Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

(   There is no issue that I struggle with more as a representative in this House than the issue of asylum seekers. Parliamentarians are rarely asked to make decisions that have immediate life-or-death consequences. But, in making asylum seeker policy, we are constantly being asked to play God. Once you recognise that Australia cannot resettle all 10.4 million refugees of concern to the UNHCR today, you are left in a situation where you are forced to make life-altering decisions between equally deserving people. I feel the realities of this responsibility as a member of this chamber keenly.

George Orwell wrote in Writers and Leviathan that wrestling with political dilemmas like this is often painful because, 'most of us still have a lingering belief that every choice, even every political choice, is between good and evil and that if a thing is necessary then it is also right.' Orwell famously rejected this dichotomy, going on to say:

We should, I think, get rid of this belief …

In politics, one can never do more than decide which of the two evils is lesser, and there are some situations from which one can only escape by acting like a devil or a lunatic.

There are few contemporary issues for which this famous dictum is more apt than our response to asylum seekers. If we cannot take everyone, how do I explain to my constituents whose need was greater—their African-Australian friend who spent the first 15 years of his life in a refugee camp; or their neighbour, a recently resettled Hazara asylum seeker who arrived by boat? And how to deal with the deserving asylum seekers who we do not choose yet come anyway? There are few straightforward right answers here. As Orwell said, it leaves one feeling 'like a devil or a lunatic'.

But our choices still have consequences that force us to weigh the costs as best we can. In this vein, I believe it is important that we do everything we can to discourage the arrival of asylum seekers to this country by boat. I believe this because the journey by sea from Indonesia to Australia is one of the most dangerous in the world and I believe that, if we control our resettlement intake, we can provide a greater equality of opportunity across asylum seekers in need throughout the world. I concede this approach creates different injustices; however, I believe that they are lesser than the alternative. Similarly, on balance, I believe that offshore processing and resettlement are necessary to deter asylum seekers from seeking to come to this country by boat.

Determining the right approach on these issues requires a difficult moral and policy calculus upon which people of good faith can disagree. That being said, there is no room for disagreement on three aspects of asylum seeker policy. Firstly, while offshore processing is necessary to deter boat arrivals, what is absolutely not necessary is for this offshore processing to be administered in the unsafe, traumatic and dehumanising manner that is currently occurring under this government.

The death of Reza Barati on Manus Island in February this year is an unambiguous moral failure and a shame on this minister and the government. We already failed this young man in our obligation to ensure his safety while he was in our care; we must not now fail him again by allowing those responsible for his death to escape accountability. Secondly, in the face of such enormous need around the world, we absolutely must agree to resettle as many legitimate refugees as possible.

Unfortunately, under this government we have slashed our humanitarian intake of refugees from 20,000 people per year under the previous Labor government to only 13,750 today. This is an Abbott government cut that will undoubtedly cost lives. It represents a failure to assist 6,250 people in need every year that we have the capacity to help.

Finally we should all be able to agree to talk about asylum seekers as the human beings that they are, not in dehumanising terms like 'illegals' or, even worse, simply named as the boats on which they arrive, but as some of the most unlucky and desperate people in the world who have come to us looking for our help. We cannot help every deserving asylum seeker in need. But the least we can do is recognise them as the grandmothers and grandfathers, aunts and uncles, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters, and brothers and sisters that they are.

In a policy full of difficult moral judgements and complex policy decisions, surely we can all agree that we should guarantee the safety and dignity of those in our care, that we should offer assistance to as many people as possible, and that we should treat each other as human beings. Thank you.