The Guardian 29 June, 2005
Vicious immigration policy falling apart
Peter Mac
Faced with a backbencher revolt, the government has been forced to modify its immigration detention policy. However, it still refuses to grant permanent protection to detainees accepted as refugees, who may still be forcibly removed to any other country that will accept them in the future.
The stateless Peter Qasim, effectively imprisoned for nearly seven years and driven into deep depression, has finally been released. The last family detained on Nauru has also been released, but 38 individuals are still held there.
The government blames the victims for its cruel and disastrous policy. The Minister for Immigration, Amanda Vanstone, who still does not accept Qasim’s statements of identity, declares he was released because "his co-operation has improved". Prime Minister Howard blames detainees for the terrible plight of their children because they "tried to come to this country in an unauthorised way in the first place".
This week the government will receive the Palmer Report into the shocking case of Cornelia Rau, a schizophrenic who was illegally imprisoned in jails and detention centres for nine months.
The Palmer inquiry has been severely compromised. Its interviews were held in secret, the report is confidential, and witnesses could not be cross-examined. Because it was not a full judicial inquiry, potential witnesses had no legal protection from harassment or libel action by bureaucrats, politicians or others who may have been disadvantaged by their evidence.
Some public servants therefore refused to be interviewed. Detainees also refused, aware that if labelled as "troublemakers" they might be forcibly returned to countries from which they had fled — as happened in the tragic case of the Baktiari family.
For reasons not clear, Vanstone was not interviewed. The Queensland government refused to give Palmer privileged access to government files, and specifically ruled out providing certain documents, on the grounds of privacy.
Some Baxter Detention Centre guards wanted to testify about problems in running the centre including low pay, inadequate training and high staff turnover, but were not able to do so. Refugee advocates also complained they were unable to contact inquiry personnel.
The report, which had a six week deadline, is expected to comprise only 120 pages — very short by official standards. It is not backed up by transcripts or background documents.
Nevertheless, the Report is likely to contain stinging conclusions. It should conclude that, seeing no laws were broken, the law itself is wrong because of the suffering it imposed on Ms Rau. This constitutes an indictment of the government, as draughter and implementer of the law.
Not that we are likely to have this confirmed in the near future. Vanstone has said she will not discuss the case because she did not wish to prejudice the inquiry (even though it was not judicial), and that she will decide how much of the report will be revealed, in order to respect Ms Rau’s privacy.
Ms Rau’s sister Christine commented: "For the minister to hide behind Cornelia’s privacy is a cynical ploy to withhold information. … if you want to give absolute privacy to the victim then you also protect the perpetrator. You can’t expose the perpetrator without revealing what they did to the victim."
The Rau case was followed by that of Vivian Alvarez, the Australian citizen unjustifiably deported to the Philippines. Palmer has finished his investigation of the Rau case, but refused to deal with any others, claiming rightly that they should be the subject of a full judicial inquiry. His baton has therefore been passed to his deputy Neil Comrie.
Under the mandatory detention aspects of the 1992 immigration laws, government and officials are required to detain and remove from the country anyone whose identity they cannot determine, and whom they believe is not a lawful citizen. The law has greatly increased the rate of forcible removals from Australia, to more than double that of the UK or Canada.
Both Ms Rau and Ms Alvarez fell foul of this law, even though they were Australian citizens. Cornelia Rau’s file was marked "released not unlawful". The Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs has some 200 files similarly marked, indicating that there are potentially 200 cases as explosive as those of Ms Rau and Ms Alvarez. It seems that Mr Comrie faces a very large task.