We are a magnet for illegal immigrants

Wednesday, 22nd April 2009

A nation that loses control of its borders is no nation at all, warns Tom Switzer

Harsh, insensitive, morally callous, dog-whistling, fear-mongering, whipping up xenophobia — all of these charges have been hurled at Sharman Stone in the past week or so. And her sin? To lament the loss of life. That’s right: the opposition immigration spokeswoman merely complained that the federal government’s lax border protection policies have culminated in the recent deaths of at least five boat people and injuries of up to 50 others trying to reach Australia on an unauthorised vessel which, thanks presumably to the antics onboard, caught fire and sank.

It speaks ill of our political discourse that a senior frontbencher should be condemned for publicly acknowledging what the Australian Federal Police had privately told the Rudd government: that Canberra’s softened border protection policy, enunciated in August last year, would encourage more people-smugglers, which in turn would heighten the risk of deaths on our seas.

It’s a wonder Ms Stone has not also been accused of resuscitating the White Australia Policy. During the Tampa asylum seeker stand-off in 2001, many journalists and academics frequently used that old chestnut against John Howard and Philip Ruddock. That such crude populists who pandered to racism almost doubled the nation’s annual non-discriminatory legal migrant intake from about 70,000 in 1996 to nearly 140,000 in 2007 did not matter. For the moral absolutists, what counts is the symbolism of compassion. And yet it is interesting how readily some of those who espouse the causes of human rights and civil society will resort to ad hominem attacks when faced with views they find uncongenial.

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