{"id":7528,"date":"2021-12-14T10:53:51","date_gmt":"2021-12-14T10:53:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chief-exec.com\/?p=7528"},"modified":"2023-01-15T17:14:52","modified_gmt":"2023-01-15T17:14:52","slug":"securing-borders-is-neither-easy-nor-cheap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chief-exec.com\/?p=7528","title":{"rendered":"Securing borders is neither easy nor cheap"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The UK should beware when it looks to Australia for a solution to \u2018stop the boats\u2019. The cost to the Australian taxpayer of detaining asylum seekers has been estimated at A$4 million per detainee, writes Geoff Kitney.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the Town Hall, just off Palazzo Pubblico, in the fabulous Medieval Tuscan city of Siena, hangs a famous mural titled \u201cThe Allegory of Good and Bad Government\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourteenth Century Renaissance artist Ambrogio Lorenzetti\u2019s painting juxtaposes corrupt, religious government with good, democratic government and invokes all who see it to choose the latter over the former.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But there is a footnote to this exhibition with deeper significance. Also hanging in the room is a figure of an angel bearing the name \u201cSecuritas\u201d. It signifies that the key to prosperity under a good and just government is security, that people are freest when they have democracy and live in safety. (See Footnote).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What was true in 14th<\/sup> century Tuscany is equally true today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The Allegory and Effects of Good and Bad Government<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The best governments are those which give their populations the ability to live their lives in liberty and without fear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem with this is that there is often a tension between the two. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fear is a powerful emotion not always rationally felt. Often it is hard to identify what is real and not real when it comes to threats to security, it is easy for people to be tempted to see threats where they don\u2019t exist. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Which makes it easy for less scrupulous governments to make people frightened and to then assure them that only their government can protect them from that perceived threat. It\u2019s a political strategy with a long history of success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In today\u2019s world where small bands of extremists have the means to infiltrate borders and inflict murder and mayhem on the people inside them, fear is everywhere even where the threat is minimal or non-existent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has given the issue of border protection powerful political potency.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Politicians promising to secure the borders of their countries have made political capital out of the issue since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cTake Back Control\u201d slogan which was used to promote the case for Brexit played successfully on the idea that Britain would be more secure outside the European Union, behind its own borders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Twenty years ago, the slogan \u201cWe will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come\u201d was used to powerful effect by the then Australian Prime Minister, John Howard. His conservative government sent SAS troops to prevent a ship carrying more than 400 asylum seekers, rescued from a sinking people smugglers\u2019 boat, from entering Australian waters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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It is hard to identify what is real and not real when it comes to threats to security, it is easy for people to be tempted to see threats where they don\u2019t exist. <\/h4>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Australia has had refugee boat arrivals \u2013 crossing the dangerous stretch of ocean between Indonesia and North-West Australia \u2013 since the Vietnam war ended in 1975.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But as numbers grew, and it became clear that people smugglers had turned the desperation of refugees into a lucrative trade, public attitudes towards refugees hardened. In late 2001 a heavily overloaded rickety boat trying to reach Australia in rough weather founded and 353 asylum seekers drowned \u2013 but this invoked little apparent public sympathy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Instead, the Howard government \u2013 in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 terror attacks on the US and in response to fears that terrorists might enter Australia disguised as refugees \u2013 promised never to allow any \u201cillegal immigrants\u201d to be permitted to settle in Australia. It rode a wave of popular support for its hardline border policies to comfortably win re-election.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Howard\u2019s then press secretary, Tony Abbott, subsequently rose through conservative political ranks to himself become prime minister in 2013 \u2013 just as the issue of border protection had been revived with a dramatic increase in asylum boat arrivals following a relaxation of border protection measures introduced by the then centre-left Labor government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abbott won a landslide victory after promising that he would \u201cstop the boats\u201d. One of his first steps as prime minister was to establish what he called \u201cOperation Sovereign Borders\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In secret operations, Australian navy vessels began intercepting boats and turning them back to Indonesia. Where boats were unseaworthy, the Navy provided lifeboats for the return journey.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asylum seekers who had arrived in Australian waters as a result of Labor\u2019s softened border laws were subject to mandatory detention and transferred to two detention camps set up \u2013 at Australia\u2019s expense \u2013 in neighbouring Papua New Guinea and the small Pacific Island of Nauru. They were to be held until they either chose to return to where they came from or were accepted as refugees by third countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nearly 2,500 asylum seekers were put into offshore detention.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Eight years later nearly 10 per cent of those asylum seekers are still in those camps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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‘The prospect of sending asylum seekers \u2018offshore\u2019 might sound like a convenient solution in theory. But the reality of this policy has proven it to be difficult, ineffective, expensive, cruel and controversial.’ <\/h4>\nMadeline Gleeson, a lawyer and senior research fellow at the Kaldor Centre<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Despite international condemnation, the Australian public has continued to support this policy and shown scant sympathy for those who have been detained in harsh, prison-like conditions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The conservative parties, which have governed Australia since 2013, have claimed the policy a success: Australia\u2019s borders had been secured, the Australia people protected, the people smuggling industry had been destroyed and countless lives which otherwise could have been lost at sea had been saved.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For those who had been victims of this policy and languished in Australia\u2019s offshore detention centres as effective prisoners, the policy has remained uncompromisingly harsh.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is an important connection between what happened in Australia in 2013 and what is now happening in the United Kingdom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tony Abbott, who lost the prime ministership after an internal putsch over his domestic policies, became an informal adviser to UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson. Abbott, who was born in the UK and emigrated to Australia as a child, is a committed Anglophile with strong connections to senior UK Conservatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Johnson had appointed Abbott as an advisor on trade policy and, behind the scenes, Abbott actively lobbied Johnson and his ministers \u2013 particularly hard-line Home Secretary Priti Patel \u2013 to adopt Australia\u2019s uncompromising approach to border protection.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Abbott appears to have had success.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following the recent surge in arrival of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel, the Johnson government decided to act to deter \u201cillegal entry\u201d into the UK with its Nationality and Borders Bill. The bill, which has just passed the House of Commons, includes a raft of laws intended to seal the UK\u2019s borders and allows for offshore detention in third countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There has been an angry response to what has been called \u201cracist\u201d legislation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Strong objections have been raised by a wide range of groups, from concerned Tory MPs through to refugee action groups and human right organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dissenters are being urged on by people familiar with the Australian experience on offshore detention \u2013 including former detainees \u2013 to fight to stop offshore detention by the UK.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, based in Sydney \u2013 a strong critic of the Australian laws \u2013 has rung alarm bells about the UK legislation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Madeline Gleeson, a lawyer and senior research fellow at the centre, warned in an article for the on-line publication The Conversation<\/em> that there appeared to be a view in the UK government that Australia\u2019s offshore detention and processing of refugees had been successful. Nothing could be further from the truth, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact, it had been an unmitigated disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cost had been astronomical \u2013 estimated at A$4 million per detainee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dehumanising effect on those held in detention was devastating (including suicides of inmates).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There was also little evidence to show that it had had a deterrent effect. The fact that asylum seeker arrivals on Australian shores had apparently ceased in recent years (although no-one knows for sure because the government\u2019s \u201con water\u201d border protection activities are shrouded in secrecy) was primarily due to the turning back of boats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe prospect of sending asylum seekers \u2018offshore\u2019 might sound like a convenient solution in theory. But the reality of this policy has proven it to be difficult, ineffective, expensive, cruel and controversial,\u201d Ms Gleeson wrote.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, in Australia, there is not the slightest sign of the conservative government relenting on its offshore detention policy. Those still in detention can only hope for it to end if they are accepted as migrants in third countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether it is true or not \u2013 and regardless of the motive for the policy (racial prejudice or national security) \u2013 Australians continue to see harsh treatment of refugees as necessary to ensure the nation\u2019s sovereign borders remain protected from unwanted intruders.

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Footnote: The symbolism of the art work in Siena\u2019s Town Hall is described in Dov Alfon\u2019s book A Long Night in Paris<\/em> (MacLehose Press). Alfon is a former Israeli intelligence officer and editor-in-chief of the influential newspaper Hareetz<\/em>. He is now editor of French daily Liberation<\/em>.

Headline image credit: Janossy Gergely\/Shutterstock.com
In-story image: The Allegory and Effects of Good and Bad Government<\/a> Credit: Erik T\u00f6rner
Used under the terms and conditions of Creative Commons<\/a> license<\/h6>\n\n\n\n
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\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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