By Anthony Barich
The Australian Bishops’ Social Justice Council chairman has lashed out at the federal government’s policy of locking up people arriving illegally via people smugglers.
Bishop Christopher Saunders of Broome said politicians on both sides of politics are playing on people’s fears by spreading the lie that Australia is being “flooded” with illegal immigrants.
“It’s the old question of ‘what would Christ have done’,” Bishop Saunders told The Record on 17 September, three days after the 95th illegal boat was intercepted and arrived at Christmas Island, which brought the total number of ‘boat people’ now in detention there awaiting processing to 4900.
“To think that just because they came through some dangerous manner – God only knows how may hundreds have drowned on the way – instead of arriving in a Qantas jet, that we have to lock them up, is an inappropriate response to people in need.
“We only see a tiny proportion of those seeking refuge. When measured against the 42 million forcibly displaced people, including 16 million refugees and asylum seekers, Australia’s annual allocation of 14,000 under our humanitarian programme is very small.
“A certain line of cowardice runs through politicians in our democracy and when they are running neck (to) neck in an election, they like to trade on people’s natural fears of being overrun by refugees, misinforming the electorate and playing on their lack of education about the issue.
“This has happened with each wave of migrants to Australia whether it is the Greeks and Italian migration of the 1950s or the arrival of the Vietnamese boat people in the 1970s.
“Each time politicians have played on the natural but unfounded fear people have and tapped into the populist mind and exploited these fears for their own sakes.”
The Bishop is in charge of Broome, the outback diocese in the far north of Western Australia where people seeking refugee status from Afghanistan are placed in the Curtin Detention Centre until their claims are processed.
He said that while the Curtin Centre’s facilities have greatly improved, with the recent addition of en suite bathrooms and the development of an atmosphere of good relationships between staff and detainees, the far-flung outback location is still unacceptable.
Curtin is “in the middle of nowhere and 28 hours by car from Perth and two hours from Broome (the nearest regional centre), with temperatures over 40 degrees (Celsius) in summer”, he said.
The Bishop called for the construction of centres for the asylum seekers that are closer to major regional centres and cities, where they can access proper medical facilities and lawyers to help them with their refugee status claims.
He also condemned the moratorium the government placed on the processing of Sri Lankan asylum-seekers’ claims on 9 April.
“We’re talking about keeping as many of them locked up as possible and not processing their claims… I can’t see one ounce of Christian love in that,” he said.