Go Back to Where You Came From

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Hi, I'm Jennie Brockie and a big welcome to the 'Go Back to Where You Came From' crew, together for the first time since the series finished filming six months ago. As we go to air tonight, Australian authorities have called off the search for survivors after a boat sank off the coast of Indonesia on Wednesday morning - 55 people have been rescued - 100 are unaccounted for. Angry, knowing what you now know about the asylum seekers as a result of this series, how would you describe the people who get on those boats?

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:  Desperate, desperate with nowhere else to turn. So desperation makes people do desperate things.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  That is very different to the kind of thing you were saying about people on boats that we heard a few minutes ago.

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:  Yes, yes, but in those days I wanted the gig, you know.  So, I was going to say the appropriate thing that got me the job.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  But they are public statements.

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:  Sorry?

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  They are public statements you make and they have an impact. They helped frame the debate.

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:  Absolutely yes, that’s true yes. Yes.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  How do you feel about having said those things?

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:   My thought process this those days was that, yes.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  How do you feel about having said those things now?

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:   The experience that we had - us three - that went to Afghanistan - a very strange person would have that experience and not be changed in a deep way, because, you know, it was a real life experience with real life people so I went there for that purpose. I took the job on - like I said, being flippant about that remark, but I was determined to get the job and I was determined to...

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  You're saying you didn't believe those things that you were saying beforehand? Or that you just said them because you wanted attention?

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:   No, no, I'm not saying I didn't believe them, no.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What I'm interested in is the way the public debate, the way the debate in general about this is conducted and one of the things I want to talk about is that, about the way that language is used t way that people talk about asylum seekers and the kind of experiences you've had. Now, you're saying you did that cynically, you made those comments kind of cynically to get the gig.

 

ALLAN ASHER:  Or is this the cynical bit?

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Or is this the cynical…..yeah?

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:  No, I was being flippant. It's partly true. Both of those things are partly true. Obviously, you're going to produce a show like this and you won't want wishy-washy people. You will want people with strong opinions - with strong belief systems, etc. You want people that bring you to a point and when I was making light of the fact that I was going to say the appropriate things, I was going to make sure, you know, that my view, if you like, or the view I represent, was put in such a way that it would do two things: it would ensure that I did get to go, because there was no certainty that any of us would get to go in the first place - it was an elimination process or a selection process.

 

So, A, I really wanted to go, because I knew that I needed to have this experience. I knew that I didn't know enough about the subject to have a balanced or rounded opinion or a strong enough opinion, to go on into the future.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  You're planning to run for public office though - You want to run for the Nationals, yeah?  Will you adopt this approach in the way you make public statements if you go into politics?

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:   Well politicians do it all the time.

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   It doesn’t make it right - Which is why they need to be left out of this debate.

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:  Paul Keating once said - he's famous for having once said that lies are the tools of trade. I don't prescribe to that, no. Again, I mean...

 

PETER REITH:  Most politicians don't, either. Seriously, I think for everybody, whether they've been involved in the issue or not in the past, for everybody, the invitation to go on this was an opportunity to know more about the issues and to be involved and Angry was very much the same as the rest of us. It was a chance to come and learn.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Michael, how would you describe the people on those boats?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  You can't generalise.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  We've heard in the news about people now presumed dead. How do you describe those people now, because the way you described them as well was pretty full-on.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  Well, the fact of people having been killed today, I don't think will change the way I’d describe them. I don't see it is relevant, the fact that someone has been killed - you can't generalise. You have to look at each individual case - what has driven an individual person to make that choice to get on the boat. I would say that the system that encourages it, or rewards it, is wrong.

 

The fact that you say if you lobe by boat you will get the glittering prize of Australian residency and citizenship to the detriment of somebody who may be more deserving of a humanitarian visa or who may be in much greater and more dire immediate need, I don't, I just couldn't live with myself thinking that that is the way this country operates.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  But again, that language is different to the language you used before you went on this trip. Before you went on this trip, you were saying things like, "We're being gamed by these people".

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  I think we are - I think we are.

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   I have to say that I find it really surprising that somebody…that you would use the word "generalise", because throughout the trip - and a lot of comments that you didn't see - Michael actually uses a lot, talking about not using language that is defamatory and religiously prejudice and, you know, those other horrible descriptive words like "boat people" - we're starting to call them people - you, I'm sorry, with all due respect, have been the king of that, the whole way along -  throughout the trip and I held my tongue on it and the other day we did an interview together on 2GB and you said, "I want to protect our shores from that influence". I know that that "that influence" meant Muslim influence and I really feel it is important…..

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  How would you know that?

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   Because I know because I spent three weeks with you and heard your opinion on it so for someone to use the words, "We can't generalise".

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  In answer to that question about people who come here by boats, there are a range of drivers. There are people undoubtedly who see it as an easy, fool-proof route to gain citizenship here in Australia and there are other people who are in dire circumstances and desperate need. The people who came from West Papua, for example, by boat to Australia, were in vastly different circumstances from someone who acquires the tapes in a market in Pakistan and comes here and purports to be, you know, from Afghanistan. It's a range of experiences.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  That's a very sober you saying this now though.  It's not the kind of things I’ve heard you say - you haven't talked like that before. I'm just - I'm interested in how the debate is framed. You are a media person, so you help frame the public debate you know. All of you, to some degree, in one way or the other, help frame the public debate. Language is important in this debate.

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   Absolutely.

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:  The simplistic answer to that is that it was such a dramatic experience, how could we come back the same? How could we be using the same language?

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Peter Reid, you, Angry and Catherine stayed with a family in Indonesia wanting to get on a boat. The father, Ali Khan, has tried unsuccessfully to get to Australia twice by boat and he's prepared now to try again with his whole family. Let's have a look.

 

 

GO BACK – ALI KHAN'S STORY:

 

ALI KHAN: First time I go… broken that boat. All are scared, the baby, the women, very scared.

 

PETER REITH:  How long was it before the boat broke?

 

ALI KHAN:  Thirty five minutes, because the boat was very small. The people much – 110 person put in the ship. This ship only for 10 person not for 110 person.  UNHCR don’t answer me, just tell me ‘You wait, wait, wait.’  Yeah, of course I try.

 

PETER REITH:  So, you mean if they don’t give you a time – you would try again if you could.

 

WOMAN:  I don’t like go by boat, a boat is dangerous, but don’t have any option – just this way, illegal.

 

PETER REITH:  Now this is Afghanistan versus Australia, okay?

 

BOY:  Okay.

 

PETER REITH:  You beat me again.

Well it is totally understandable, but it is a bit of a conundrum for him because of his circumstances, which I presume actually are quite common.  You know, you just can’t avoid the reality that there are a lot of people that want to come to Australia and they want to come to Australia – from their perspective – for very good reasons.

 

 

JENNY BROCKIE:     Peter, you clearly connected with that child, and you talk there about a conundrum. Why didn't you use that kind of language about this issue when you were a politician?

 

PETER REITH:  Well, I'm not sure that it can be said that I didn't then, either. You may have quotes - I'm sure you have...

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   I have a few.

 

PETER REITH:  Okay. I mean, I've never really been in any doubt about the fact or the circumstances that we face, which is, namely, people want to come to Australia; we understand why they want to come to Australia; they find themselves in a state like Afghanistan where they are persecuted, where they don't have the opportunities that they'd like to have for their children. I understand that. To me, that's a given in the debate.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   But you called people like the Khans "illegals" in the past, I mean you have used those terms.

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   And "terrorists".

 

PETER REITH:  Have I?

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   Mmmmm.

 

PETER REITH:  When was that?

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   I can give you the documents.

 

PETER REITH:  Well I'd like to have it because I don't think that is true. It's not, because there was one case, one situation, where that issue was raised. It was raised by an American official in Jakarta talking about the possibility of people getting to Australia without being properly screened and I referred to his remarks. Now, that was a perfectly reasonable response to an American official, so don't make these claims, Catherine. If you don't have the piece of paper here, you haven't got it.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  I have a quote where you did refered to illegals, on 13th September 2001 during a Sky News interview.

 

PETER REITH:   I don’t find it totally offensive, I must say. In the common parlance of describing how people come to Australia, well obviously I understand how the treaty works. They do have a right to make an application but in terms of describing it to people, the fact is that they are coming to Australia without having first applied to come to Australia.

 

ALLAN ASHER:  There is a stigma though and it frames an argument in the wrong way.

 

PETER REITH:  The people who don't like it, Allan though, are out there saying, "This is a stigma". Let's face it, the use of the word...

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   but the people who like to use it are the politicians that like to use it to enable them to make their point and sell their pitch and that is unfair.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What was the point you wanted to make Allan?

 

ALLAN ASHER:   The point I was making is that when you get prominent people who either use or allow to be used language which is technically wrong and inhuman, that gives permission to people who do have extremist views - and actually I don't think Peter does - but you see how it allows oxygen to people who just shouldn't be allowed to get away with misinformation.

 

PETER REITH:  I don't mind that, Allan, I don’t mind that but I mean, you know, you're talking to the public at large. They're not into the technicalities of it and I accept the point that you need to be reasonable in the words you use, but that word I don't find - I don't use it myself particularly.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Couldn’t you talk to the public the way you talked in that clip and say, "These people are desperate; it is a conundrum; we have a problem; it's a really difficult situation to resolve and it's tough, I feel for these people".

 

PETER REITH:  To be honest with you Jenny, I don't have a problem with that. All I'm saying is it's not an accusation you can easily make at me quite frankly.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  It's not the language of politics is it, and I'm not just talking about your side of politics, I’m talking about politics in general. It's not the language of politics in this debate.

 

PETER REITH:   I don't find your proposition unreasonable, but you also have to accept that for the average Joe listening to the debate, you want to express it in a way in which they understand what you're trying to say. Now, yes, be careful about it, but, you know, I don't think you should be too precious about it either. It has to be reasonable, whatever that is.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Catherine, you took Peter on full-on in this series and it was - you know - you were attacking him regularly. I just wonder, you know, some of those attacks were very personal. You were talking about his clothes; having a go about his chinos and what he wore.

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   He told me I should be in a detention centre.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  You've done it on Twitter as well. You've been very confrontational in the way you approach this issue. I wonder whether you think that improves the debate, by approaching it that way?

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   I think that people have to realise is we were all away for three weeks and the show was edited. It's a brutal edit when you have to deal with three weeks of stuff and there were a lot of things that went on between all of us that we never saw and they had to choose what would work and what would stimulate debate. There were many things that I wish they’d seen both highly volatile and really, you know - the camaraderie between us all.  I don't feel that I took on Peter at all. I think that Peter and I had vigorous debates. I don't see it as unusual whatsoever for two people who have differing and passionate feelings about this.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  But my question to you, I guess, is about the tone of the debate as much as to the others, and the tone that you adopted and whether you think that actually... adds to people's understanding of the debate or whether you're just talking to the people who agree with you.

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   So preaching to the converted. I adopt many different ways of dealing with this issue. I do it privately, in my home, I do it with my money, I do it with the way I speak to my friends. This is only a visible way that people saw that I deal with this debate. The ways to deal with this debate are educate, donate and participate.

 

And to be honest, this is so close to my heart, this subject, and when you don't know what to do, do anything. That boat went down and any time I hear that a boat has arrived or that a boat has gone down, I wonder if Fatma is on it and Sara and Ali and I care and that's passion. I don't think that Australians are comfortable with passion, but there were a whole lot of different conversations that went on that trip. I think it's valuable and I think it's one of the many ways.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Michael, I talked a little bit about your role as a media figure. I want to just have a look at what happened when you met Abdi Aden who fled Somalia when he was 13, let’s have a look at this.

 

 

GO BACK - ABDI ADEN'S  STORY: 

 

ABDI ADEN:  The Government militias they caught us halfway, we were 20 boys and they pick up the older boys and they tied us up. The person who was shooting us was another younger person - maybe not older than 20.

 

VOICE OVER:  The teenage executioner sprayed the line of refugees with machine-gun fire.

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   Were you pretending that you were dead?

 

ABDI ADEN:  I was. I thought some of the blood, I thought it was mine.

 

ALLAN ASHER:  Bad memories, bad memories.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  You weren't prosecuted for travelling on a false passport?

 

ABDI ADEN:  I thought I was a legitimate refugee.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:   When you filled out the arrival card, what did you write on that?

 

ABDI ADEN:  I didn't fill it. He did it for me.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  The fixer in Germany?

 

ABDI ADEN:  Yes. I don't think he was a fixer.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  Did you pay him?

 

ABDI ADEN:  No, I didn't.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  How did you get a false passport issued with no money changing hands?

 

ABDI ADEN:  You basically were driving something...

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  I’m asking for the truth mate.

 

ABDI ADEN:   I'm telling the truth.

 

 

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Michael, when Abdi told you his story, why was it that that you focus on, the false passport?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  That was about a three quarters of an hour discussion in his living room. When the story unfolded, Abdi and I have spoken about this a lot - then and since. As the story unfolded and he went from Kenya to Egypt, through the processing system, to Romania, and back and forth to Croatia, other countries in Europe, then to Germany with a fixer who has provided him with what turned out to be a false passport that wasn't the original story, but, you know, we were talking about it and the facts to me didn't back up the story as it was originally presented and so I kept asking questions about it.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Abdi, can you understand why he wanted to ask you about that?

 

ABDI ADEN:  Yeah, I think Michael, you were actually not asking the right question, or you don't want to hear it. Because I actually came as my father's childhood friend to help me to come to Australia and I didn't even know the passport, how it works. In Somali passport often they put the children's name on. He put it that way and we came. I thought I was coming in the right way.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  That's not what you said when we had that discussion.

 

ABDI ADEN:  Michael, you often don't listen to people and don't respect. When you came to my house that day, I said, "My name is Abdi", you said, "Happi?" You actually lived in Indonesia. You are very disrespectful to people. This is what I say, you are a person who doesn't respect other cultures.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Abdi though, I wonder what your experience has been of this series. We heard a lot from these people what they thought. What did you think of it? Of 'Go Back to Where You Came From' - the program.

 

ABDI ADEN:  My experience, the reason I signed up to do this program was to make awareness for the wider Australia and I see myself an Australian because after doing this show I found that people are calling me a refugee. Yes, I came as a refugee, but I lived here 20 years. But also the show didn't talk about what I have done in Australia last 20 years.

My experiences were good and dealing with someone like Michael - often I find in Australia, living, from time to time I see someone like Michael and I do well, but I knew that I was getting at least one person who thought differently and I didn't mind that, because I think I'm educated, open-minded, bring it on, and I worked with 12 years youth work and I thought I knew everything - not everything - so when Michael came to my house, I was prepared, but one thing I didn't know was that he actually doesn't listen when I'm talking. I find that disrespectful and an Australian man, as I am, I like to have my own voice, to give and say...

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Okay, a quick response from you, Michael. Were you listening?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  To what?  Absolutely, yeah.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Imogen says you weren’t you say you were. Why do you say that he wasn’t listening?

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   Because I remember this story exactly that way.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  I would like to see the tape, if I have….

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   And I would also say that you should know now from being in Somalia that getting a passport is impossible.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  This is in Germany after several years after leaving Somalia.

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   Where did he start?

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Michael, again, just very quickly, what is interesting is that you did focus in on that, that was the thing you thought, so you thought that was a really important part of Abdi’s story?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  Entering on a false passport? Yes.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Yes.

JENNY BROCKIE:   Tonight we are talking to the cast of 'Go Back to Where You Came From', about how they are feeling six months on. Angry, let's have a look at one of the key moments for you, which was meeting the Aq Bari family in Afghanistan. Here is Tarana, who lost her nine-year-old brother in a bombing at a local religious ceremony.

 

 

GO BACK - TARANA’S STORY:

 

TARANA (Translation): We went to the shrine, there was a yellow door, we were standing in the sun and watching people hitting themselves on the chest. A minister came and said ‘Open the door.” Then the doorman opened the door – as soon as he stepped in, he blew himself up.

 

VOICE OVER:   74 people were killed. Tirana lost her only brother and six other family members. 

 

WOMAN (Translation): What a horrifying time it was, is that your son?

 

MOTHER (Translation):  Yes, that’s him.

 

WOMAN (Translation):  Look at her, look how she’s lying.

 

FATHER (Translation):  Out of all those other people, only my daughter Tarana survived. I lost my only son that day. What was his sin?  His name was Showaib and he was just nine years old.

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:   What was his bomber trying to do?

 

FATHER (Translation):  We don’t know who he was or why he did this.

 

VOICE OVER:   Hundreds of men, women and Hazara children have been killed here in the last year. Families like this can't seek refugee status in their own country. Their only option is to flee and seek asylum elsewhere.

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   Do you think things will get better or worse?

 

FATHER (Translation):  From what we see right now, worse.  Life is so hard here, we don’t want to stay in this country but we can’t do anything about it because this is how life is.

 

 

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Angry, did you know what it was like for Hazara’s  before you went to Afghanistan?

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:  I had no idea, I had no idea. One of the things I think was illuminated for me; one of the many things, was that - I mean, we all understand that press is selective. I mean, there's a bias, whether it be left or right or there's a bias, you know, towards some sort of - CNN, we've heard those remarks are made about the bias, and we all understand that. I think when you see a situation where that fundamentally important fact has never been explained and I never saw it in press. I had to go there to find that out. We were introduced to it in Melbourne.

 

There was persecution from one sect, tribe - however you like to describe it - and two fundamental things came to me, glaringly, you know, and it made the picture a lot clearer for me, was that, you know, it was Muslims persecuting to death other Muslims, so it's not so much a religious thing and I still don't understand the complexity of it, but I understand the fundamentals of it. Once I became aware of that simple fact, which had never been illuminated to me before, never in the press have I ever seen that there were eight people being persecuted in their own country. In their own country they are known as "non-people" seemingly somehow they don’t exist.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Why do you think you didn't know that, though?

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:  I don't know why. It's the irresponsibility, I suppose, of the bias - not so much call the bias - but why would that not be explained to us, as a population, that very simplistic dynamic, so that we understood the picture, the larger picture even more. I mean...

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  But where does that leave you now, six months on. Where does that leave you now in terms of your view views about asylum seekers and the kind of public statements you will make about them as a politician - if you do become a politician? Where does it leave you, what will you be saying?

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:  Well, the thing about it is how could I possibly have the same view now that I know and I don't have the same view. That's the simple answer.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What is the view you have now, what would you be saying now?

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:   I understand why they do that. I understand why they have to do that. There's no mechanism - one of the things we found out that was so glaringly obvious is that there's no mechanism within those countries - whether it be the country that they're fleeing from, and/or the intermediate country, like Indonesia - there's no formal agreement between our government, whether it be Liberal, Labor or whatever - there's no mechanism in place for people to seek asylum through channels that would be acceptable to all Australians.

 

ALLAN ASHER:  And there is no such thing as a queue.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Do you think there is such a thing as a queue, Angry?

 

ANGRY ANDERSON:  I've never really thought about it in terms as a queue. I mean - the terminology.

 

ALLAN ASHER:  A queue-jumper - all of that has been such a powerful derogatory argument against the sort of people that we came to know and love in getting on boats to come here. The accusations that they are facing….

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Peter, what do you think about this?

 

PETER REITH:  I hear what Alan says, but I think Alan would agree that Australia's approach to immigration is to place limits on the number of people who come. That limits, in terms of resettlement, going up to 20,000 and the system as it has operated until now, with the 13,250 is that rightly or wrongly - but it is the system - if you have, you know, 8,000 people come by boat, then there are only 5,500 left. In that sense it constrains the numbers you can take from elsewhere. You may not call that...

 

ALLAN ASHER:  It's not the point.

 

PETER REITH:  It's a good point, it’s quite a good point.

 

ALLAN ASHER:  It is highly irrelevant to Nauru and Manus Island argument, where we have to device a system that puts people there until their spot in the queue would have come up and that doesn't exist because it's an individual assessment.

 

PETER REITH:  Just to finish, I mean, I think it was Ray, the lady, who was in the first series, went to Africa and her concern was that there were, you know, people there who would be successful applicants wanting to come to Australia, but, given the limitations on the number that we take, they would be - their opportunities of doing so - were limited.  Now you say it's not a queue, but it's certainly a limit, a constraint.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Do you accept those constraints, Imogen? You came away from this experience being very sympathetic. But I wonder how much those of you who are sympathetic had your ideas tested about what to do about it because a lot of the focus in the series is on testing these three, Michael, Peter and Angry, not so much on testing you. What do you think about their argument that there has to be a limit?

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   Well look, I do think there has to be a limit, of course there does, but I think that it is difficult to define - so far as selecting and those kinds of things, it's difficult to define what is the right way to come here when you're dealing with countries and places that it's impossible to get paperwork.  As we've established, there is no queue, but also, you know, getting to appointments, the levels of corruption. It's like we just cannot define it on what is right here.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Where does that leave you in terms of what you do, Imogen?

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:  Well I feel like we absolutely need to have solutions, not these deterrent-based policies. I don't agree with the detention centres. I feel like we need to come up with and I'm not saying I'm a politician - so far as numbers go, and all those kinds of things, I'm absolutely not saying that is my thing, but I think that we need to do more with aid and we need to work out how we are going to get these people safely here, because we all agree that we do have to stop the boats.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  If we talking about - we will get on to stopping the boats in a minute - but if we're talking about numbers, I want to look at Ethiopia and your experience there, Michael because you were in a camp in Ethiopia where you met a teenage boy called Mohammed, who is one of hundreds of thousands of refugees in that area from Somalia. Let's have a look at what happened to you.

 

 

GO BACK - MOHAMMED’S STORY:

 

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  Hey Mohammed.  Mohammed, he's got no mum, no dad, he's been following us all day. Oh, shit. I said, "What's the future?" He said he will stay here with them until he's 18 and then he has to go try something himself. It breaks your heart – it breaks mine.

 

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  I wonder if Mohammed managed to get a false passport to get out of that situation, to be somewhere safe, like Australia, would you criticise him for doing that in the way you criticised Abdi?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  Abdi's circumstances  then  were so vastly different from that little fellow.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Let's just stick with the illegality issue.

 

ABDI ADEN:  I am human, I will do whatever I have to ...

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  It's nothing to do with your humanity or ethnic background Abdi.

 

ABDI ADEN:  No, it is to do my friend, it is to do.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:   It's not.

 

ABDI ADEN:  What's the difference, that young man and myself?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  You were in Romania, you were safe, there was no persecution of you there.

 

ABDI ADEN:  Do you know how the world works? Romania were Communist months before I get there and they just get rid of their President. You know it so I don't know where you get your information from.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  Were you fleeing persecution in Romania?

 

ABDI ADEN:  Yes... Hang on, let me - you do it again, you do it again. You always do that. I find that really frustrating, because if you are intelligent person, you will listen when I'm talking.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Let's just get to the point you want to make, Abdi, about your circumstances being the same as Mohammed’s or similar to Mohammed's?

 

ABDI ADEN:  No difference. I didn't know where my parents were. I didn't know whether they died or were alive. I went to Romania with a family that their son died, so they replaced me to go. That's how I get there. When I get to Romania, the President died, they killed him. And then they used to gas us all the time. The Romanian people used to gas their own people. So when I get there, it was hard. I went there one year-and-a-half looking for this particular, my father's friend, who worked at the embassy.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  So you could get out.

 

ABDI ADEN:  Get to Germany. When I get to Germany, this is what I want to say, I want to make it clear, when I get to Germany, the Somali Government in Somalia was keeping the people in the country so it was very hard - same as Syria now. You couldn't actually go back so Germany was doing to send people back to Somalia. This is a theory that we were worried.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  So you were worried about going back. Let me just go back to Michael about this because  Abdi is saying look, "There's no difference between me and Mohammed" and I guess the point  I'm making to you is not whether  Mohammed was in Germany or anything else, but this idea of illegality. If he had managed to somehow get an illegal passport to get out of there, would you think that was something you would want to criticise?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  Yes.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  You would still criticise it?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  I’m sorry….

 

ALLAN ASHER:   Michael, have you ever technically or otherwise broken an immigration law?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  Paid a facilitation payment?

 

ALLAN ASHER:  Yes you have, you're admitting that you have. That is not an irrelevant thing in this circumstance.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  It is a facilitation payment which is different from….

 

ALLAN ASHER:  It's called bribe.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  It's not a bribe mate.

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   That’s because you are sitting there as an entitled person saying that it's okay for you but not okay for a child in a camp, it’s terrible.

 

PETER REITH:  I think this is quite a difficult issue, I don’t know the answer to it because we met somebody and who is here tonight and I think the story was - but certainly, we were told this, anyway - this person was in the airport in Malaysia, had to get out, and I think the story basically was, reading the between the lines, money was paid so they could get out and then get themselves across to Indonesia. You can understand it from the Malaysians' point of view - they're not very keen on having their officials being bribed. Then again, you can understand a person who is desperate - they are in the hands of a people smuggler, who organises it all. I don't know the answer.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  That poor little kid. It is clear the circumstances that he is in and the horrors that he has faced and is getting away from. You asked me a pointed question: could I say to him that the path out of that is to deceive and to do something so manifestly illegal as to start your life with a false travel document, no, I couldn't condone that. I would say to him, you have to find another way, mate.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  You talked about wanting to adopt him. Are you still pursuing that?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  That's a personal matter for my family. There are roadblocks after roadblocks after roadblocks and...

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   Isn't that a form of queue-jumping?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  How? Look, we are Australian. We are born into a very fortunate country and there's a hell of a lot of misfortune in the world. To alleviate that for somebody, how is that an improper thing to do?

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  So your response to that situation is to want to do something personal.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  For him, yes.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Your wife is here, Katarina. What do you think about that?

 

KATARINA KROSLAKOVA, MICHAEL’S WIFE:   It’s funny, that is the thing that most people have commented on this week actually. Most people at work have just looked at me and said, "Oh - New addition to the family".

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  And your feeling about that?

 

KATARINA KROSLAKOVA:   Ah look, I balled my eyes out, that episode, and so did most of the crew in the studio watching it. I saw Michael and I know obviously what he's like at home and I saw him and we just had tissues everywhere and I obviously can see that he's got an extraordinary connection with that boy, and not just that boy, but also that young mum with those children who walked and I’ve watched the videos, and it's something that, it was probably one of the first things we discussed.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What I find interesting is that you were here, you were not there. What is your response to him wanting to adopt the child?

 

KATARINA KROSLAKOVA:  It's the conversation that we have in the privacy of our own home and it’s a conversation that we have on a daily basis.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  At some level, Catherine, you know, you have a go about that, but at some level that kind of thing involves a big commitment. It is doing something. It may not be doing politically what you want to do, but it is someone trying to do something.

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   When you don't know what to do, do anything. I think it is fantastic. What I wanted to illuminate was the hypocrisy of talking about queue jumpers, but then and - illegals and being rorted - yet if an opportunity arrives for this young boy and he took it, that's the same as a boat. It's a boat of hope that you're offering. I really hope it works out for you guys and you do it. It would be a fantastic example to Australians and to your own family and I was only trying to illuminate the hypocrisy of – it’s just another boat – if you have money you use it, if you find a people smuggler, use it.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:   I'm not doing as an example, Catherine, Jesus Christ. Catherine, love...

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   Don't call me "love".

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  When you say it's an example, you do it as an example... This is to do with personal relationships - A little man and my family and my children. I would no more do that as an example than fly to the moon.

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   You won’t do it as an example but it would be an example.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  What does that matter?

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Can I get on to a broader question, which is a question of policy. That is the individual response. Michael, you saw thousands of people, like Mohammed, in that camp, and the Government has announced plans to double humanitarian intake from the UNHCR over the next five years. Do you support that, having seen those thousands of people that need to get out of that camp? Do you support the doubling?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  This is a diabolical question for the Government to deal with.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What do you think?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  The material impact of 14,000 versus 20,000, in the scheme of 45 million people on the move, is not significant. It won't ameliorate the circumstance for the 45 mill.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  But it is 14 thousand more than the one that you are talking about adopting, and you can't use that argument about one thing and not about the other.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  I understand, that's why I said it is a vexed and difficult issue.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Do you not support - I want a simple answer - do you support the increase or not?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  You see the complexity though and you can see why it's not a simple answer. We have to satisfy ourselves that we are capable of discharging our duty to the people we bring here and to this nation itself, to its social cohesion, that we can assimilate people, that we have sufficient resources and time and money and inclination to help people acquire English language and acclimatise to custom and law and what have you, so that we don't create problems and set ourselves up to fail in for the people that we bring here and so that we don't create social dysfunction.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Is that a no, that you don't support it?

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  No, it is too complex a question to give a glib, monosyllabic response to. I don't know, Jenny. I'm not prepared to say I have the wisdom or experience to make that absolute judgement now.

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   For every minute you go on with this verbose monologue, for every minute there's another eight people that have had to flee from war, so thank you.

 

MICHAEL SMITH:  Your response to that...

 

IMOGEN BAILEY:   My thing is the language is wrong and we don't get to the issues. What we get stuck in, even here is we're all trying our hardest to get our point across, but then we're trying not to offend each other. It isn't about that. It is about the asylum seekers, it is about human lives. It's not about politics and everyone needs to remove their own agenda and start talking about the human lives.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Peter, can I get to this question of policy, because that's where the rubber hits the road really on this is what you actually do. The Opposition is not supporting this doubling of the humanitarian aid.

 

PETER REITH:  They have talked about it in the past - I don’t have a problem with it.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Should they be?

 

PETER REITH:  I don't have a problem with the 20,000, which is what the Government has said and then after a period they will make another decision to go on to the 27.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  So you think that is okay?

 

PETER REITH:  I think that's quite reasonable.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  The Opposition should be supporting that?

 

PETER REITH:  Well, I'm not speaking for the Opposition, but for me.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Speak for you, though. Should the Opposition be supporting it?

 

PETER REITH:  As I said, to my knowledge in recent times, they've suggested they have no problem, or are in fact supportive of the 20. They didn't support it when the Houston came out so I'm not quite sure what their view is, but the bottom line is to answer Imogen's point, I don't have a problem about moving to 20. Decisions have to be made, that's not unreasonable decision to be made. The broader question, though, really did come up in what Imogen said before because she did say, look, ‘I accepted there has to be a limit” and I think that is an important statement to make. The reason I say it is important because I personally support a higher level of immigration or a strong immigration policy for Australia.

 

We are a country of migrants. We have the resources and opportunities to have more people and it's good for our economic development so I see a lot of pluses to a strong migration program. One last thing to say, to fit it in with everything else, to make it relevant to the issue that we particularly have been on and that is that over a long period of time, it's been quite clear that the Australian public are prepared to take a reasonable level of migrants but they want the whole system to be properly managed. If it's not properly managed, as they believe it to be, then support for migration falls. That is very bad for our economy - A big issue.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Allan, when you see the scale of the problem in a place like Ethiopia. I mean, do you have sympathy with governments wrestling with these issues? I'm getting back to this idea of the way the debate is conducted and it strikes me it is simplistic on both sides, that you get over simplification on both sides of the debate and an unwillingness to address that complexity.

 

ALLAN ASHER:  There's a great deal... The place that we need to start in such an analysis is at least discharging the obligations that we've adopted legally - the treaties that we've signed and things like that. That is irrespective of the numbers. Our treaty obligations are that anybody who makes it to our shores and can demonstrate that they have a well-founded fear of persecution is entitled to protection, no matter how many come.

 

As it happens the numbers have been entirely trivial as I have pointed out to people, the total number who arrived this year in boats represent the average increase in Australia's population for one week. That's 7,500 people. That is how much Australia's population grows every week so the number is trivial. It could be much larger. Is there a limit? Of course.

 

I would start with something that Australia has done before - during the resettlement, the regional plan that really worked with all of our regional neighbouring countries, from South East Asia, with Indo-Chinese refugees, where 200,000 were resettled over a period of ten years, and another reminder,  Australia has accepted three quarters of a million refugees since World War II. The numbers now are trivial and our debate - that's used more of an excuse than a rational number.

JENNY BROCKIE:  Peter, I want to have a look at what happened when you met one of the Tampa asylum seekers before we finish up tonight,  Resai who was sent to Nauru by the Howard Government in 2001, had his application for asylum rejected and was then sent back to Afghanistan.

 

 

GO BACK – RESAI’S STORY:

 

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   How was it for you when you came home?

 

RESAI:  I found Afghanistan worse than it was before, there was no safety. When I came, I can stay in Kabul about six days, after six days, I realised no – there is not a place to stay here. 

 

VOICE OVER:   Resai claims he started receiving death threats. He changed his name and still has no permanent address.

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   Who came back with you, how many people?

 

RESAI:  312 people.

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   From Nauru?

 

RESAI:  From Nauru come.

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   Where are they now?

 

RESAI:  Nesaar Nazari has been killed. Khan has been killed. Mohammed Saied has been killed. Ahmad has been killed and a lot of people became kidnapped.

 

 

JENNY BROCKIE:   Peter, your government was sending people back to Afghanistan on the basis that it was safe to send them back. I wonder how you felt when you heard that story?

 

PETER REITH:   I was sorry I didn't know more about it, quite frankly, when we met him. I'd left the government by then, and so it was a totally new story to me, I must say. I only found out a bit more about it, really, when I spoke to the guys from the Australian Refugee Council, who have done a listing of people who went back. Now, in this particular case, his application for refugee status had been rejected and I think a fair percentage of them had, in fact, been approved, so I don't know why that was.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Was it a mistake, though, that he was sent back?

 

PETER REITH:  Well I still don't have enough information, quite frankly. I'm interested to know that the refugee Council believed that was the case. I mean, he wasn't sent back so much as offered an inducement to go back and what he told us was that when seeking information about the situation of him going back, the person who gave him the information was a Pashtun and he's a Hazara and he felt the thing was loaded against him. That might be right or wrong. I just don't know.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  What I'm interested in it's not about whether you were personally responsible or not, it's just how you feel as a former politician, when you come bang up against something like that, which is a direct result of policy?

 

PETER REITH:  My attitude to that situation is when you come bang up against a person's personal circumstances, you immediately, you know, you have an emotional reaction to it, but also, quite frankly, as a minister, you also have an obligation to make sure you know all of the facts. I didn't get them and that's the way in which the program runs, which is fair enough. What I said the other day was, well, maybe mistakes were made and I think Australia should be big enough to be prepared to look at the material and material has been supplied and I don't think the Government has responded.

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:   The Government has responded. About 18 months ago the Department of Immigration approached Phil Glen Dinning from the Edmond Rice Centre and they said that they realise mistakes were made – this is the Gillard Government - and "Give us your best 20 men in Afghanistan, on the ground who were sent back to Nauru".  Who were sent back and told it was safe, they would get a house, they would get a job and they would get money and if they didn't go, they would end up in a worse place.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  Where does that add up to at the moment?

 

CATHERINE DEVENY:    They said, "Give us your best 20". Phil gave them his best 40. Then suddenly more boats arrived and they cut it off. There is a petition online which is making things start to move.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  David, you're worried about the reopening of Nauru and Manus Island, why?

 

DAVID CORLETT:  I want to respond to the mistakes being made, I think mistakes can be made and when mistakes are made in this area the consequences are so grave that we have a loss of life, we have people being killed, we have people being kidnapped. We have all sorts of grave human rights violations. Given the gravity of the issues, we have a whole bunch of checks and balances, so that when mistakes are made at a lower level, there's a possibility that those mistake also be caught up at more senior levels.

The problem with, I think, the Pacific Solution, is that it wasn't just that mistakes were made, but the system that was set up. It was deliberately set up to exclude asylum seekers from accessing those checks and balances and I think there is something to be learned in the present time about the past, if we don't understand our history and the way that the mistakes we made in the past, then we're likely to make the same mistakes in the future.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  We have to wrap up. Rick McPhee, you are the series producer of 'Go Back to Where You Came From', a question I want to ask you - I raised this earlier - you didn't test the ideas of Catherine, Allen and Imogen anywhere near as much as you tested the other three - why? Why did you focus on testing one side of the debate rather than the other.

 

RICK MCPHEE, SERIES PRODUCER, CORDELL JIGSAW ZAPRUDER:  Neither did you, by the way. Well their challenge was more to find a policy, to work out what they would do with the people that come beyond what they think the numbers should be so their challenge was to come up with those sorts of policy solutions. It wasn't just all one way, and also, when they were there, they also talked to people about whether everyone was genuine, and, you know, Michael met Abdi and has his own opinions about that. It wasn't all one way.

 

JENNY BROCKIE:  We have to wrap it up. We're out of time and a lot more to talk about. You can keep talking about it online. Go to our website, to Twitter or our Facebook page.