Patrick Barkham: Howard's Way is the Wrong Way
Australia's asylum seeker strategy should not be a model for Blair, writes Patrick Barkham, the Guardian's Australia correspondent 2000-2002.
Kylie Minogue in the charts, Michael Lynch on the South Bank, Robert Thomson at the Times, dozens of footballers in the football league and oceans of wine on supermarket shelves: we are being swamped by a flood of successful Australian exports. And now Tony Blair is poised to adopt another Australian export - a political strategy perfected by the Australian prime minister, John Howard, in which the far right is defeated and disillusioned voters are won back by demonising refugees.
Judging by the Home Office memo leaked to the Guardian, Blair's wonks want to follow Howard's way. The Australian prime minister won an unwinnable third-term election by declaring war on asylum seekers. He sent those who reached Australia to detention centres more suited to prisoners of war, and dispatched the navy to patrol its northern shores.
The Home Office recipe for calming public anxieties about asylum seekers is remarkably similar. Today's white paper, which widens the Working Holidaymakers Scheme (currently used by thousands of Australians) to encourage people from poor Commonwealth countries to come to Britain on temporary working visas, sounds a different note. But it still seems part of a process to split migrants into "good" working immigrants and "bad" refugees - a division perfected by Australia.
What will be the result? Pit armies, civil servants, fortunes in taxpayers' money against some of the poorest people in the world and there is only one winner. But, judging by the Australian experience, the developed world will pay a big and ugly price.
Last year, Howard's political obituaries were written. Pauline Hanson's One Nation party was certain to split the rightwing vote. Then, three months before the election, Howard transformed his fortunes by refusing to allow 433 Afghans rescued by a Norwegian container ship north of Australia to claim asylum. He followed this by instructing the navy to permanently seal off Australia's borders, stopping boats of asylum seekers and exporting migrants to primitive camps on impoverished Pacific islands.
Those who penetrated Fortress Australia on planes were thrown into barbed-wire-and-desert detention centres, rife with violence and abuse. New laws ensured that those detainees deemed genuine refugees would only get three-year visas. Legal appeals were curtailed for those refused protection. Finally, September 11 enabled Howard to link refugees to the "war on terror".
Howard's way was the most divisive controversy in Australia since the Vietnam war. Some feel the country's reputation for generosity has been spoiled and community sentiment permanently soured. But the vast majority support Howard. On its own crude terms, the strategy has also worked: no boats of asylum seekers have reached Australian beaches for six months.
But Blair and his Home Office wonks would be wrong if they hoped a similar package of measures could seal off Britain or Europe to such excellent electoral effect. Just 4,000 asylum seekers were entering Australia by boat each year - a trickle compared to the numbers crossing the Mediterranean. And it is much easier to turn a geographically isolated nation into a fortress than it is to build walls around Europe.
Regardless of the multiple immoralities of such a strategy, Australia also offers a warning to Blair on the economics of stopping asylum seekers. Preventing 4,000 asylum arrivals is costing Australia A$287m (£1bn) over five years. Most of this is paying for extra navy patrols, new offshore detention centres and bribes for Pacific nations to take camp-loads of refugees and for individual refugees to return to their homeland. The treasurer totted up that in return for this "protection", fewer Australians would get disability benefit and all would have to pay more for prescription drugs.
The building of Fortress Australia has blown a huge hole in Howard's budget. Suddenly the Australian PM doesn't look such a convincing manager of the global economy. Governments may find it easier to adopt the anti-immigration prong of the far right's agenda than its anti-free market stance - it is simpler to stigmatise immigrants than address the inequalities created by economic globalisation that foster anti-immigrant prejudices in the first place. But they will struggle to make consistent policies by adopting this ugly opposition to the free movement of people while retaining a contradictory commitment to the unfettered global capitalism to keep the bankers and George Bush happy. Blair be warned: Howard's way is an expensive and probably shortlived palliative to voter discontent.
Patrick Barkham was the Guardian's Australia correspondent 2000-2002
patrick.barkham@guardian.co.uk
Judging by the Home Office memo leaked to the Guardian, Blair's wonks want to follow Howard's way. The Australian prime minister won an unwinnable third-term election by declaring war on asylum seekers. He sent those who reached Australia to detention centres more suited to prisoners of war, and dispatched the navy to patrol its northern shores.
The Home Office recipe for calming public anxieties about asylum seekers is remarkably similar. Today's white paper, which widens the Working Holidaymakers Scheme (currently used by thousands of Australians) to encourage people from poor Commonwealth countries to come to Britain on temporary working visas, sounds a different note. But it still seems part of a process to split migrants into "good" working immigrants and "bad" refugees - a division perfected by Australia.
What will be the result? Pit armies, civil servants, fortunes in taxpayers' money against some of the poorest people in the world and there is only one winner. But, judging by the Australian experience, the developed world will pay a big and ugly price.
Last year, Howard's political obituaries were written. Pauline Hanson's One Nation party was certain to split the rightwing vote. Then, three months before the election, Howard transformed his fortunes by refusing to allow 433 Afghans rescued by a Norwegian container ship north of Australia to claim asylum. He followed this by instructing the navy to permanently seal off Australia's borders, stopping boats of asylum seekers and exporting migrants to primitive camps on impoverished Pacific islands.
Those who penetrated Fortress Australia on planes were thrown into barbed-wire-and-desert detention centres, rife with violence and abuse. New laws ensured that those detainees deemed genuine refugees would only get three-year visas. Legal appeals were curtailed for those refused protection. Finally, September 11 enabled Howard to link refugees to the "war on terror".
Howard's way was the most divisive controversy in Australia since the Vietnam war. Some feel the country's reputation for generosity has been spoiled and community sentiment permanently soured. But the vast majority support Howard. On its own crude terms, the strategy has also worked: no boats of asylum seekers have reached Australian beaches for six months.
But Blair and his Home Office wonks would be wrong if they hoped a similar package of measures could seal off Britain or Europe to such excellent electoral effect. Just 4,000 asylum seekers were entering Australia by boat each year - a trickle compared to the numbers crossing the Mediterranean. And it is much easier to turn a geographically isolated nation into a fortress than it is to build walls around Europe.
Regardless of the multiple immoralities of such a strategy, Australia also offers a warning to Blair on the economics of stopping asylum seekers. Preventing 4,000 asylum arrivals is costing Australia A$287m (£1bn) over five years. Most of this is paying for extra navy patrols, new offshore detention centres and bribes for Pacific nations to take camp-loads of refugees and for individual refugees to return to their homeland. The treasurer totted up that in return for this "protection", fewer Australians would get disability benefit and all would have to pay more for prescription drugs.
The building of Fortress Australia has blown a huge hole in Howard's budget. Suddenly the Australian PM doesn't look such a convincing manager of the global economy. Governments may find it easier to adopt the anti-immigration prong of the far right's agenda than its anti-free market stance - it is simpler to stigmatise immigrants than address the inequalities created by economic globalisation that foster anti-immigrant prejudices in the first place. But they will struggle to make consistent policies by adopting this ugly opposition to the free movement of people while retaining a contradictory commitment to the unfettered global capitalism to keep the bankers and George Bush happy. Blair be warned: Howard's way is an expensive and probably shortlived palliative to voter discontent.
Patrick Barkham was the Guardian's Australia correspondent 2000-2002
patrick.barkham@guardian.co.uk
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