Open letter to Australia’s Senators

NO STATUTE in this country compels you to care for asylum seeker children.

In fact one statute allows you such breadth to act against them, to so great an extent, it takes one’s breath away.

This message is to all you – the veritable cornucopia of factions – who voted AYE to legislation depriving children of their human rights.

Like those who excised Australia from the migration zone. A motion which removed children from our sunny shores to islands such as Manus and Nauru, and potentially anywhere else the Minister for Border Protection so deems.

This band of AYES is just one in a long line of motions, cementing the fate of the children.

Motions that removed the Minister for Border Protection as Guardian of the children. Because the courts deemed that no guardian could send a child to a malaria-infested island.

You may have been involved in other motions. Like the one that gave the Minister power unencumbered by international law or domestic statute. Even the whisper of natural justice silenced.

Or you may have voted yes to placing power in the hands of one person: the Minister. Regardless of whether any other person or agency involved has anything to say about it.

Or you may have ayed the motion which allows the indefinite detention of children. Giving them fewer rights than a murderer or a terrorist.

Yes indeed you have underwritten what will be seen in the dusty pages of history as an act of state-sanctioned abuse against children.

When Amanda Vanstone stood at Villawood, her ministerial foot poised on the hilt of a spade she launched what would become Villawood, ‘Alternative Place of Detention’, Labor leaders cried foul.

Under both Liberal and Labor-led governments 50+ people have been detained in Villawood for years, including young children, and will remain so indefinitely. Without charge or the ability to see accusations made against them. 

By your acts of parliament you dig that hole ever deeper.

When Labor came to power then Immigration Minister Chris Evans presented New Directions in Detention: Restoring Integrity to Australia’s Immigration System.

When then new immigration minister Chris Bowen first visited Christmas Island and played with the detained children in the sandpit he said, these children must be free, and soon.

Today Ministers Bowen and Evans are no more. But over 700 children remain locked in secure facilities. Those New Directions shredded, beyond recognition. Integrity all but set adrift.

Now we have war on our hands. A military led, operationally secret, full scale conflict primarily against children.

Only now it does not suffice to send children to remote onshore locations.

With your AYES we send them to Nauru. An island of 21-square kilometres with a population of 10,000, only ten percent of those working for wages. From us, poor Australia, only the 12th largest economy in the world by GDP.

After all, we here in Australia only have limited plains to share. With only 7.7 million square kilometres it makes sense that we should send children to a tiny island prison straddling a rubbish dump and phosphate mine.

But! You cry – dear politicians – you cry. For all those poor drown-ed children.

But where are your tears for the poor damaged children?

For the nine-year-old who attempted suicide in Darwin detention?

For the children assaulted on Nauru, where staff have no working with children checks. A country with no local child protection laws.

For those who self-harm in their ‘alternative’ detention holes? Not counted as attempted suicide by the corporations paid billions to keep them in ‘care’.

And even if that child does die that death will not be considered a death in custody.

For of course, you may accept the Party line, children ‘are not held in immigration detention in Australia’. Despite the fences, sensors on doors and windows. The armed guards. And the inability to move out of their non-prison-like home.

A damaged child is better than a drowned child you say.

Please do go and say that to the face of a damaged child on Nauru.

Go and look in the eyes of a five-year-old. Then go again and visit him when he’s ten.

Say to him, ‘You’re here, but not for your own good, for the good of all the children who would have drowned had we not imprisoned you.’

Look into his face and say ‘Those lost years in Nauru – those non-drowned children you saved – were worth the price of your childhood. I cannot give you those years back. I’m sorry. As we were sorry for the Stolen Generations. For those who were taken from the hands of loving mothers and placed in state care. History repeats itself. I did not know then what I know now.’

If you cannot imagine his face look to his words and the pictures he draws. Look to his letters imploring you not to forget him.

Oh ‘but we must be cruel to be kind’ you say. We must build walls to protect children from drowning.

But our kindness does not extend to those who live.

Not to children languishing in an Indonesian cage.

Or those destitute in an impoverished corrupt nation, with its non-existent child protections.

Nor from the slow cruel death of hope in detention.

Nor death in another country’s waters.

I am telling you this; all you of the AYES. Because we have been to fortress Australia before.

The hole was dug first by the Keating Government. Expanded by the Coalition. Banished as immoral then re-embraced by the Labor Party. Then fortress Australia, with its four-star generals was re-envisaged by the Coalition government. Turning an already anti-refugee policy into a war against vulnerable people.

For all Australia’s riches, the moral depravity of this statute, what it has become, is astounding, to my eyes, a person reading statutes for over 15 years.

And now, you are all poised to do it again. To inject more hatred into an already hateful policy, where the minister already has the power to detain at whim. To extend his powers to make life or death decisions without court oversight. To ‘legally’ as well as practically ignore the Refugee Convention. To reduce life or death decisions to the flick of his pen and to – in true Alice-in-Wonderland fashion – deem babies born in Australia ‘illegal maritime arrivals’.

Senators let me ask you, does any one man or woman deserve such power?

Is any man or woman immune from the truism that absolute power corrupts absolutely?

Look at the Migration Act and what it has become; there you will find your answer.   

So perhaps MPs, senators, you of the AYES, you will have saved a few children from drowning.

But without a doubt you have turned your hearts and backs on those who still live.

It’s time to turn around now. To stop the assault inflicted on the rights and lives of children. Remove the blindfolds from your eyes and see the truth; this is no war. You have the power to demilitarise this discussion and help people realise, yes, this is about protecting children’s lives. Stopping children drowning at sea is but one side. Protecting those who live is a whole other story.

This is not an ‘and/or scenario’. You need not damage children to protect others.

Start by saying ‘no’ to the Migration and Maritime Powers Legislation Amendment (Resolving the Asylum Legacy Caseload) Bill 2014.

If you truly care for children, all children then build a framework that protects children.

Start with an independent guardian; one who is not their gaoler.

Apply Australian child protection laws to asylum seeker children.

Help protect children in languishing in gaols and slums in source countries, like Malaysia and Indonesia. Take the absurd masses of money – $400,000 to detain EACH child – and put that towards assessing refugee claims in source countries.

Exercise your creativity; don’t just pay a gaoler.

Then listen to groups like the Human Rights Commission, ChilOut, the AMA, the paediatricians, the psychologists, and thousands of others who have spoken for the children.  All children. Not just those who might die at sea.

_______________________

A Secret Safe to Tell by Naomi Hunter Illustrations by Karen Erasmus

A Secret Safe to Tell 
by Naomi Hunter
Illustrations by Karen Erasmus

I just want to commend a book to you dealing with the sensitive issue of child abuse.

This book – A Secret Safe to Tell – is written for children in the voice of a child who is being abused.

The child at first feels loved and comforted by her special relationship with an adult, but this relationship soon turns sour and she realises things are not right.

The book exposes the common lies abusers tell – your parents will be angry, this is a secret between us – in a very simple and safe way.

The child is trapped by feelings of confusion and shame which she cannot come to terms with until she meets an adult who is willing to listen.

Only then is she set free from her terrible secret.

Talking about inappropriate touching has to be one of the most difficult conversations you can have with a child.

A Secret Safe to Tell uses beautiful colour illustrations and simple language to introduce the topic in gentle ways that a child can understand.

The book ends with a list of Australian help lines children and adults can call.

It can help parents negotiate this conversation with their children if they suspect something isn’t right. And children can also be empowered to explain to an adult that they don’t feel comfortable with certain relationships or actions by individuals who are supposed to be their friends.

By reading A Secret Safe to Tell hopefully children at risk will realise that they are not alone. And hopefully they’ll be encouraged to finally tell their secret and be set free from it.

If you work with children, care for them, if you’re a parent, or a friend and you suspect a child may be at risk you should have a copy of this book. It can help you talk about a topic no child or parent should have to understand. But sadly these days far too many do.

Goodreads link.

Eight stupid things people say to advocates every day

Eight stupid things people say to advocates every day

 

Dear wanker. The following arguments are not original. In fact I hear them a dozen times a day. They’re not even very thoughtful, funny, or poignant. So please STOP yelling them at me.

1. “So you want children to drown.” No I don’t f*cking want children to drown. I have spent over a decade of my life fighting for the health and welfare of children. Unlike you I don’t believe the debate is as simple as “damage a child, save another child from drowning”. Australia we can do better.

Just because we don’t see the deaths, doesn’t mean they’re not happening by other means. How many people have died in detention? How many have died in Indonesia? Malaysia? How many babies have miscarried as women were given malaria shots on Manus? At least 50% from last count. How many have died in community detention? Like Leo Semmanpillai who set himself alight. Or died in detention, like Hamid Kahazaei, whose heart failed ostensibly due to a cut on his foot that got infected. Or Reza whose head was stomped on? How many children are slowly dying in detention now? At least 193 on Nauru. I believe in more than one kind of death.

2. “John Howard stopped the boats.” Actually, I don’t believe this premise, and if we look to OECD numbers you shouldn’t either. Graphs clearly show the fall in boat numbers correlated with a number of factors THROUGHOUT THE REGION. 

3. “If we release kids out of detention the boats will start up again.” And your evidence is? The last time we let kids out of detention this didn’t happen. And even if you do have evidence, aren’t you confronted with another moral dilemma? Would you imprison a child, just to stop another child from doing something? It’s contrary to the laws of many modern countries to imprison innocents. Let alone to imprison them to deter others. Let alone to do it indefinitely.

4. “There were no children in detention when John Howard left office.” The thing that pisses me off about this little ditty is that it makes the man out to be holy; a saint he ain’t. John Howard did not release children out of the kindness of his sweet little heart. He was pistol-whipped by Petro Georgiou, Russell Broadbent and Judi Moylan. Thousands of children spent years in detention under the Howard regime, banging their heads against walls.

5. “Why didn’t they just stop when they got to other countries along the way like Indonesia?” Here’s just one reason why.

6. “So aren’t we making ourselves a target for asylum seekers if things are too easy?” Are you suggesting we turn Australia into a war zone? Because that’s what people are fleeing. And if you want to make conditions so bad people won’t come, that’s what we have to look forward to. Besides we’re at the arse-end of the world. They already have to be pretty desperate to come here. Really we’re getting the most determined of people, and we should admire their extraordinary efforts to come all the way across the world. See them as entrepreneurs, see them as determined. Don’t see them as terrorists. They’re fleeing terror.

7. “These people are illegals.” No actually they are not. If you can’t be bothered reading the literature I can’t be bothered quoting it at you. Google it, fool. And in an interesting twist the High Court has just ruled that people can only be detained for certain reasons, for example processing, or removal etc. If we’re just doing it simply at HRH Morrison’s bidding those detained indefinitely are detained illegally. So technically the illegal shoe is now on the other – read ‘government’s’ – foot.

8. “You want an open door policy. You want to flood Australia with these people.” No I don’t. I’m asking for due process. For people’s claims for protection to be heard in a timely manner. I’m asking to not detain children for years of their lives. No one’s asking for an open door policy; those of you uncreative enough to claim this should go back to painting school.

Think about it. Seriously. You’re attacking an advocate for children. Stop being such a wanker. Go attack some merchant banker with minions at his fingertips.