Tone of migration and refugee debate lamented

(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)

As the federal election campaign heats up -- regardless whether it's officially begun or who the candidates turn out to be -- so, too, does the debate over migrants and refugees.

From workers on temporary 457 visas to the asylum seekers arriving in their boats, they're in the spotlight.

It's an age-old issue in any country, but some important voices from over the years say they've never, in modern Australia, seen the debate take the tone we're hearing now.

(Gillard:) "I don't want to hear stories of Australians missing out on a job because a 457 visa has been misused ..." (Morrison:) "The Government needs proper protocols and guidelines in place if they're going to run a program of community release of 10,000 people into the community that they know very little about."

First, there was Julia Gillard campaigning in the west of Sydney and promising a federal government crackdown on what she said was the misuse of the 457 temporary visa scheme, for skilled workers on short-term contracts.

Then the Opposition's immigration spokesman used an asylum seeker's alleged sexual assault to call for notifying local police and residents when asylum seekers are housed in the community.

The man who headed the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under then-Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser when the first Vietnamese boat people reached Australia is appalled.

John Menadue, who later headed the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, says the debate over migrants and refugees has hit rock bottom.

"I haven't known it to be worse than this. The public discussions about the 457 visas suggest to me that the Government, unfortunately, is playing the anti-foreigner card, playing to xenophobia. I would assume that it's government policy that, under 457 visas, Australians are given preference and the basic arrangement is that, if Australians are not available, or suitable, for certain positions, well, employers can use the 457. And if there are rorts, and there may be a few, it's the government's responsibility to fix them. But I am concerned that the whole approach in recent weeks on the 457 seems to be to exploit the fear of the foreigner in the Australian community. And that's very easily done."

John Menadue says the Opposition has been doing it routinely for some time now under its leader, Tony Abbott.

But Mr Menadue says the remarks by its immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, and its Senate leader, Eric Abetz, mark what he regards as the single lowest point of the debate on migration and refugee issues.

"I was appalled by it. It's been part of a consistent pattern by the Coalition, particularly by Scott Morrison, to demonise asylum seekers. He's said, over a period, that they were bringing diseases -- venereal disease, chlamydia and so on -- they were bringing wads of cash, they were bringing jewellery. And then he topped it off by suggesting that persons who were on bridging visas in the community might be, or should be, registered so the community knows what's happening. Then Senator Abetz threw in the suggestion that, in fact, the community wanted paedophiles to be registered and known when they went into the community and perhaps, by inference, that should also occur for asylum seekers in the community. Well, I think that's the lowest we've come to in this country."

Mr Menadue watched from up close as Malcolm Fraser struggled with how to handle the first asylum-seekers arriving by boat in 1976, after the Communist victory in the Vietnam War.

Over the ensuing five years, more than two-thousand Vietnamese boat people would reach Australia's shores.

But then, as now, the arrival of boats would be only a small part of the real refugee tale.

More than 100,000 refugees would come from Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia.

And family-reunion visas would eventually bring many more of their brothers, sisters and parents.

Looking back, Malcolm Fraser says, from any reasonable perspective, it was what Australia had to do - having supported the side that was defeated in the Vietnam War.

"I strongly believed that we lived on the edge of Asia, that the White Australia Policy had done us enormous and almost irreparable damage -- which it had, if you look at the old documents -- and that we had to respond to the test. Now not only that, in the case of Vietnam, a lot of the people who were wanting to come here had worked with Australians or worked with Americans, and they, in particular, were going to be at risk as the South Vietnamese fell. You know, I thought, morally, ethically, we had no option. Whatever you like to call it, common humanity demanded that we offer a hand."

Mr Fraser says, in racing to see who can find what he calls the toughest, nastiest way to handle asylum seekers arriving by boat now, the two sides of politics are undoing all the good done then.

"The great disservice that has been done by both parties racing to the bottom of the political barrel is that the great progress Australia had made, in terms of relationships with East and South-East Asia, has been undone. And it's been undone, in particular, with Indonesia. And Australians will get up and deny that, but the current president is about the only friend Australia has left within Indonesian government circles."

In John Menadue's view, Malcolm Fraser displayed moral leadership in dealing with the refugee crisis in the 1970s.

He says Mr Fraser spoke to editors, spoke at public meetings, spoke to important community groups, explaining the policy.

Arja Keski-Nummi agrees on the importance of that leadership.

Ms Keski-Nummi joined the Department of Immigration in 1979, as the resettlement of Vietnamese refugees moved into high gear.

She worked for the department for more than three decades, rising to first assistant secretary of its Refugee, Humanitarian and International Division.

Ms Keski-Nummi joined Mr Menadue last month in writing an open plea to new Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor to change the narrative surrounding today's boat arrivals.

And that was before the 457 visa and registration-of-asylum-seekers controversies.

She says, besides the leadership from Mr Fraser, the other key factor in the 1970s was bipartisanship.

Ms Keski-Nummi suggests Australia has lost that bipartisan co-operation now, along with leadership and simply a view of Australia's role in the world.

"If you go back and look at the '79 Cabinet submissions, you will find that there was a similar angst as there is now to boat arrivals. While the numbers weren't what they are like today, there was the same angst, in terms of how to respond to direct boat arrivals: What should we be doing? Should we be detaining? Shouldn't we be detaining? How humane can we be? We need to be tough. We need to crack down on people smugglers. All of those same things are actually in those documents. So, in that sense, are we different now? I think one of the hallmarks of that time -- and, also, again, looking at those Cabinet documents, which are really instructive -- is that the Government then realised, 'This is going to be one (issue) that the community will have anxieties and concerns about, and the most important thing to do is actually to have a bipartisan approach, and engage the community, and explain what's happening and why we're doing what we're doing.'"

Malcolm Fraser says his government also had to dismiss what he calls racist tendencies in the Immigration Department.

"The Immigration Department was saying, 'Shouldn't we have fixed detention centres in the middle of a desert?' -- things like that. I think, collectively, such proposals might have got five minutes of the Cabinet's time. We paid no attention to what I regarded as a ... really, a racist, old-fashioned, White Australia-based proposal."

Earlier this month, Roy Morgan Research released its results from two years of polling on political issues in the marginal west Sydney seat of Greenway.

They showed high concern over the number of what the company termed illegal migrants.

More than one in seven respondents chose reducing the number of illegal migrants as the single most important issue to them.

Illegal migrants are actually those people from overseas who stay after their visas expire.

Recently, as she was attacking Prime Minister Julia Gillard's 457 visa comments, West Australian Liberal Senator Michaelia (mih-KAY-luh) Cash spoke of people arriving illegally on boats.

That was an apparent reference to asylum-seekers, though refugee advocates often point out that it's not illegal to seek asylum in Australia.

"Why is the Government targeting migrants who get jobs and pay taxes, rather than reversing their border-protection policy failures that have allowed tens of thousands of people to arrive illegally on boats and claim welfare?"

Arja Keski-Nummi says the language used -- in political debate, on radio, on a personal level or in surveys -- is incredibly important to perceptions and understanding.

"Several years ago, when I was looking very closely at the way surveys were being conducted -- and this is when there was a large-scale arrival of Vietnamese refugees in the '80s and so forth -- immigration didn't necessarily come up as a concern, you know? Health, education, those sorts of things came up. Jobs and so forth. And job security as the Number 1 concern. As soon as you start introducing immigration (as an issue), and you start using loaded language like illegal migrants ... And most people would not know who is or isn't an illegal migrant. Most people probably would not be aware of just what is the scale of the issue -- and it's not large. But using loaded language like illegal migrants, immediately (the respondent) says, 'Oh, yes, well, that's a problem, because it's about fairness, and people have to come in the right way.'"

The former head of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, John Menadue, looks at where the migrant debate has gone and thinks of the story of Hieu Van Le.

An early boat arrival from Vietnam, Hieu Van Le has gone on to become Lieutenant Governor of South Australia, Mr Menadue's home state.

"He recalls coming into Darwin Harbour, and, as they came in, they saw a couple of blokes with zinc cream smeared on their noses, with fishing lines ready and a tinnie in each hand about 7 o'clock in the morning. And as the refugee boat came in, the two Aussies in the tin boat raised their cans of beer and said, 'Welcome.' And, I think Australians do have a decency and we will welcome the stranger if we're encouraged and if we have the leadership that takes us there."