During the early 80's whilst living in Mexico City my family met the Rodriguez* family. The Rodriguez’s had fled El Salvador for fear of their lives after Mr Rodriguez was picked up by an El Salvadorian paramilitary group who suspected him of being a guerilla fighter. He was taken, with a group of other suspects to a cliff where drunken Salvadorian soldiers threatened to behead them. Mr. Rodriguez managed to escape, and with the help of the famed Archbishop Oscar Romero moved his family to Mexico City. In the mid 1980's Mr. Rodriguez made contact with our family after they had arrived in Sydney and were staying at a refugee hostel.

Through the aid of cross denominational efforts and our church, which had always had a strong commitment to social justice, we secured housing and helped the Rodriguez family and others set up a life in our home town of Avalon. As a result of the media attention gained through this humanitarian assistance, our family received death threats, bricks were thrown through the windows of our church and my sister and I were escorted by undercover police officers to and from school for some weeks. I have seen this phenomenon of fear relating to refugees continue throughout my life.

August 26 is the ten-year anniversary of the Tampa incident. Tampa stands as a sad reminder of how our fear of refugees and asylum seekers has failed people in need, and how this fear still exists in Australian political rhetoric. Driven by political sound bites such as “queue jumpers” and the hysteria that insisted that these people were a threat to our security, jobs and way of life, John Howard secured re-election shortly after the Tampa incident. This policy of turning back the boats has continued to be a major platform in the Abbot election campaign. To be fair, the Labor policy is not much different.

So what are the facts of these supposed queue jumpers? Since 1996, the Australian government has numerically linked the onshore and offshore components of Australia’s Refugee and Humanitarian Program. What this means then, is that every time an onshore applicant (e.g. those who arrive by boat) is granted a Protection Visa, a place is deducted from the offshore program (e.g. refugees already processed by the UNHCR awaiting resettlement in camps). Australia is the only country in the world which links its onshore and offshore programs in this way.

Australia agreed with the UNHCR in the 2009-2010 financial year to resettle 13,770 refugees. This number forms the basis of the fictional queue that the government has created. The reason this is fictional is due to the amalgamation of onshore and offshore protection visa numbers. During this year, Australia granted 4534 onshore protection visas, 66.5% of the final grant rate, or total applications.   As a result of Australia’s legal obligation to grant protection to these people under international law (Refugee Convention) and due to the decision to link onshore and offshore programs, this has reduced the number of refugees that we would have resettled from the UNHCR, which had already been processed and approved from within their camps. This resulted in only 9236 offshore visas being granted. It is this internal policy decision that is used to justify the rhetoric of queue jumping and not a requirement of law or actual fact.

This rhetoric is then used to characterize onshore refugees as selfish, unfair, unjust and wholly un-Australian. This is simply not the case as these people have the right to seek asylum and Australia has a right to provide it, when justified. Australia is being unjust and unfair by refusing to take its originally agreed number of refugees processed by the UNHCR.

Australia’s current deal with Malaysia and plans to develop arrangements with the Government of Papua New Guinea are further examples of Australia’s liberal interpretation of it’s international obligations and in essence feeds the current rhetoric by placing those that arrive onshore at the back of the artificial queue. The Malaysian agreement, which will see an extra 4000 offshore refugees coming to Australia over four years, seems like a humanitarian good deed, but what of the 800 onshore asylum seekers being sent to Malaysia? Due to their choice to risk their lives and come by boat, their rights as asylum seekers have been denied, just as those on the Tampa ten years ago.

Our fears of refugees and asylum seekers coming to Australia are unfounded and are a result of the manipulation of facts by politicians seeking votes. Australians must stop buying into this misinformation and fear mongering. Let us put more pressure on our local members to be more active on this issue and allow asylum seekers to exercise their rights under the Refugee Convention, without diminishing Australia’s promises to the international community on the already agreed upon number of processed refugees that it will resettle. We live in a democratic society let your voice, governed by facts, be heard.