{"id":8184,"date":"2023-03-13T17:47:24","date_gmt":"2023-03-13T17:47:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/chief-exec.com\/?p=8184"},"modified":"2023-04-04T15:45:26","modified_gmt":"2023-04-04T15:45:26","slug":"australia-stopped-the-boats-but-the-uk-may-flounder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chief-exec.com\/?p=8184","title":{"rendered":"Australia stopped the boats but the UK may flounder"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The BBC may have reinstated sports pundit Gary Lineker, but the debate on the United Kingdom government\u2019s tough new refugee policy will go on and on, writes Geoff Kitney.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In today\u2019s democracies, what are the limits of free speech? At what point should an individual\u2019s right to say what they think about political issues of the day be curtailed? Should there be limits to this freedom, imposed to protect the interests of governments or corporations?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These questions, now being asked in a heated environment in the United Kingdom, have echoes in Australia going back two decades.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The UK\u2019s controversial, newly announced border protection policies \u2013 under the slogan Stop the Boats<\/em> \u2013 are based on an Australian blueprint.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key advisers involved in drawing up the UK policy were also  the architects of the Australian policy, first adopted in 2001. Its aim? To stop asylum seekers arriving on Australian soil. The slogan \u2013 Stop the Boats<\/em> \u2013 is a direct take from the Australian model. The clarion commitment by UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak to \u201cdecide who comes into this country and on what terms\u201d was promised in exactly the same words as then Australian conservative Prime Minister John Howard in his election campaign launch in 2001.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the more than 20 years of controversy in Australia about these policies there have been strong debates about the basis on which this debate should take place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This has fed into a wider debate about freedom of speech and what its limitations should be, if any.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the sports arena, there was a famous debate a few years ago when then star Australian rugby union player Israel Folau had his contract with the Australian Rugby Union cancelled after he posted strong social media comments. A practising Christian Falau wrote that \u201chell awaits drunks, homosexuals, adulterers, liars, fornicators, thieves, atheists and idolators\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, right wing and conservative commentators protested loudly in support of Folau, arguing that the ARU had breached his right to free speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More specifically, there has been ongoing controversy about what was \u201callowable\u201d in the debate over border protection. Subsequent conservative governments to the Howard government drew a heavy veil of secrecy over operations to stop and turn around boats carrying people seeking asylum, making it illegal to disclose details of \u201con water matters\u201d relating to Border Force operations to prevent small boats entering Australian waters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Interestingly, one of the loudest Australian critics of the government\u2019s harsh border protection regime and its treatment of those seeking to come to Australia on small boats is a footballer \u2013 former Australian Socceroos player and captain Craig Foster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

‘Human rights, which are independent of any party, politician or government of the day, provide us with the only true neutrality. Criticising policy that manifests these dangers is a duty we all hold. Otherwise, when does our profession start and our humanity end?’<\/strong><\/p>\nCraig Foster, Sydney Morning Herald<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

He is both a high-profile football commentator for Australia\u2019s second public broadcaster, the Special Broadcasting Service, and an outspoken advocate for the rights of refugees and asylum seekers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foster (who in the 1990s played several seasons in England for Portsmouth and Crystal Palace) has never hesitated to enter the political controversy over Australia\u2019s treatment of refugees \u2013 and has quickly entered the controversy over Gary Lineker\u2019s remarks about the UK government\u2019s Stop the Boats<\/em> policies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foster defended Lineker\u2019s right to say what he said and argued that it was not inappropriate for him to do so because the UK government\u2019s policy had the clear intention of \u201cstoking division and hate\u201d. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is a fundamental difference between calling out human rights abuse and being politically partisan,\u201d Foster said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere is no such thing as taking a \u201cneutral\u201d approach to racism, the marginalization of groups, hate speech, violence and a descent into treating people like animals,\u201d Foster wrote in today’s Sydney Morning Herald<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHuman rights, which are independent of any party, politician or government of the day, provide us with the only true neutrality. Criticising policy that manifests these dangers is a duty we all hold. Otherwise, when does our profession start and our humanity end?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Foster said that Australians should be \u201cdeeply ashamed\u201d that the policy of Australian governments \u2013 which has cost billions of dollars to implement and destroyed many lives \u2013 was now \u201ctravelling the world and taking our reputation with it\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe Sunak government has copied Australia\u2019s policy right down to the simplistic, diversionary slogan Stop the Boats<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Those three words have defined much that has happened in Australian politics for most of the first quarter of the 21st<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

From that day in September 2001 when then conservative Prime Minister John Howard ordered gun-toting Special Air Service regiment troops to force a ship (the Norwegian-owned MV Tampa) carrying hundreds of rescued asylum seekers to turn around to stop it entering Australian territorial waters, Australia has put in place a raft of laws designed to deter asylum seekers from coming to Australia by small boat and a punishing regime of penalties for those who do.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are still offshore detention centres on nearby Pacific Islands containing some of those who made the mistake of thinking it was still worth taking the risk of boarding a small boat and undergoing treacherous ocean voyages to reach Australia and seek refugee protection. Some of those detainees have been held for 10 years in conditions condemned by the United Nations and human rights organisations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But here\u2019s the thing: it worked!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boats stopped.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The hard-line policy worked so effectively that subsequent Labor governments have not dared to reverse it, with public opinion consistently in favour of the policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of John Howard\u2019s successors as Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, has named stopping the boats as the greatest modern achievement of conservative governments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But Foster argues that casting the border security policy as \u201cstopping the boats\u201d rather than shutting out desperate humans had been successful only in \u201cnumbing the Australian public to the reality of human mobility and suffering\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A thought provoking thread that\u2019s worth a couple of minutes of your time: https:\/\/t.co\/NckBd2wEIe<\/a><\/p>\u2014 Gary Lineker 💙💛 (@GaryLineker) March 8, 2023<\/a><\/blockquote>