Australian prime minister seeks Indonesian support for anti-refugee policies

By
Patrick O’Connor

9 July 2013

In his first overseas trip since being reinstalled as prime minister on June 27, Kevin Rudd went to Indonesia late last week, to seek Jakarta’s support for harsh new measures to prevent asylum seekers from reaching Australia by boat. The Labor and Liberal parties are both making the issue central to their 2013 election campaigns as a diversion from their plans for stepped up austerity against the working class at home, and the promotion of war and militarism abroad.

The major parties are in full agreement on the need to prevent people exercising their democratic right under international law to flee persecution and claim asylum in a country of their choice. Rudd and opposition leader Tony Abbott are of one mind on the need to punish those who do arrive in Australia–including by indefinite detention, and barring asylum seekers from working–as a “deterrent” to other refugees applying for asylum.

Only minor tactical differences exist between the Rudd government and the opposition. One of the prime minister’s aims in meeting with President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was to bolster his case against a proposal by the opposition Liberal-National coalition to use the navy to forcibly send refugee vessels back to Indonesia. Rudd disagrees with the plan, not because it is unlawful and likely to lead to mass drownings, but because it risks triggering a diplomatic crisis, and even military conflict, between Canberra and Jakarta. In his first press conference as prime minister, Rudd had pointedly referred to Konfrontasi, the military “confrontation” in the early 1960s between Indonesia and a British imperialist-led coalition in Borneo that also involved Australian troops.

In a joint communiqué issued after Rudd and Yudhoyono met on Friday, the two leaders “reaffirmed their commitment to continue to develop a regional solution [for asylum seekers], involving countries of origin, transit and destination” and “stressed the importance of avoiding unilateral actions which might jeopardise such a comprehensive regional approach and which might cause operational or other difficulties to any party.”

This reference to “unilateral actions” amounted to a diplomatically coded rebuff to opposition leader Tony Abbott and his plan to return asylum boats back to Indonesian waters.

The opposition’s immigration spokesman Scott Morrison dismissed the diplomatic statement, bluntly insisting, “you have got to have unilateral action on our side that works.” Yesterday he added that that the opposition would be ready to deploy SAS elite military forces to prevent asylum seeker vessels gaining entry to Australia. Morrison and other Liberal Party figures boasted of the “success” of the former government of John Howard, when in 2001 it sent SAS forces on board the Norwegian freighter MV Tampa to prevent it carrying hundreds of refugees rescued at sea from landing on Australian territory.

These remarks came after another merchant vessel this week aborted an attempt to return rescued asylum seekers to Indonesia after they allegedly threatened suicide. The incident underscored the desperate plight of the vulnerable families who embark on the voyage to Australia, which is made all the more dangerous by the government’s reactionary “border protection” regime.

Under successive Labor and Liberal governments, refugee vessel disasters have been permitted to occur by military and border protection personnel, and then welcomed by politicians as a means of deterring others from attempting the voyage. The Liberal Party, backed by the Murdoch media, has repeatedly insisted that the Howard government’s policy of towing refugee vessels back to Indonesia “stopped the boats.” The truth is that the October 2001 sinking of “SIEV X”–in which 353 men, women, and children drowned as Australian authorities deliberately did nothing–marked the turning point. Then immigration minister, Phillip Ruddock, declared at the time that the incident “may have an upside” in serving as a warning to other would-be asylum seekers. The number of arrivals was sharply lower in subsequent years.

There have drownings comparable to the SIEV X disaster under the Labor government, with no less compelling evidence that authorities knew of, and permitted the deaths of refugees at sea (see: “Australian government’s culpability in refugee boat disaster”). The number of arrivals has nevertheless increased, reflecting the higher number of refugees around the world, largely due the deepening global economic crisis, political upheavals and wars such as US-led regime change operation in Syria that is backed by Australia.

Since returning as prime minister, Rudd has indicated he is preparing further blatantly illegal crackdowns on asylum seekers, including by arbitrarily redefining the already strict criteria people must meet to be officially recognised as refugees.

When he first came to office, in 2007, Rudd made an appeal to the widespread disgust and hostility among ordinary people towards the former Howard government’s brutal “Pacific Solution”, which provoked numerous mental health breakdowns and self-harm incidents among the men, women, and children detained in concentration camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea. Six years later, this sentiment has not gone away. There has been a sharp shift, however, among an upper middle-class layer–including erstwhile liberal intellectuals and journalists such as Professor Robert Manne and philosopher Tim Soutphommasane–who repudiated their previous criticisms of Howard’s policies. They seized on Gillard’s “humanitarian” rationale for her anti-asylum policies, which went far beyond Howard’s “Pacific Solution”, most notably with the “no advantage” test imposing arbitrary detention for refugees for as many years as they would otherwise have been forced to wait in overseas camps. The most brutal and unlawful policies have been embraced by this milieu, under the banner of “saving lives” through the creation of sufficient “deterrents” to refugees considering travelling to Australia by sea. They will now line up behind Rudd as he prepares even more draconian measures.

The major parties’ and media’s preoccupation with refugees is consciously aimed at creating a reactionary diversion at the centre of the official election campaign. The sudden collapse of the China-fuelled mining export boom has brought the Australian economy to the brink of a major recession, with layoffs and corporate-imposed wage cuts already accelerating across the country. The economic crisis will intensify after the election, with whichever party is elected implementing ruthless European-style austerity spending cuts aimed at lowering working class living standards. At the same time, the US preparations for a military confrontation against China will continue, with Canberra squarely aligned with the Obama administration’s reckless “pivot” to the Asia-Pacific that is aimed at forcibly maintaining Washington’s strategic dominance.

None of these issues confronting ordinary working people are being openly discussed.

Rudd’s trip to Indonesia pointed to the diversionary character of the refugee issue. The media was preoccupied with this aspect of the prime minister’s talks with Yudhoyono, while almost entirely ignoring the other items on the agenda. These included Rudd’s promotion of Australian corporate interests in the region. He announced new measures promoting Australian beef exports and agricultural ties, attempting to resolve tensions generated when the Gillard government suspended live cattle exports to Indonesia in 2011.

In a speech to a business breakfast, Rudd emphasised that Indonesia was a central aspect of the so-called emerging “Asian Century”, the concept used by the Labor government to advance its demand for greater productivity measures aimed at boosting Australian capitalism’s “international competitiveness.” The prime minister told the assembled CEOs and officials: “Indonesia is poised to take its place as one of the world’s largest economies… Australian businesses in particular should take note of this. Everywhere we turn, there are remarkable statistics. Today Indonesia has more billionaires than Japan–and more per capita than India or China.”

Rudd also boasted of developing strategic and military ties between Canberra and Jakarta. In late November, when Gillard and US President Barack Obama announced a new US Marine base in the Northern Territory, as part of the anti-China “pivot”, Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa expressed concern that this would create a “vicious circle of tension and mistrust” in the region. Indonesia has long standing diplomatic ties with Washington–going back to the 1965—66 military coup, when the CIA assisted the junta’s slaughter of more than 500,000 Communist Party members and supporters–but has developed close economic relations with China that it feared could be disrupted by Obama’s stoking of regional tensions.

Washington and Canberra have since expended considerable efforts to keep Jakarta on side, and prevent the Indonesian government from aligning itself with Beijing. Indonesia recently participated in joint US-Australian military exercises, and in September last year signed a “Defence Cooperation Arrangement.” The joint communiqué issued by Rudd and Yudhoyono “reiterated their commitment to strengthening defence and security cooperation” and “welcomed expanding cooperation, including in strategic policy and planning.”

In the federal election campaign, the Socialist Equality Party is alone raising the need for the working class to intervene in defence of its independent interests and against the drive towards war and imposition of austerity. This requires working people to unify internationally on the basis of the common class interests. The defence of refugees and immigrants is a vital part of this internationalist perspective. Everyone who arrives in Australia, regardless of whether they are fleeing oppression or seeking to escape poverty and unemployment, ought to be able to live and work in the country with full rights.

Authorised by Nick Beams, 113/55 Flemington Rd, North Melbourne VIC 3051