) abolishing fees to refugees, which forced them to pay for their imprisonment.

(Most of) The Liberal Party, as always, has opposed the moves, stating that soften border protection cause an influx of refugees.

Petro Georgiou, the only Liberal with a functioning conscience, has written an opinion piece in the Age, showing how ludicrous the fee laws were:
The most obvious reason for repealing it is that it has totally failed to achieve its objective. Since the policy was initiated, only 4 per cent of the costs have been recovered. In the past four years, $139 million, or 81 per cent, of charges have been waived or written off, mainly by the coalition government, because it was impractical or uneconomical to recover the charges. This year it is estimated that it will cost $709,000 to collect $573,000. There is simply no rational basis to continue the charges. What these charges do achieve is making those subject to them more anxious and their lives more difficult. There is another fundamental reason for ending the detention charges — imposing these charges is part of the process of dehumanising people seeking refuge, part of the way they have been presented as being worse than the worst criminals. Do we charge drug dealers, serial pedophiles, sadistic murderers and multiple rapists the costs of their detention?
[my emphasis]

The government forced refugees to pay for their imprisonment dates back to 1992-in the 15+ years since, no legislation has ever been passed that forced criminals to pay for their detention. For over fifteen years, Australia treated the most vulnerable people on the earth more harshly than some of the most violent people on the earth. This, more than anything else, shows how corrosive fear is on a multi-nation's morality. Our fears of being swamped by Vietnamese Asians in general Africans led us to support truly amoral measures to deter refugees for our own security-yet these refugees still came regardless. It is amazing how powerful fear is in destroying one's morals.

But even if those harsher anti-refugee laws did work, we should still oppose them because of their inhumanity. They further wreck havoc with people whose lives have so nearly been destroyed by dictatorships, civil war or both. Refugees have a fundamental right to find a better place to live, and if that's Australia, then so be it. These laws reduced our human rights records to that of dictatorships. The mere fact that it took this long to be changes it utterly shameful.

That being said, it's good Australia is seeing the light.

Also see here, here, here and here.

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