Comments on MC22-047102

This letter is from the office of Clare O’Neil, Minister for Home Affairs, in answer to an email I sent to a number of Labor Parliamentarians. This answer was prompted by a message from the office of Senator Gallagher forwarding to the minister my message to Sen. Gallagher. The letter from the minister’s office is unsigned, initialled “BJ”.

My message to Labor parliamentarians urged three actions: (1) Immediately bring former detainees still in PNG and Nauru to Australia; (2) begin a serious effort to find third-country resettlement options in safe and welcoming countries; (3) announce publicly as soon as possible that all former detainees will know their settlement country by the end of this year.

BJ’s answer does not directly address any of these points. It suggests that all is well with the former detainees still on Nauru – their health needs are all well served, they are not detained, they can work in the community – implying that there is no need to bring them to Australia. As for the former detainees in PNG, they are there by choice (they could have gone to Nauru) and Australia has no responsibility for them. It is up to the refugees to find their own settlement: “Individuals are strongly encouraged to engage with available migration options. Third country resettlement provices the best available opportunity” [indeed, the only available opportunity].

No mention of several matters in my email: the Refugee Council of Australia’s concern that “more than 500 people will be left behind when all resettlement options currently available are exhausted”; the mental health impact of all these years of hiatus in their lives, with continued uncertainty for years ahead for many of them; the ALP Platform statement that they will be resettled “as a priority”. No response to my suggestion that the former detainees should be assured that they will know their destination by the end of this year. No response to the suggestion that some of them should be settled in Australia.

In short, this message on behalf of a new Labor minister is exactly the message that might have come from Scott Morrison or Peter Dutton. The underlying attitude is that these transitory people are just lucky to be alive, and they can’t expect anything more. If they’d stayed back where they came from they’d be dead or destitute by now. Australia has no concern for them.

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My letter to Labor parliamentarians got three other answers. Two were just boilerplate, but one was a serious reply that led to some further exchange. It touched on a special category of refugees and asylum-seekers, those who will not be accepted anywhere for settlement because they are criminals or terrorists. (These were the people who were the object of the Migration Amendment (Clarifying International Obligations for Removal) Bill 2021. See speech by Senator Keneally, who claimed that it affected only 21 detainees.) I asked my interlocutor several questions about them: “Are the security concerns well-founded? Have the people suspected been given a proper chance to answer the accusations? Were those who have a criminal history in another country properly tried and convicted? Were those who were violent in detention provoked by unfair treatment, and were they properly tried and convicted by a court? And what will be their future — are they detained indefinitely, perhaps for life, at the absolute discretion of a minister?” He answered that he did not know the answers, I’d need to ask the minister. A surprising answer: you would think that MPs who voted in favour of that Bill would have asked those questions.

John Kilcullen
25 September 2022

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