Fortress Australia bills undermine human rights

The Catholic Commission for Justice Development and Peace Melbourne 
warned that the raft of seven Fortress Australia Bills set to be passed in 
Parliament last Monday undermined the human rights of refugees.

Executive Officer, Marc Purcell warned, "Fortress Australia is made up of 
an offshore and onshore assault on the human rights of refugees. The 
offshore assault involves, firstly, the removal of human rights standards 
being applied in different parts of Australian territory.

"It is a dangerous precedent. Having started to cut out bits of Australia 
such as the Christmas Islands, and draw lines marking where we won't 
tolerate refugee claims, where will it end — a resurrected Brisbane line?"

"Secondly, an effect of the Bills will be that the Australian navy will be 
able to intercept refugee boats and transfer them to quasi-prison centres 
on Nauru and other islands. There is a deep irony in Australia — nation 
founded as a South Pacific penal settlement setting up its own refugee 
prison colonies on Pacific islands", he said.

Mr Purell said, "These Bills undermine three different human rights 
conventions where Australia has undertaken to hear refugee asylum claims 
and not to forcibly deport those seeking asylum:

"- the International Convenant on Civil and Political Human Rights (Art2.1) 
states that human rights are applicable to all individuals on a territory 
and that they shall be applied in a non-discriminatory manner;

"- the UN Convention on the Status of Refugees obliges us to assess refugee 
claims made on Australian territory;

"- the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that a signatory nation 
must offer 'special protection and assistance to children' — is sending 
children to be incarcerated on Nauru in their best interests?

"- and the Refugee Convention expressly forbids deporting of asylum 
seekers, yet the Bills allow this to occur with refugee boats in Australian 
territorial waters."

"The onshore assault on refugees involves removing the scrutiny of the 
courts over administrative decisions about refugee status (as well as the 
existing policy of mandatory detention of all refugees seeking asylum).

It is vitally important to retain unhindered judicial scrutiny by the 
Federal Court to ensure the integrity and transparency of what is 
essentially an administrative system with decisions about people's lives 
being made primarily by public servants", he said.

"Collectively, the Bills represent the most far-reaching changes to 
Australia's reception and treatment of refugees in forty years.

"In an attempt to neutralise refugees and asylum seekers as an election 
issue, the ALP has reversed its earlier opposition to these Bills. The 
passing these Bills without proper parliamentary debate, or an opportunity 
for public submission is a low point in Australian parliamentary process."

Enforcing the new policy will be a drain on the public purse. It cost $150 
million of public money in the Tampa crisis plus another $20 million reward 
to the Government of Nauru for taking the refugees.

Mandatory detention cost the public purse $96,650,701 in 2000.

Australia is flouting the guidelines of the United Nations High Commission 
for Refugees on asylum seekers which state detention is "inherently 
undesirable" and that children should not be detained at all — 1147 minors 
were held in detention in 2000", he said.