Jalal Gholizadeh is sick. He complains of “constant pain in my heart”, a numb left shoulder, shortness of breath and a haemorrhoid. He is also on medication for anxiety. The 29-year-old Iranian has been on Manus Island for more than five years, save for the time he spent in Australia in 2014 for medical treatment.
Now, as a result of the changes ushered through Parliament this week against the will of the government, Gholizadeh will seek a second transfer. “Of course,” he says over WhatsApp. “We’re following the news closely here.”
Gholizadeh did not apply for asylum and consequently has not been given refugee status. He cannot be forced back to Iran because Tehran does not accept involuntary returns. But under the new laws he will be eligible for medical transfer to Australia if two doctors agree and Immigration Minister David Coleman finds no security or criminal grounds to reject him.
For the people who have now spent more than five years on Manus or Nauru, the events of this week hold out the possibility of relief – temporary or otherwise. For politicians staring down the barrel of a federal election, however, there are all sorts of dynamics in play.
Morrison said Bill Shorten and Labor “have made it crystal clear that, at the next election, Australians will be deciding once again – as they did in 2013, as they did in 2001 – about whether they want the stronger border protection policies of the Liberal and National parties or they want the weaker border protection policies of the Labor Party”.
The comparison to 2001 is tempting for the Coalition. John Howard looked likely to lose that year’s election to Kim Beazley until the Tampa, a Norwegian freighter, turned up carrying 433 mostly Afghan refugees. Howard’s refusal to accept the vessel, and the subsequent political firestorm, changed the government’s fortunes and the history of Australia.
The question being asked around Canberra this week was whether this is Morrison’s Tampa moment. It’s impossible to know the answer. But Labor argues the current atmosphere is very different. It believes the better comparison is to 2006, after the unlawful detention of Cornelia Rau and deportation of Vivian Alvarez Solon, when there was growing scepticism about lengthy or unwarranted immigration detention.
Labor also argues it has not changed the “fundamentals” of border protection and that this is simply a humanitarian decision confined to the cohort of people currently on Manus and Nauru. Furthermore, it has always had differences with the Coalition on asylum seekers – for example, its commitment to abolishing temporary protection visas. Finally, Labor believes a fight on border protection was inevitable anyway.
“The moment Scott Morrison became prime minister there was always going to be a drumbeat on boats,” says Labor frontbencher Tony Burke, who was immigration minister under Kevin Rudd mark II. “The moment he became leader that was going to be a theme of the election campaign. Nothing that has happened this week changes that.”
So, will the medical transfer changes restart the boats? Independent expert views don’t bear this out. Restricting the new policy to the cohort currently on Manus and Nauru – a change insisted on by Labor only at the 11th hour – was fundamental to this.
A former official with experience in border protection said people smugglers would use any argument they could find to persuade people to get on boats, but doubted it would work now.
“It is likely that some smuggling syndicates would try to make something of it and you might get a couple of goes that are justified on this basis, but I don’t see it opening floodgates,” he said. “I’m not desperately concerned about it. The sort of people who fork out $US5000 to $US10,000 are going to want a lot of assurance. Who is going to want to be in that first body of people who are in just as bad a situation as they were before but have lost their money?”
The former official said a couple of boats are likely to “test the waters” if Labor wins power anyway, irrespective of the latest bill. “Labor has to be ready to deal with it,” he said. “They have to be careful about the surrounding narrative. They can’t do what Rudd did.” canberratimes
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