Australia’s Refugee Policy
| Author | Fabricio H. Chagas-Bastos,John Minns,Kieran Bradley |
| Date | 01 January 2018 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0020881717746797 |
| Published date | 01 January 2018 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Australia’s Refugee Policy:
Not a Model for the World
John Minns1
Kieran Bradley1
Fabricio H. Chagas-Bastos2
Abstract
The image of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s body, washed up on a Turkish beach is
only the most visible face among the large number of tragic deaths resulting from
the perilous journey of the world’s desperate to reach safety. Over the years,
the arrival of asylum-seekers to Australia has been an issue of significant political
contestation. In October 2015 former Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott
urged European leaders to follow Australia’s example and prevent the recent
wave of Syrian refugees from crossing borders. Contrary to Abbott’s appeal, the
‘Australian Solution’ is a model neither Europe nor anyone else should follow.
Australia’s refugee policies emerged not in response to the number of asylum-
seeker arrivals, but rather as a political appeal to fear and segregation in order to
scapegoat the Other. We outline Australia’s refugee policies over the previous
two decades (1992–2015), discuss some of their negative consequences and the
implications of the Australian model being adopted internationally. Finally, we
propose alternative ways forward for both Australia and Europe.
Keywords
Australia, refugee policy, forced migration, Asia-Pacific, refugee crisis
Conflicts in the Middle East seem nowhere to be nearing peaceful resolutions. In
recent years, the wars in Iraq and Syria have worsened, the instability in North Africa,
particularly Libya, has increased, and the Taliban and ISIS have continued to make
gains in Afghanistan long after the USA celebrated an end to its ‘combat operations’
there. The result of this instability has been a significant increase in the number of
people fleeing the region and seeking asylum in Europe (UNHCR, 2016b).
Article
International Studies
55(1) 1–21
2018 Jawaharlal Nehru University
SAGE Publications
sagepub.in/home.nav
DOI: 10.1177/0020881717746797
http://journals.sagepub.com/home/isq
1 The Australian National University, School of Politics and International Relations, Canberra, Australia.
2 The University of Melbourne, Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences, Melbourne, Australia.
Corresponding author:
John Minns, The Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, Australia.
E-mail: john.minns@anu.edu.au
2 International Studies 55(1)
The inflow of refugees divided people across Europe. This partly reflected
different pre-existing attitudes in various countries and these attitudes were, in
turn, partly based on the initial responses from political leaders. In Germany,
where Chancellor Angela Merkel had been the most welcoming, the public
response was strongest. In other countries, such as the UK, the response was
much weaker. Moreover, Hungary shut its borders to those seeking asylum, as
did Slovenia.
While many people came out in public demonstrations of support for the refu-
gees, there has been a strong right-wing reaction. In some places, hostile anti-
immigrant groups, such as the Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the
West (PEGIDA), have made political capital out of the new arrivals.1 It seemed
for a time that anti-immigrant sentiment would dominate European politics to the
extent that the far-right would sweep to power in a number of countries. But the
situation was more complex. The French Presidential election, held in late April
and early May 2017, was the third in a series of disappointments for the far-right
over the preceding six months.2
Voters when faced with the imminent reality of far-right government in these
countries pulled back from the brink. The results show the complexity of the
widespread disillusionment with ‘politics as usual’. Anti-immigrant campaigns
could, under some circumstances, take advantage of xenophobic reactions. But
disillusionment could also be expressed as support for a new force such as Macron,
or by a revived social democratic programme which produced a surprisingly
strong result for Jeremy Corbyn in the UK’s June 2017 general election and in the
strong primary campaign for Bernie Sanders in the 2016 US primaries.
The image of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi’s body, washed up on a Turkish
beach is only the most visible face among the large number of tragic deaths
resulting from the perilous journey of the world’s desperate to reach safety
(Köse, 2015; Withnall, 2015). However, it is revealing that in his October 2015
speech to the Margaret Thatcher Society in London, former Australian Prime
Minister Tony Abbott (Abbott, 2015; Miller, 2015) made no reference to stop-
ping asylum-seekers in order to prevent drownings at sea—which, as Prime
Minister, had been the primary rationale for his party’s policies. Instead, Abbott
urged European leaders to stop asylum-seekers in order to prevent the changing
of Europe ‘forever’—that is to say, a not-so-subtle appeal to preserve the racial
and religious identity of Europe.
Over the years, the arrival of asylum-seekers to Australia has been an issue of
significant political contestation. Many sympathize with their plight and are spurred
into pro-refugee support when the issue makes the front pages. However, since 1992,
but especially from 2001 onwards, the Australian government has adopted strict
policies to stop the flow of asylum-seekers, including detaining indefinitely in
offshore detention centres all those who arrive by boat. Furthermore, they have
had widespread public support for doing so.
While the number of asylum-seekers Australia receives pale in comparison
to those who arrived in Europe even before the current crisis, the Australian
response has been far more drastic, with policies exorbitantly expensive and
plagued with controversy. These policies did not emerge in response to the
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