L17: Australias Refugee Policy

1
L17 Australias Refugee Policy

• Genuine refugees should not become victims yet
  again. Surely, there are other ways to win
  elections.
• UNHCR, 2001. 
• We decide who comes to this country and the
  circumstances in which they come.
• John Howard, November 2001
•  This fleet the first Australian naval vessels
  will defend White Australia from less advanced
  but aggressive nations with lower standards.
• PM Joseph Cook, 1913.
•  "You can judge politicians by how they treat
  refugees they do to them what they would do to
  everyone else if they could get away with it."
•  Ken Livingstone, Mayor of London

2
Legal Rights to Asylum

• A refugee is a person who owing to a
  well-founded fear of being persecuted for reasons
  of race, religion, nationality, membership of a
  particular social group, or political opinion, is
  outside the country of his nationality, and is
  unable to or, owing to such fear, is unwilling to
  avail himself of the protection of that
  country..."
• The United Nations 1951 Convention Relating to
  the Status of Refugees

3
Refugees in International Politics

• Statistics
• 9.7 million refugees
• 985,500 asylum seekers
• 4.4 million Internally Displaced Persons
• 912,000 people of concern.
• (UNHCR, 2004)
• Causes of Refugee Flows
• New Wars
• Wars of Intervention
• Globalisation

4
Australias Refugee Policy

• Militaristic
• Bureaucratic
• The Politics of Difference
• National security discourse
• Statism
• Sovereignty
• Zero-Sum Security

5
Case One MV Tampa

• We decide who comes to this country and the
  circumstances in which they come. John Howard,
  November 2001

6
Case Two Children Overboard

• I dont want people like that in Australia.
  Genuine refugees dont do that They hang on to
  their children John Howard, 8 October 2001

7
Asylum, Self and Security

• The 2001 Election
• Asylum seekers as
• swamping Australias shores
• Not our responsibility
• Selfish queue-jumpers
• terrorists

In 2005 Kim Huynh and his parents returned to the
island where they sought refugee status in 1978.