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 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.
_______________________
time/date stamp 11:11 on 11/11 ?
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