NZ joins Australian asylum policy‏

http://www.indymedia.org.nz/articles/673

NZ joins Australian asylum policy
by No One Is Illegal
Saturday, 9th February 2013

John Key has today struck a deal with his Australian counterpart that
turns both countries’ asylum policies on their heads.
Key and Australian PM Julia Gillard have announced today, 9 February
2013, – while shopping in Queenstown – that NZ will accept 150 refugees
from Australian detention centres annually. This will reduce the number
of refugees NZ accepts from UN refugee camps from 750 to a maximum of
600. Key tried to explain this bizarre move with having to return
favours to Australia for sharing their 'intelligence' on so-called
people smugglers. Australia had been "extremely helpful to New Zealand
over the past four or five years", according to Key. "There are boats
that we can point to that were on their way to New Zealand where
Australia has effectively taken those people."

The truth is he can point to exactly one boat with a group of ten Falun
Gong refugees, which had been intercepted by the Australian coast guard,
and where the refugees had stated that their destination had actually
been NZ. They also had no idea how far they would have still have to go
and in what direction to sail.

The agreement has been slammed by Amnesty International, the NZ Refugee
Council and the Australian Refugee Action Coalition, who correctly point
out that the NZ contingent of 750 refugees is pathetic to start with
(Australia is taking around 20,000).

Background

Five years ago, in February 2007, the then Prime Minister of Australia,
Kevin Rudd announced an end to the offshore processing policy for asylum
seekers arriving in Australia. The policy had been introduced by his
predecessor, John Howard, in 2001. Offshore processing means that any
asylum seeker arriving in Australia is held in a detention centre on an
offshore island while their claim is being processed. Rudd replaced
offshore processing with the 'Pacific Solution' under which smaller
Pacific countries would be bullied into building and maintaining
detention centres, with the participation of NZ. However, this never got
off the ground.

Then earlier last year, Australia returned to offshore processing under
Julia Gillard who argued that there should be 'no advantage' for
so-called boat people over those refugees who are settled from refugee
camps as part of the UN contingent. 'No advantage' in this context means
that asylum seekers are locked up for what Australian officials believe
to be the average time refugees spend in one of those UN camps before
being resettled. This is has been set to be two to three years.

However, the reality in refugee camps is different. In many of the camps
people linger for 20 years or more. NZ is taking Buthanese refugees from
camps in Nepal who are adults and were born in the camp.

Australia's policy of detaining people on far-away places like Nauru or
Manus Island in Papua New Guinea was supposed to deter people from
taking their lives into their own hands and make their own way to
Australia to claim asylum. But it hasn't worked. Since re-introduction
of the policy in August 2012, more than 20,000 asylum seekers have tried
to get to Australia. Most of them get picked up by the Australian coast
guard, but many of them drown when their flimsy and overloaded boats
strike high seas.

NZ desperate to come in line with Australia

Also last year, the NZ government introduced the 'Immigration Amendment
Bill' (the second amendment to the Immigration Act in just over a year),
which would introduce mandatory detention of asylum seekers (those who
arrive in groups of ten or more, which none ever have), just like in
Australia. Because NZ doesn't really have any offshore islands suitable
for detention centres, the refugees would be held in the Waiouru army
base. If any boats ever arrive here.

The Bill made it to the select committee stage where 32 of 33
submissions were made against it and then it got stuck. It is doubtful,
whether the National government would have the numbers to pass the Bill
at the moment.

Now John Key has struck a deal with Julia Gillard to take 150 of 'their'
refugees (after they have been found worthy of refugee status and have
been sufficiently traumatised by being processed by Australian
authorities and having been locked up for several years). This number
would be subtracted from the 750 refugees NZ normally accepts from UN
refugee camps.

Apart from being complete nonsense, because with a total of 20,000
refugees, the 150 going to NZ will hardly make any difference to
Australia, this also contradicts the official 'no advantage' bullshit
that Gillard has been putting out. If the result of this deal is that NZ
will take 150 fewer refugees from UN camps in favour of those who
arrived in Australia by boat, then the chances of those waiting in the
camps for their resettlement will just have gotten a tiny bit smaller,
giving a tiny bit more encouragement to leave the camp and try their luck.

So why are Key and Gillard striking this deal? Are they too stupid not
to see the contradiction they are creating? Or are they cynical enough
to actually want to encourage more people to try to get to Australia by
boat in the hope that they will capsize and never make it? Australian
Senator Hanson-Young almost hinted at that, when she criticised today's
agreement: "Why wait for someone to take a dangerous boat journey?"

The high rate of refugees drowning on the way to Australia is already
partially a result of Australia's policy of destroying any refugee boats
they intercept, so that "people smugglers" will always choose to send
boats that are pretty much worthless – and therefore dangerous – anyway.

Or is this the beginning of NZ's withdrawal from the UN refugee quota
programme? Is NZ giving up its own assessment of refugees in favour of
letting the Australian authorities do the processing? It looked that
way, when Key announced that this arrangement could come in handy if any
boatloads of refugees ever arrive in NZ. They could then potentially be
processed by Australian authorities in one of their detention centres.

Whatever the real reason for this deal is, the NZ government will from
now on carry part of the responsibility for the protests, the hunger
strikes and the suicides that occur daily in Australian detention centres.