As some of you may know, on Wednesday the 1st of July a piece of legislation came into force called the Australian Border Force Act. This act was designed to facilitate several initiatives in regards to Australia’s border protection scheme, one of which has Australia’s Human Rights advocates terrified and ashamed.

Human rights abuses within Australian Detention facilities have been reported for years, going as far back as the notorious ‘children behind bars’ saga of the Howard Government. Both major parties have been complicit in this ongoing fiasco with Labor attempting to claim the moral high ground under the Rudd government by ending off-shore detention, before reintroducing the policy in 2012 under the Gillard government. Some people say the ends justify the means, some say they don’t, and some say Australia is actually in breach of human rights obligations. However, this post is not about whether Australia should open its doors to immigrants, this post is not about whether off-shore detention is a humane way of dealing with the people who come to this country, this post is about something far more fundamental and something I HOPE there really doesn’t need to be a debate on.

So what are we talking about?

Earlier this year the Australian Human Rights Commission handed down a report into children being kept in detention under Australia’s immigration policy. This report covered both the years of the previous Labor Government and the current Liberal Government.

To nobodies great surprise the commission’s findings were scathing. The report found that children in detention were more likely to suffer from mental illness; that they were being denied their legal right to education; that they were being moved between detention facilities by force and against their will; and that there were extensive reports of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse of children by both individuals in detention and staff working at the detention facility.

In response to this, the Abbot government accused the Australian Human Rights Commission of political bias and demanded the resignation of the commission’s chief. This was done even though the report covered both time under the previous Labor Government and the current Liberal Government. This demand by the federal government and the attempted stifling of debate and discussion around the institutionalised abuse of children in Australian detention facilities, was the loudest sign yet that something was seriously twisted about the way the Australian government, both Labor and Liberal, see the issue of asylum seekers in Australia.

The proper response to the findings of the Australian Human Rights Commission would have been an immediate investigation of the relevant government departments and a program to ensure the prevention of any further abuse of children. Instead, the government tried to cover it up and hope the issue just went away. Meanwhile the Labor party sat quietly by, basking in the self-destructive tendencies of the Abbot government at the time but also remaining suspiciously quiet on the issue of the abuse of children in detention.

Why, you may ask? Well over the last few weeks that has become abundantly clear… they don’t care. In fact, not only do they not care, they’re just as rotten as the government. And this is where we come full circle; back to the Australian Border Force Act.

Among the many provisions of this act, there are a few that have shown just how low this government (and the Labor party) will go in their almost maniacal persecution of asylum seekers. Imagine you were a teacher or a doctor, and you found evidence that one of your child students or patients was being sexually or physically abused. As a community, we DEMAND people in those positions report those abuses to the proper authorities. We DEMAND that above all else, the well-being of children is sacrosanct.

So imagine if our government made it illegal for those doctors or teachers to report those abuses. Imagine if the government made it illegal for those doctors or teachers to report abuse happening in the very school or surgery they worked in… This is what the Australian Border Force Act does.
The act states that any ‘trusted person’ who reveals any information about the operation of Australian detention facilities would face a two-year prison sentence. Although the act does make provisions that, in theory, allow employees to report ‘serious’ abuse or threat to life; the burden of proof is placed upon the employee. They must convince the court that the threat to the child’s health was serious enough to warrant the disclosure of protected information. However, as the act does not state how serious of a threat is required, the employee would have to report the abuse and then risk two years in prison before they could find out if the threat they perceived had been serious enough to warrant reporting.

Greg Barnes, spokesman for the Australian Lawyers Alliance, claims that;
“It effectively turns the Department of Immigration into a secret security organisation with police powers”.

Julian Burnside claims that;
“Clearly the purpose of the legislation is to throw a blanket of silence over the detention system”.

Some in the government claim that existing whistle-blower legislation means that the Border Force Act will provide staff with an avenue through which they would be able to report abuse. They claim that the legislation is designed to prevent individuals from leaking 'operational’ information, not reporting breaches of the human rights of children. However, if this were true then how exactly does one explain the defeat of the amendment put forward by The Greens which had the specific purpose of making it a requirement for staff to report sexual or physical abuse of children… That’s right, that amendment got voted DOWN!

This disgusting piece of legislation makes it all but illigal for health or support professionals working in Australian detention centres to report the abuse WE KNOW IS HAPPENING…. And do you know what makes this that little bit worse for someone like me?

It had the full support of the Labor party.

Years ago I honestly believed that there was some hope left in that party. In 2007, I was uplifted by the vision that I saw being brought to the nation which wiped out the Howard government and it’s increasingly neo-con agenda. Now I look at the wilted, rotting corpse of the party that once inspired me.

It seems fitting that only six months after the death of Labor’s greatest visionary, the party has hit its lowest point. It’s almost as if with the passing of Whitlam, the party has lost its last scrap of ethical legitimacy.

And so, as I resign my membership of the party I once thought could redeem itself, I feel that we have hit a special kind of despair. The race to the bottom that we have been seeing between the two major parties has ended…

Turns out it was a draw.

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