A couple of interesting posts on refugee policy

Sec Ozdowski has written an opinion piece in The Australian titled Real solution is Asia-Pacific pact. In it he looks at the longer term measures he thinks are needed to "deliver much better protection of refugee rights and remove key initiatives for jumping on a leaky boat to Australia". I thing much of what he advocates is interesting, but I don't support his suggestion of introducing Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs). Although, to be fair, he does suggest that they be introduced for people who bypass the "queue" after a regional solution is implemented:

Following the creation of a regional framework for refugees, there should be consequences for people who choose not to join the queue in Indonesia. Any asylum-seekers who arrive by boat without proper travel documents should not be given a right to permanent residency but instead be offered temporary protection visas if they are found to be genuine refugees.

Malcolm Farnsworth in Confusion, timidity and capitulation on asylum seekers argues that the Gillard Government is showing poor leadership on the issue:

If ever there was an issue that required leadership, this is it. The Gillard Government has not provided it. In the lead-up to Christmas, it merely begged the Opposition to rescue it.

Personally I think the above post focuses too much on the politics of the issue and not enough on the issue itself, or the policies proposed by the different parties.

In The problem with Nauru: a Christmas reflection Julian Burnside asks some interesting questions:

The first is: What is the problem we are trying to solve? Is it that boat people might come to harm on the way here, or is it just that they get here?

He advocates offshore processing, that is processing before people get on a boat for Australia.

One possibility is to process protection claims while people are in Indonesia. Those who are assessed as refugees would be resettled, in Australia or elsewhere, in the order in which they have been accepted as refugees. If Australia increased its annual refugee intake, with a guarantee of at least 10,000 places for those processed in Indonesia, the incentive to get on a boat would disappear overnight. At present, people assessed by the UNHCR in Indonesia face a wait of 10 or 20 years before they have a prospect of being resettled. During that time, they are not allowed to work, and can't send their kids to school. No wonder they chance their luck by getting on a boat. This proposal would reduce the waiting time to one or two years, and Australian officials would have an ample chance to warn people of the dangers of a trip with people smugglers.

Genuine offshore processing, with a guarantee of swift resettlement, was the means by which the Fraser government managed to bring about 80,000 Vietnamese boat people to Australia in the late 1970s. It worked, but it was crucially different from the manner of offshore processing being proposed by both major parties.

Unless offshore processing is done fairly and is coupled with swift resettlement, it is nothing but a sham to mask a desire to keep refugees out.

Jack the Insider has written an interesting summary of the issue in No deals, no hope, no policies worth a damn:

You can bet the house that an Abbott Government would not tow back boat one. It is a policy it holds in the abstract in opposition but if it found itself in government, wiser heads would conclude that the political perils would be too great. The Howard government ditched tow backs for very good reasons.

But let’s assume that all other policies are put in place in a spirit of bipartisanship.

Remember, the anticipated arrivals over the next six months are 7,000.

The government could heed Scott Morrison’s urging and reintroduce TPVs. The experts say that TPVs are not effective deterrents but let’s assume for the sake of argument that it cuts the anticipated arrivals by say, twenty five per cent during this period.

800 asylum seekers would go to Malaysia. Nauru would fill to capacity and beyond within months and Manus Island (let’s put to one side the intrinsic difficulties of the Commonwealth coming to an agreement with PNG locked in constitutional stasis, as it is) would soon fill to overflowing, too.

And then what do we do?

Be it the government, the opposition or the Greens, there is no effective policy response available to deter asylum-seekers from putting their lives at risk. After more than ten years, we have to come to the conclusion that no such policy exists within our parliament and that a little more imagination than the creation of vague deterrents of unknown or questionable value is required.

That's really the great risk: short of ripping up our treaty and moral obligations, there's probably nothing we can do that's guaranteed to "fix" the issue. For one thing, we can't agree on what the issue is. For another, none of the solutions would really scale if there was a large increase in asylum seekers. Even a regional solution, in my opinion the best of the options put forward, would run into trouble if there was a significant increase (think of the scale we're currently seeing with Somalia) and the "queues" blew out. Lastly, a regional solution would likely see more recent asylum seekers given preference over those in other regions. Effectively asylum seekers in a regional queue would be fast tracked compared to those in places like Africa.

Unfortunately, as with all wicked problems, there's no perfect solution.

Edit 31/12: The Conversation gives several academics the opportunity to put their view across in Five ways to prevent more asylum seeker tragedies.