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.

Launch – www.bastardswholiveinmystreet.com.au

Dear Mr Scott Morrison,

While I wholeheartedly agree with your policy of alerting neighbourhoods to criminals, I feel targeting asylum seekers is setting the bar too low.

I suggest we start with a real criminal class: politicians.

Politicians are 45 percent more likely to serve a jail sentence than your standard garden variety asylum seeker.

For example, a former Minister for Corrective Services, sentenced to 10 years for bribery could go on the register. The child molester pollies are already registered, but we can always expand to bribery, drug offences, attempting to pervert the course of justice, perjury, corruption, extortion, misappropriation of public funds etc.

And I agree with you, we shouldn't limit the register to people who have committed crimes.

The next time someone like Eddie Obeid buys some land, we'll know to watch the mining rights and buy nextdoor. He's been incredibly lucky in that way.

You also mention lack of English skills as being a prerequisite for the register. Mr Morrison, we couldn't be in higher accord! A study has found the speaking skills of Australian politicians to be "embarrassingly poor".  Everyday Australians can now give pollies tips on articulation, musicality and tonality. Thank you for this suggestion!

Next time you want to suggest treating asylum seekers like criminals, check out the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. 

Just in case you didn't know racial vilification is subject to criminal prosecution Mr Morrison.
 
People in glass houses really shouldn't throw rocks.

All the best with your register. Don't forget to add your name to
www.bastardswholiveinmystreet.com.au.

Jessica



 

Australia where? Rebuilding our borders

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Australia where? Rebuilding our borders

It seems the Australian government has discovered its love for Ptolemy, most specifically Ptolemy’s version of the world as it existed in the second century. In Ptolemy’s vision nothing exists below the Malay Peninsula beyond wind blowing faces, scorpions and centaurs. Labor hasn’t put those into its migration map yet, but it is early days …

The newly-revised map of Australia, 1 November 2012, based on Ptolemy's 2nd century vision.

So Australia chooses to mislay a few islands. Pretends – for the benefit of boat people – they simply don’t exist. Australia? What Australia? Let’s liquid-paper it out of the legislation, to avoid any confusion.

Next, we excise the whole of Australia. For all boatish migration intents and purposes, Australia? What Australia? It simply ain’t there. So what? You say. Mercator’s 1598 map of the world doesn’t have an Australia either. We’re just one great big chunk of Antarctica.

So now all men, women and children who come by boat won’t technically land on Australian soil. They land in legal nowhere land. Subject to the punitive elements of the migration laws of Australia, but not afforded any of their perks. You know, the little things, like the right to seek asylum.

But Australia has come a long way in a few hundred years you say. We’ve developed a civil society. Our convicts are all free. Women have a right to vote and work. Children are not enslaved in Drizabone factories. It’s true we’ve developed morals and standards, things we wouldn’t dream of going back on, or outrage would befall all the land. That is outrage for certain people. Certainly not all.

But with all of Australia resembling a map of Ptolemy’s time, what is there left for people who come here by boat if not the soil beneath their feet? Not a hell of a lot. Certainly no recourse to the courts. And no recourse to natural justice. No access to human rights instruments; not a whiff of them here. No rights at all.

Sorry how wrong of me; I should be more accurate. Boat people do have rights. They have the right to be detained indefinitely on an overseas island made of dung and riddled with malaria. And they have a right to mental illness, running rampant within long-term detained populations.

Oh what hopes we had for a Labor-led Australia. And oh how the mighty have fallen, and all in the time it took Jamie Oliver to make his new fandangled 15-minute meal.

Bring back our Petro Georgious and our Judi Moylans. Where are their Labor equivalents? Lost in the jungles of no-conscience Labor. Crushed in the embrace of the far right.

Labor the party of the working man, the down and out, the battler. You’ve lost your way Labor, for who is more of a battler than someone fleeing persecution? Who is more down and out than a child who has known only war and misery?

In my confusion, I look to the Labor Values website to see what Labor stands for in 2012. There I find some clues.

Our Values: Through the good times and through the tough times, the great mission of Australian Labor governments for more than one hundred years has been to improve the lives of ordinary Australians—giving every Australian opportunities through education and training, ensuring fairness at work and supporting Australians throughout the different stages and transitions of their lives. 

Oh I see. It’s an Australia for Australians, mentioned four times, just in case I didn’t get the message. I get it. The rest of yous can bugger off.

Labor has stood by Australians in difficult and uncertain times, building a strong safety net and providing help through hardship. Labor has promoted social justice, compassion and the fair go at home and abroad. 

Oh a fair go, at home. And abroad. For far-flung peoples like those poor starving Africans. Set foot on our land buddy and watch our values be thrown to the winds.

There’s no fair go for boat people. Stuck on an island, no one processing their cases, in the hands of a nation so impoverished its only 737 was repossessed to pay off its debts.

Did someone not say:

Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!

Oh sorry, that wasn’t us was it? Might we even pretend to say that? Sequester that for our own? That’s right we do have something along those lines...

Australians all let us rejoice … for we are young and free.

I can’t sing it. Not for the horrid tune … does it even have a melody? No, but for its sentiments.

The children we’re about to send to Nauru, Manus or some other far-flung island, are young, but they are not free. Some are newborn babies, some still rest in their mums’ wombs. Whether we put fences around them or not they are not free. Not free to live their lives, plan their futures, not free to study what they want or set up a life for themselves, to have a home. And sooner than we know it, they will no longer be young. Their childhoods will have been sacrificed for a greater goal: saving other’s lives at sea. To protect our great nation, our values, our people.

Because if that’s what each precious child’s life is about, saving another child’s life, shouldn’t we all sacrifice our children, if we really love children around the world? We should sacrifice them on the altar of ‘let this be a lesson to everyone who comes after your time.’

Because that is what you are saying Labor party, and those Liberals and Independents who vote with you.

This child’s life is inherently worthless, beyond the message it sends to others.

Prove me wrong. I dare you.

Show me your pages and pages of documents, those that prove you are planning for the welfare of these children.

Show me how they shall be educated, how they shall be protected, show me what recourse they have to justice, and what example they will have on an island of marooned desperate people.

I want to see this. I want to see your plan, and I don’t want to weep when I see it.

Because so far that’s all I do when I hear your hard-hearted excuses for policies. Howard-era White Australia trash ramped up for a 2012 audience.

This legislation will go down in the annals of Australian history alongside the Immigration Restriction Act 1901 to “place certain restrictions on immigration and ... for the removal ... of prohibited immigrants”, which drew on the inspiration provided by those white South Africans.

Rest assured those of you who vote to send children overseas: your actions will be viewed alongside the acts of those who encouraged Aboriginal children to be ripped from their parents, put to work on little or no wages in white homes, and often treated miserably, in households that maintained lies of their abandonment.

Your place in history is assured. I hope you don’t sleep at night for what you are allowing to happen. I hope you know the extent of the damage you’re causing. And if you don’t I hope one day soon you see it with your own eyes and weep.

Do not flinch from this. If you do it, do it with full knowledge. It has been done before, and the lessons we learned from last time are clear. People detained for years with no cut-off date lost their minds, some lost their lives, and all lost pieces of themselves they could have used to build long and prosperous lives. Many many years later, as the vast majority were finally granted legal access to our shores, we the people pay for what we allowed to be done in our name.

And now, we launch into it again.

Australian federal politicians know this. This is your doing. In history’s eyes and the eyes of people who know better, it will not be forgiven. Because you cannot rebuild a broken childhood or a broken family. You cannot save a child from a fast drowning only to kill them slowly on an island made of dung.

Jessica

Admitting you have a children in detention problem

The first step of substance abuse recovery is admitting you have a problem.

This would be one step Sandi Logan, the National Communications Manager of the Dept of Immigration could very well embrace. On Twitter last week Mr Logan insisted, "Misinformation about kids in detention centres is unhelpful, disingenuous. As you know, kids are NOT detained in centres." Instead he stated that children are held in APODs, that is alternatives to detention.

On this point "Misinformation ... is unhelpful and disingenuous", I couldn't agree with you more Mr Logan. So let's put some facts straight.

Some APODs are places with fences and electronic sensor mats and alarms that go off if the kids go between houses. Normal? Non-detention like? Hmm. Some schools are surrounded by fences yes. But then again at the end of normal school the little kiddies are free to go to their comfortable houses and their own beds. Not so with kids in detention.

And what about the CCTV, recently installed on Christmas Island to monitor the children there? Perhaps we could install those in our homes, so would know at all times know whether our children were on the internet spending up big on our credit cards, or raiding the pantry for much-loved chips. Hmm, I'm not convinced. CCTV sounds a tad prison-like to me.

What about when the kids go out and they're followed by guards? Maybe they're called "protectors" in Sandi Logan Land. Surely they're just playing the role of parent, ensuring the kids don't decide to walk the 830 kilometres to Perth from their barren desert "non-detention" facility. In which case they're doing the children a great service.

Of course Australian children get to go on holidays from time to time. So too do kids in non-detention. Why only last week, 27 Vietnamese kids who had been settled in Port Augusta were whisked away to their third non-detention paradise in 8 months: tropical Darwin. Away from supporters, their local church to a longed-for holiday in a far away clime.

Not only is this non-detention facility a change, which is apparently as good as a holiday, but it's also an educational experience. Here the children get to learn about self-harm, mental health issues and depression.

Forgive me Sandi, but I almost forgot the most creative of non-detention facility innovations: calling the children by their numbers instead of their names.

Just this week I looked at my last born child, the only boy among 4 girls, and for the life of me I couldn't remember his name. Then it struck me, oh yes! Let's do that non-detention trick; henceforth he shall be known as "Number 5". Oh how delighted I was! Thank you guards/protectors of Leonora non-detention facility for the inspiration.

In some non-detention facilities parents can't even cook a meal of their kids. Nor have any privacy from the eyes of guards or cameras. Room checks can take place at any time of day or night. While my kids might welcome a ban on me cooking in our kitchen, my humour runs out at the invasion of privacy and prison environs of non-detention. There's just nothing funny to say about that.

I'm forced to go back to the old cliche: if something quacks like a Mallard and walks like a Mallard, then surely it is a duck of some kind.

Immigration detention by any other name would smell as foul.

Repeat after me Sandi. "Children are held in immigration detention." Now, don't you feel better for admitting the truth?