The Abbott government, and Labor before it, has waged a war on innocent people seeking asylum, transforming the sea into a military operation and reducing people to a security “issue” to be dealt with, or a “debate” to be won.
As a society, as a community, we have to remember that an asylum seeker is a person, just like any of us, asking for help. An asylum seeker is not a threat. An asylum seeker is not a criminal. Asylum seekers are victims of global conflicts and Australia has a long history of helping them to resettle here, shouldering our fair share of global responsibility and celebrating multiculturalism.
Until the John Howard era, most Australians were happy with that. I think that we still are.
So the Abbott government is deluded to think it should be congratulated for “stopping the boats.” The claim itself is wrong when, outside Scott Morrison’s oppressive cone of silence, we’ve learned asylum seekers are still embarking on dangerous sea voyages; they’re just being turned around and away from Australian shores.
You don’t save lives by loading people onto lifeboats and pointing them towards Indonesia, or locking them up in countries that will never provide them permanent protection.
You don’t save lives by sending refugees back to where they have fled persecution or the horrors of war.
You don’t save lives by mistreating desperate people, or scaring the Australian community into a fear of "the other" with the kind of chest thumping we see on display from Tony Abbott and his immigration minister.
The Greens and asylum seeker advocates have always tried to prevent people getting on leaky boats from Indonesia. We have called for: extra funding to help the UNHCR in Indonesia and Malaysia speed up processing, increased humanitarian intake, and safe passage to Australia in a timely way so people don't feel they have no other option than to get on a boat.
We have urged serious compliance with the Safety of Life at Sea treaty in the face of Australian governments failing to do so. 353 people drowned when the Siev X sank, but successive governments continue to block inquiries into whether or not decisions were made not to save them.
But now, those who have thumbed their nose at international law and supported and implemented cruelty, those who claim to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" label those who mourn the death of Reza Berati in the Manus Island detention centre, hypocrites.
"No man is an island" and it is ridiculous to think that if Australia closes its borders to asylum seekers, the problems that drove them to seek asylum here will go away. Persecution in Iran, Afghanistan, Uganda and Sri Lanka, for example, continues. People will still seek help. If we don't help them, where will they go? Or don't we care so long as it is not here? That is the real question.
If we don't care where they go or what happens to them, let's just admit it. Let's stop pretending we care about stopping people drowning when we are prepared to leave them indefinitely to lose their minds in detention hellholes, to lock them up anywhere but here, so long as we don't have to see or hear about it.
If we do care, as the thousands of candles in vigils around the country suggest, then it is time for all of us to push back. We must take a stand against the Abbott government and for people! For compassion, a humanitarian response and acceptance of our global responsibility.
Senator Christine Milne is leader of the Australian Greens.
