My wife and her (now) late husband escaped their homeland and were refugees having to leave everything behind. Her husbands crime? He had just been released after about 9 months imprisonment, with bashings, because they suspected he had sold his invention to the “west”. He never did. Upon release, they managed to escape with their child. Luckily being able to get a passport for the child and my (now) wife.
They were lucky in that regard being able to escape having identity papers but risking to be imprisoned by daring to pursue passports.

Still, as a “constitutionalist” I try to consider what is constitutionally appropriate before contemplating emotional issues.
Constitutionally, any person who is alleged to be in breach of Commonwealth law must be handed over to State authorities and be subjected to a “judicial decision” by a State Court to determine their innocence or guilt. Section 120 of the Constitution provide that the States shall provide detention for any person accused (formally charged) and/or convicted.

As such, I view holding any refugee in any kind of styled concentration camps is unconstitutional. Exchanging refugees is also unconstitutional. We have a constitution and unless we operate within the framework of the constitution we are no better then any other terrorist as we terrorize others to be denied the very rights provided for in the Constitution we claim others do.
It is therefore very simple; If the Federal Government claims refugees are criminals in breach of Commonwealth law then have them charged and placed before a Court of law to be adjudicated upon by the judiciary as to their guilt or innocence. After all, isn’t that for which we have a judiciary?
See also;
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CJ Morgan “I would like to swap Australian "scrotes" like Col Rouge for those desperate but deserving people who increasingly frequently make the unenviable decision to abandon their homelands “

As an immigrant I waited in line in my homeland before I was deemed acceptable for migration to Australia.

I guess CJ Morgan you will live a frustrated life. Australia “chose” me. In fact I distinctly remember the migration officer at Sydney commenting when he saw the visa – “ah some fhe chosen people” (a particularly warming welcome to Australia). Somehow I doubt you migrated here – I can suggest that for two reasons,

Your flippancy suggests you would not have the strength of character to wait in line, as I did

The historic quality of your posts would suggest you would fail the basic competency tests for entry.

Thus whilst I had to prove my “worth”; your “tenure in and citizenship of “Australia is no more than “an accident of birth”.

I wonder how you would go if you had to qualify for entry into Australia?

- disappointingly I think - probably resorting to the services of an illegal people smuggler.

Col Rouge:
Like you, I enjoy the privilege of Australian citizenship as a migrant not by birth, and like you I applied through formal channels and waited my turn to be processed. But refugees – unlike us conventional migrants – can’t sit safely and hopefully waiting for their applications to be processed. They are forced to flee, often without papers, sometimes escaping personal persecution at the hand of their government, with little idea of where they’re going or how long they’ll stay.

A woman I know fled Sudan when her village was attacked, her hone destroyed and her parents and husband killed. She settled initially in a camp in Ethiopia but her children were at risk of abduction and conscription by raiding militias. So she walked, carrying the youngest, to a camp in Kenya, from where she successfully applied to come to Australia. Should she have “waited her turn” in Sudan? Or Ethiopia? I admire her strength, courage and persistence in getting herself and her sons firstly out of Sudan, then out of Ethiopia into Kenya (all on foot) and finally into Australia. That’s strength of character and determination than no immigration form can quantify, and she’s a great asset to this country.

Ludwig:
Your slippery slope argument that because there is a case for initially detaining some refugees until their health and security status is ascertained doesn’t make sense. Health checks can be done in a matter of days, if not hours. True, not all refugees have papers, and a few might even fake or hide them, but many do have papers, and the risk of absconding for the rest is pretty low (though not zero). Prolonged detention should be necessary only in the small minority of cases where someone represents a significant risk to the community, and their case cannot be decided quickly.

I find your argument that we should treat asylum seekers harshly to deter new arrivals deeply repugnant, against all principles of natural justice and fairness. Like my Sudanese friend, these are mostly people trying to escape terrible dangers and oppression. We should offer them compassion.

``Indonesia is not a signatory to the Refugee Convention and is not obligated to assist asylum seekers. It can return them to their homeland regardless of the dangers they face and usually does. Australia is a signatory and is required to process asylum seekers’ claims, so you would expect its numbers of approvals to be higher.''

What you are saying makes no sense. The UNHCR is a UN agency, not an arm of the Indonesian government. Indonesian policies towards asylum seekers have nothing to do with the UNHCR's approval rate.

``Refugee families typically sell all they have to pay people smugglers to take one of them to a safe country. They have little idea of where they are going or how they will get there and the fact they might board a plane doesn’t in any way negate their refugee status. The boat trip is certainly no stunt. It’s an extremely risky and arduous voyage and many have lost their lives in boats that have sunk. That people would even get on these boats is testament in itself to their desperate circumstances."

Again, this is highly dubious. From my understanding, many if not most asylum seekers have very deliberately chosen Australia, often because they already have relatives here. It makes no sense to claim they would pay thousands of dollars to people smugglers with no idea of their destination. And I don't doubt that the boat trip is very dangerous. However, it's my understanding that the smugglers lie about how long and hard the boat trip is, even to the extent of stocking the boat with barely any food, to sustain the illusion. So, again, I don't buy the argument that because they come by boat they are necessarily desperate.

Ludwig,
Many times we have had this debate about illegals on OLO and other forums and do you notice that the "bleeding hearts' like Bronwyn always work on the emotive angle and will not accept any practical argument that detention is necessary to check the bona fides of the applicants stories. Any prolonged detention is mainly due to the applicant not accepting the adverse findings and they continue to appeal the findings, at our expense.

Then, as Bronwyn did, they bring up the SIEV X and Tampa. Again they will not accept that the SIEV X sank in Indonesian waters and was Indonesias responsibility. The survivors were taken back to Indonesia and that finally convinced those waiting that the sea trip WAS dangerous. To blame us that the boat sank is ridiculous and some have even cast slurs on our search and rescue, and defence, personel, saying they were racist.

In relation to the Tampa. The Tampa picked up people from a sinking vessel and was proceeding to port in Indonesia when she was hyjacked be the people she rescued and made to sail to Christmas Island. Off Christmas Island our Government interviened and a RAN vessel took those rescued to Nauru. The point here is that at least some of the rescued should have been charged with hyjacking and it is disappointing that they ended up in Australia. Shows just how much of a soft touch we are.

They may have some valid argument in the children overboard saga. However, it was not the first time we had to rescue women and children from the water and the next day the illegals sank the boat and we had to take them aboard. People that take such action should not be allowed in Aus, ever. We are bowing to intimidation.

We must continue to not let illegals on our mainland until they are found to be genuine refugees, and we should use UNHCR criteria. Not end up bending our own rules so as to accomodate them.

Rhian

“Health checks can be done in a matter of days, if not hours.”

Yes probably for most, but security checks can take much longer.

The risk of abscondment may be low overall, but it only takes a small number of absconders to create a lot of strife: to give all asylum-seekers a bad name in the eyes of the Australian public, and to cost an enormous amount of money and effort attempting to find them.

“I find your argument that we should treat asylum seekers harshly to deter new arrivals deeply repugnant…”

Fine! I don’t like it either. It is not a nice concept at all is it. Of course we initially desire to treat them as well as we can.

But we simply MUST be critically concerned about the deterrence factor, and therefore the balance between the treatment of asylum seekers and maintaining a strong border-protection regime.

I’m sure you can see exactly what would happen very quickly if we were to treat asylum seekers as Bronwyn or yourself would desire them to be treated. We would be subjected to a vastly increased number of arrivals.

We cannot create a situation where we would bring thousands of asylum seekers down upon us. We have to be very careful not to do that, for the sake of all involved.

Rhian, you don’t seem to spare a thought for this side of the argument.

We should offer refugees compassion in an entirely different way as I said earlier; by addressing the root causes of the problems via our international aid effort…. and NOT by way of accepting onshore asylum seekers.