Asylum seeker policy more complex than 'stop the boats'

Friday, July 26, 2013

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KALARU-BASED human rights advocate Martin Hodgson has described Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s new asylum seeker policy as “an election year move”.

Last Friday, Mr Rudd announced that no asylum seeker who comes by boat will ever be resettled in Australia.

Mr Hodgson has spent the past decade working as a senior advocate at the Foreign Prisoner Support Service.

On Wednesday, Mr Hodgson told the BDN it was a “tough decision”.

“It’s an election year move when we’re talking about a very complex issue,” he said.

“There should be a bi-partisan component, a long-term regional solution.

“Instead, we have a single sentence slogan like ‘Stop the boats’, it’s far more complex than that.

“It’s been driven by [popularity] polls – people are largely unaware of these issues.”

Mr Hodgson said he “100 per cent agreed” with others that it was often forgotten that “we’re talking about people”.

He said that in the past, Australia had shown a more positive attitude towards asylum seekers.

“I think Australians are very generous,” Mr Hodgson said.

“We need to look at the past and be very proud, and then look to emulate the past.”

Mr Hodgson said one of the wrong perceptions by many people was the number of asylum seekers arriving by boat on Australian shores.

“We have a very small number of refugees compared to Europe,” he said.

“In one year, we have the same amount as European countries have in a week.

“This year, Italy has had 70,000 [refugees], while some countries have 200,000 in a year.

“We’re talking about a few thousand in Australia.”

Mr Hodgson said the asylum seeker could have been dealt with 10 years ago.

He said the government could have “cleared the backlog” of asylum seekers in Indonesia.

Mr Rudd’s new policy will affect Mr Hodgson, who has a client who has been “stuck in limbo” for 20 years in Indonesia.

Mr Hodgson’s client fled from his home country Somalia during the war in 1991.

His client is a trained engineer who can work on aeroplanes, but is instead working in a bakery, which is illegal in Indonesia.
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Mr Hodgson said his client does “enough to get food to survive”.

According to Mr Hodgson, asylum seekers were often “not people with money”.

“He has been stuck in limbo for 20 years, so the frustration becomes extreme,” he said.

“I’ve advised him not to get on a boat, but sometimes these people see their lives slipping away.”

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