HAVE YOU EVER THOUGHT THAT AUSTRALIA'S recent policies on asylum seekers are wrong, but don't quite have the statistics to back up your views?Or perhaps you are just seeking some thoughtful insights into the stories of asylum seekers in order to understand their plight?
Maybe you want to understand further the Government's dilemma of how to determine who is in the most need of its protection under the Refugee Convention?
If you are interested in any of these issues, Father Brennan's book provides different perspectives and thoughtful and compassionate insights into this difficult area.
Brennan provides a significant amount of factual material to inform the debate. For example, next time someone suggests to you there is a queue for asylum seekers, consider that the Australian High Commission in Islamabad in Pakistan in 2000-2001 issued only 109 humanitarian visas to Afghans fleeing persecution. Or that in 2001, Australia received only 12,400 asylum claims in comparison to 92, 000 claims over the same period in the United Kingdom.
Some of Brennan's interesting anecdotes include his conversation with Palestinian asylum seekers.
In conversations with the Palestinian Akram Ouda Mohammad Al Masri, Brennan had informed him and other Palestinian detainees that the judge hearing his case in the Federal Court, Justice Merkel, was "Jewish with a fine reputation for upholding human rights". The first question by the other Palestinians on his return to Woomera after the successful outcome of Al Masri's case was "Do you think we could get the Jewish judge?". Brennan remarked that "in the middle of the Australian desert, some of the most complex conflicts seem resolvable.
"There is hope when persons are treated with dignity and respect under the rule of law regardless of history and politics".
Father Brennan explores Australia's policies, in particular mandatory detention, by comparing them with Europe (the UK in particular), the US and Canada. He argues that the hard line adopted by the current Government will not deter those fleeing persecution, and jeopardises the whole system of dealing with refugees, especially in a world where it is already almost impossible for a refugee to lawfully flee directly to a first world country.
Instead, many developing countries already stretched to look after their own citizens, like Pakistan, Tanzania and Chad, shoulder the burden of looking after most of the world's refugees.
Some of the other areas he explores in detail are: child protection issues in detention centres, the false idea of a 'queue' to enter Australia, the harshness of the Temporary Protection Visa system, the difference between the onshore and offshore protection system, the role of courts in determining asylum claims and examining detention, and the Government's attempts to limit judicial review.
A rational look at asylum seekers Tampering with Asylum - A Universal Humanitarian Problem By Frank Brennan, University of Queensland Press, Brisbane, 2003.
By KIRSTY RUDDOCK posted 20 April 05
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