As an organisation which has a longstanding commitment to action in support of the basic human rights of refugees and asylum seekers in Australia and its off-shore detention centres, we had hoped that the appalling treatment of asylum seeker and refugee families and children in this country ended with the defeat of the Howard Government.

We have had occasion to write to you and the previous Minister, Senator Evans, several times to congratulate and support the Labor Government on changes to the cruel, inhumane and degrading mandatory detention policies of successive Howard Governments.

However recent moves by your Government regarding asylum seeker and refugee families and children, particularly the so-called Malaysian Solution, are such that we feel the need to express our outrage and serious fears.

You and your Government have made much of the fact that sending asylum seekers to Malaysia, including unaccompanied minors, is necessary to send a strong message to deter people-smugglers and “break their business model” by which they “sell the product of resettlement in Australia”.

Your argument that there would be no exemptions in order to ensure “a very robust system” of deterrence which would discourage people smugglers from “trafficking in children” was rightly condemned by the United Nations and others as shocking, hypocritical, extremely callous and lacking in compassion.

We consider your subsequent statement that the situation of these children will now be considered on a case by case basis, in the face of the outrage and concerns for the protection of vulnerable unaccompanied minors prompted by your earlier position, to be only marginally less hypocritical and deplorable. So too your insistence that somehow asylum seekers transferred from Australia to Malaysia, including unaccompanied minors, will have their human rights respected and protections guaranteed through some unspecified form of special arrangements which will ensure they are not treated under the same regime that applies to other asylum seekers in Malaysia.

Your claim that unaccompanied minors, who you say “might be particularly vulnerable”, will be protected by “appropriate measures in place on an individual basis” is equally unacceptable.

If “appropriate measures” were in place in Australia, as laid down by conventions to which Australia is a signatory, including the Convention on the Rights of the Child, this internationally demeaning situation whereby your Government and the Opposition offer competing ‘off-shore’ policies of mistreating children could be avoided.

Under the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the children of asylum seekers and unaccompanied minors are entitled to have their welfare and rights protected, and you, as the Minister, are responsible for ensuring that Australia complies with its legal obligations under that convention.

Being party to the ongoing mistreatment of children in the pursuit of political gain and policy objectives is both immoral and antithetical to this responsibility.
The AEU actively campaigned for a decent, humane refugee policy, respect for human rights and an end to ‘off-shore solutions’ whereby Australia avoided its international obligations in breach of the United Nations Convention of the Rights of the Child and the UN Refugee Convention, during the Howard years. We had hoped that it would no longer be necessary to call for our Government to stop playing politics with vulnerable asylum seekers and innocent children’s futures.

The incoming Rudd Government went some way to redressing the enormous damage done to Australia’s international reputation by the Howard Government’s inhumane policies. There was a degree of hope that Australia had moved beyond the politics of fear, divisiveness and the opportunistic exploitation of the plight of desperate people for political gain.

However the rising numbers of children in detention, and the politics around the ‘Malaysian Solution’, particularly that associated with unaccompanied minors, force us to consider the necessity of once again actively campaigning for reforms to Australia’s refugee and asylum seekers policies.

The detention of children and the consequent potential for serious negative impacts on their development and mental health is not compatible with a decent and humane immigration policy consistent with the human rights standards which Australia has developed and endorsed.

Australia’s policies towards asylum seekers and refugees, including unaccompanied minors, should at all times be in accord with the UN Conventions to which we are party, and advance Australia’s international standing by reflecting respect, decency and traditional Australian generosity to those in need.

We call on the Government to honour its moral and legal commitments and develop policies for the treatment of asylum seeker families and children which ensure that, among other things, the education, health and developmental needs of all asylum seeker and refugee children, many of whom have suffered severe physical and mental trauma, are met.

We look forward to your positive response.

Yours sincerely,
Angelo Gavrielatos
Federal President