According to Joe Hildebrand and the Daily Telegraph, the Devil needs pity too.

The Daily Telegraph is peddling an asylum seeker mythology in which there are only two choices; deaths at sea or playgrounds on Nauru.



In an article published last Friday, Daily Telegraph columnist Joe Hildebrand argued that the question of sending 267 asylum seekers back to offshore detention is a grey area, an “impossible moral quandary,” while simultaneously painting the most black and white image of the situation one could imagine.

Although the article is not alone in its defence of offshore detention, I could find no better example that encompasses popular opinion.

To Hildebrand and the majority of the Australian public, the issue of Asylum seekers comes down to a binary choice in which there is no clear compassionate answer, as every conscientious action is 
met with an equal and opposite reaction of suffering.

Hildebrand stipulates that if you save the 37 babies from Nauru, “you know that you are depriving another baby [in overseas Refugee camps] … of that very same future.” It is simply a one-for-one swap.

He goes on to suggest that the previous “impact of well-intentioned compassion” was deaths at sea, and that the only alternative is offshore processing.

This point of view does have some internal logic, but only if you commit the outrageous error of not seeing further than the narrow spectrum of ALP and LNP policy, which is clearly evident in Hildebrand’s discussion.

This is a point of view that the Daily Telegraph repeated on Monday with a front-page image of an asylum seeker vessel sinking, juxtaposed against the image of an inviting playground, supposedly found on Nauru, with the words “you choose” printed ominously underneath.

According to Hildebrand and the Daily Telegraph, the choice is clear; it is deaths at sea or it is detention camps with playgrounds; you can choose to save an asylum seeker here but in doing so, sacrifice an asylum seeker elsewhere.

Most outrageously, in this article entitled “This is the Devil’s choice, and may God help those who make it,” Hildebrand insinuates that the only clear decision is that we afford Politicians such as Mr. Dutton and Mr. Turnbull our sympathy, rather than our anger, for having to face problem at all.

Hildebrand considers the reality of the topic to be “complex” and “vexing,” but anyone with integrity would find the idea of sympathising with politicians who subject innocent people to collective punishment by indefinite detention the most ‘vexing’ prospect of all.

This is compounded by the testimony of the Paediatricians who assessed the health of the 69 children in the group, finding that they were some of the most damaged children with which they ever had to work.

Even the Immigration department’s own top Doctor has conservatively echoed their views and asserted that detaining children is harmful to their wellbeing.

Furthermore, Hildebrand agonises over the threat of “inadvertently [creating] a cruel incentive for people to feign illness or commit acts of self-harm in order to win a chance at freedom” if the Government were to abstain from sending them back to Nauru.

Perhaps, Joe, the answer is to remove the incentive by closing the camps. 

For Hildebrand and those readers who are stuck in the Quagmire of two-party politics, this does not mean that we must again resign ourselves to the prospect of a northern sea graveyard. There are serious alternatives.

For example, using some of the many findings from the Houston Panel’s 2012 report on Asylum seekers, the Greens party has outlined a plan that would see an increase in humanitarian intake (which to his credit, Hildebrand himself advocates) and refugee processing in Indonesia to prevent the likelihood of people risking the high seas.

Assuming this kind of plan or any other alternative fails to stop the stream of people smuggling, we can learn an important lesson from the Italian Navy on what to do about it.

In response to the drownings of 150 asylum seekers in the Mediterranean in October 2013, the Italian Government enacted a policy of search and rescue in the waters between Italy and the coast of Libya. 

The operation dictated that a boat in distress was to be towed back to the Italian coast for processing and the refugees on-board given the aid that international law stipulates.

This operation is widely considered to have saved the lives of approximately 130,000 African asylum seekers, while 3,000 drowned over the 12 month period.

It was only when the $12 million a month ‘Operation Mare Nostrum’ was replaced with the cheaper ‘Operation Triton’ in October 2014, which had a far smaller search and rescue range, did the body count begin to run wild.

It was in the very first week that Operation Mare Nostrum was abandoned and Operation Triton began that over 1000 refugees drowned, which amounted to a third of the previous year’s body count in only a seven day period.

But not only did the death toll rise tenfold from 4.2 to 46.5 per 1,000 refugees over comparable periods, there was a similarly a rise in the amount of asylum seekers that attempted to make the journey despite the decreasing prospect of success.

This showed clearly that it was not the pull factor of Operation Mare Nostrum that explained the tide of refugees, rather it was the nature of the push factors that were sending them fleeing.

To bring the discussion back to Australia, it is clear that the recommendations from the Houston Panel and the example of Operation Mare Nostrum provide alternatives we can adopt to find the “greatest possible good” that Mr. Hildebrand is looking for.

Joe can continue to champion the cause of the ‘worthy’ refugees in overseas camps, who he refers to as the ones we do not see, but the undeniable fact is that he does not know, in fact nobody knows, that the fate of those who are dissuaded from braving the journey over the sea is any different from those remaining in the camps.

It would be a cliché to suggest that Joe should stick to entertainment journalism, and nor do I think he should; anyone with a voice should speak up in defence of those who cannot defend themselves.

Unfortunately, Mr. Hildebrand seems to have drowned in the quagmire of two-party politics and public opinion and ended up regurgitating the mythology that there is no escape from our current reality.

It takes some courage to be a contrarian and to stand against the masses, but when faced with those who would say ‘I know that detention camps are a human rights abuse, but…’ it becomes our moral obligation to speak out in protest.

The many names of Australia Day

The concept that is Australia Day is not unique to our great southern land, it is a day that lingers offensively around nations that fail to recognise and deal with the subjugation of indigenous peoples.

Australia Day has more than one name

It is becoming common knowledge that not everyone in our vast country agrees on what to call January 26.

Our mainstream media and society refer to it lovingly as Australia day, but to many others it is regretfully remembered as Invasion Day, or Survival Day.

I argue that Australia Day has more names than this, because the commemoration of the events that transpired beginning on January 26, 1788 is not a concept that is unique to our Country.

There happens to be another southern land in which this day has an entirely different name.

In South Africa, the Day of the vow on December 16 once encompassed no more or less than what we still celebrate as Australia Day.

Like Australia, South Africa is a land that was stolen away from those who had lived there for consecutive generations over many thousands of years.

Like us, the white South Africans came to commemorate what they considered to be their God given right to conquer the lands of the Zulu people on a day which befell a monumental slaughter upon the resisting local populations.

To me, the only difference between the Day of the Vow and our Australia Day is in name, apart from which they are entirely the same thing.

Perversely, this racist occasion continued on through modern times and was annually celebrated by many white South Africans during the Apartheid years.

While black citizens suffered the humiliation of segregation and the neglect of their civil rights, white South Africans celebrated The Day of the vow in pride.

This carried on until 1994 when the election of Nelson Mandela ended Apartheid and the December 16 commemoration was altogether transformed.

Since then, South Africa’s Day of the Vow, its Invasion Day, its Survival Day, its Australia day ceased to exist and became a new day: Reconciliation Day.

Over the Indian Ocean in Australia, our Day of the vow clings on, it saunters around every year, and it continues to drape cheap Australian Flags over uncomfortable secrets.

It falls over the legacy of our wretched Imperial past, but also over the faces of First Australians found dead in police cells, the scores in our prisons, those who are suffering preventable diseases of poverty, those who live in squalor, the children that continue to be removed from their families, and those who die far younger than they should.

We know what to think of those South Africans who celebrated this day with impunity during Apartheid, so why don’t we think of Australians in the same way?

Until the time comes that a treaty is signed with the First Australians and their human and collective rights are respected, January 26 will remain a day of exclusion.

It is perfectly reasonable to celebrate your identity and good fortune on Australia Day, but the denial and obfuscation of the legacy and present reality of First Australian suffering mars the day in shame.