Seeking Asylum in Australia

One of the hot issues of today, and one touched on by Tim Costello on Monday evening, is the issue of those people seeking asylum as refugees in Australia. The whole matter seems to lose perspective in what, I percieve, is an immature political debate. Here are some realities to get people looking at this issue, less from a fear perspective, and more from a constructive perspective...

• Australia does not have a problem with illegal immigrants. There are two reasons for this: seeking asylum is not illegal, and our border control is one of the best in the world.
• Australia does not have a problem with boat people. More than 95% of people that arrive seeking asylum do so by plane!
• Australia is not being flooded with people seeking asylum. Compared to countries such as the US and those in Western Europe that have land borders we have a very small number of people seeking our help.
• Australia has demonstrated great hypocrisy in demanding that offshore processing sites are signatories to the refugee convention, as we do not uphold the refugee convention ourselves, despite being signatories. For example, we are obliged under the convention to process people that land in Australia here as expediently as possible, but have instead sent them away.
• More than 90% of people that Australia detains while processing their asylum requests end up being affirmed as refugees and settled in Australia. However, our current system of slow detention in unhelpful conditions is leading to many mental health issues. In the end, our slow, poor treatment of these refugees lands us with a large mental health bill that we would be rid of if we treated them humanely and processed claims on-shore and quickly.

The irony of the current debate is that both sides of politics may be forced into expedient on-shore processing by accident - because they are both blocking each other's offshore policies. The costs of offshore processing would be more than enough to establish a good system of processing in Australia - which would also keep the jobs related to processing within Australia, so would provide greater economic benefit.

We need, as a country, to rid ourselves of the irrational fear of refugees or general vulnerability and embrace mature discussion on this issue.