With a mark to make and byelection to win, the PM is making haste, but that doesn’t extend to children in detention
Scott Morrison
is a leader on the clock. Australia’s new prime minister has a very
short window to make a positive connection with voters, and he knows it.
Apart from the divisions in the Liberal party, and the deep wounds they have inflicted, Morrison has an immediate practical problem: a byelection that could rob his government of its one-seat majority in the lower house. If Wentworth falls next month, the outlook is minority government or an election before the year is out.
But it’s not just the realities of division and rancour and a byelection. It’s also the mood of the electorate that fuels the new prime minister’s sense of urgency.
If recent history is any guide, voters are not in a mood to give any politician the benefit of the doubt. Political honeymoons are either short or non-existent. Australian political leaders now decay and disintegrate in record time. Impatience is as hard-baked into the system as backroom treachery.
So, busy busy busy. Morrison does not intend to die wondering whether a bit of crash-through might have worked.
We’ve had a royal commission into aged care even before a nasty Four Corners report went to air. In response to the zeitgeist issue of the week – strawberries – there were new penalties for food tampering, cooked up in the blink of an eye. Then a truckload of cash for Catholic schools – never mind whether or not that’s good policy. The Morrison operation is moving so fast it won’t even give a commitment to offsetting the $4.6bn in schools spending.
But not everything gets a rapid response.
Morrison received a letter this week from the president of the Australian Medical Association, Tony Bartone, pleading for the government to step in and address the “humanitarian emergency” unfolding on Nauru. “Humanitarian emergency” were Bartone’s words, and doctors, in my experience, use their words advisedly.
Bartone made it clear he was intervening because his membership, the medical profession, were in a state of “agitation” (again, his word) about what was going on in offshore immigration detention centres. There had been an escalation in reports of “catastrophic mental and physical health conditions being experienced by the asylum seekers, especially children”.
The solution to this, in the AMA president’s mind, was obvious. The kids and the families needed to be removed from Nauru, preferably to Australia, and the government needed to allow a delegation of medical professionals to go in and assess the situation and report publicly, so that people could be assured that it was being managed.
As Bartone wrote his letter to Morrison, Paul Bauert, a Darwin-based paediatrician, was walking from office to office in parliament house, trying to engage MPs on the Nauru cases he’d assessed as an expert witness over the past six weeks. Bauert has been involved in a spate of court actions trying to secure ailing refugees and asylum seekers medical transfers to Australia.
Given that what happens on Nauru is completely out of sight of the Australian public and, for that matter, the political class – apart from the handful on both sides of the major-party divide whose consciences move them sufficiently to take a close interest – Bauert attempted to bring the stories to life.
One MP told me after his visit of being moved by the paediatrician’s powerful description of a suicidal 11-year-old on Nauru.
The AMA is not alone in trying to engage politicians about the disaster unfolding on their watch. The law firm Maurice Blackburn was in Canberra during the last sitting fortnight to brief MPs about the cases it is active in, again trying to array facts in front of a political class apparently content to shield itself from moral discomfort by delivering soundbites about the imperative of strong borders.
"It’s unconscionable. It’s disgraceful. It’s a stain on the soul of the country, and it needs to end"
The lawyers told MPs they had been involved in three cases recently involving minors on Nauru who faced imminent health risks. “These minors have been as young as six months old, and have in all cases faced life-threatening illnesses,” the Maurice Blackburn briefing note prepared for MPs says.
“In two of these cases, the court ordered the urgent transfer of these minors and their families to Australia for specialist medical treatment and in the third case, the department agreed to remove the minor and her family to Australia in advance of the court hearing.
“It is clear that the medical facilities on Nauru are unequipped to deal with many of the health issues faced by refugees and asylum seekers. In particular, the medical evidence in these cases reflect the fact that there is a lack of ongoing specialist care for children.”
The lawyers also told MPs they were “gravely concerned by the number of reported cases we are receiving from individuals alleging sexual assault on Nauru”.
Efforts by legal and medical groups to shame our parliamentarians out of their collective stupor have been playing out at the same time as Peter Dutton has been attempting to fend off a bunch of questions associated with the au pair controversy.
Dutton has faced political pressure over his use of ministerial powers in 2015, when he approved visitor visas to an Italian and a French au pair facing deportation.
The home affairs minister was lucky to get through his close encounter with a no-confidence motion in the House of Representatives this week because, as the Senate inquiry found this week, the minister misled the chamber when he said in March he didn’t know the intended employer of either of the au pairs. One of them, as it turned out, was a former colleague from his days in the Queensland police force.
Just for the record, Dutton wasn’t asked in March if he was best buddies with the people requesting that he exercise his ministerial discretion. He was asked if he could rule out “any personal connection or any other relationship between you and the intended employer of either of the au pairs”. The minister replied: “I don’t know these people.”
No grey area there. That’s misleading the House.
As well as that problem, Dutton has faced questions about whether the granting of tourist visas was reasonable in the circumstances. There has been a conversation about whether the case study suggests there is one set of rules and outcomes for people with connections, and another set of rules for people without them.
While a couple of au pairs can be rescued, as the Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie pointed out during the parliamentary debate on the no-confidence motion, there are kids on Nauru who have to rely on getting court-ordered transfers to safeguard their physical and mental wellbeing.
Wilkie sketched the obvious counterpoint, wondering how it was OK to intervene on humanitarian grounds for au pairs to come to this country, but not OK for the minister to intervene in cases where kids are in life-threatening situations in offshore immigration detention.
If anyone has a good answer to that question, I’d like to hear it.
Morrison attempted to provide an answer this week, saying he wasn’t prepared to do anything that would weaken the border protection regime. But the fact of the matter is the federal court is intervening to protect some of these children, and Australia, last time I looked, is not being overrun with would-be asylum seekers.
We need to be very clear what is happening on our watch, even if it is happening largely out of sight.
These are children, who have committed no crime, who are suffering as a consequence of a policy mandated by the Australian government. Children, wanting to die, wanting to harm themselves. Kids on hunger strikes. A 14-year-old boy with muscle wastage so severe he might never walk again.
It’s unconscionable. It’s disgraceful.
It’s a stain on the soul of the country, and it needs to end.
Apart from the divisions in the Liberal party, and the deep wounds they have inflicted, Morrison has an immediate practical problem: a byelection that could rob his government of its one-seat majority in the lower house. If Wentworth falls next month, the outlook is minority government or an election before the year is out.
But it’s not just the realities of division and rancour and a byelection. It’s also the mood of the electorate that fuels the new prime minister’s sense of urgency.
If recent history is any guide, voters are not in a mood to give any politician the benefit of the doubt. Political honeymoons are either short or non-existent. Australian political leaders now decay and disintegrate in record time. Impatience is as hard-baked into the system as backroom treachery.
So, busy busy busy. Morrison does not intend to die wondering whether a bit of crash-through might have worked.
We’ve had a royal commission into aged care even before a nasty Four Corners report went to air. In response to the zeitgeist issue of the week – strawberries – there were new penalties for food tampering, cooked up in the blink of an eye. Then a truckload of cash for Catholic schools – never mind whether or not that’s good policy. The Morrison operation is moving so fast it won’t even give a commitment to offsetting the $4.6bn in schools spending.
But not everything gets a rapid response.
Morrison received a letter this week from the president of the Australian Medical Association, Tony Bartone, pleading for the government to step in and address the “humanitarian emergency” unfolding on Nauru. “Humanitarian emergency” were Bartone’s words, and doctors, in my experience, use their words advisedly.
Bartone made it clear he was intervening because his membership, the medical profession, were in a state of “agitation” (again, his word) about what was going on in offshore immigration detention centres. There had been an escalation in reports of “catastrophic mental and physical health conditions being experienced by the asylum seekers, especially children”.
The solution to this, in the AMA president’s mind, was obvious. The kids and the families needed to be removed from Nauru, preferably to Australia, and the government needed to allow a delegation of medical professionals to go in and assess the situation and report publicly, so that people could be assured that it was being managed.
As Bartone wrote his letter to Morrison, Paul Bauert, a Darwin-based paediatrician, was walking from office to office in parliament house, trying to engage MPs on the Nauru cases he’d assessed as an expert witness over the past six weeks. Bauert has been involved in a spate of court actions trying to secure ailing refugees and asylum seekers medical transfers to Australia.
Given that what happens on Nauru is completely out of sight of the Australian public and, for that matter, the political class – apart from the handful on both sides of the major-party divide whose consciences move them sufficiently to take a close interest – Bauert attempted to bring the stories to life.
One MP told me after his visit of being moved by the paediatrician’s powerful description of a suicidal 11-year-old on Nauru.
The AMA is not alone in trying to engage politicians about the disaster unfolding on their watch. The law firm Maurice Blackburn was in Canberra during the last sitting fortnight to brief MPs about the cases it is active in, again trying to array facts in front of a political class apparently content to shield itself from moral discomfort by delivering soundbites about the imperative of strong borders.
"It’s unconscionable. It’s disgraceful. It’s a stain on the soul of the country, and it needs to end"
The lawyers told MPs they had been involved in three cases recently involving minors on Nauru who faced imminent health risks. “These minors have been as young as six months old, and have in all cases faced life-threatening illnesses,” the Maurice Blackburn briefing note prepared for MPs says.
“In two of these cases, the court ordered the urgent transfer of these minors and their families to Australia for specialist medical treatment and in the third case, the department agreed to remove the minor and her family to Australia in advance of the court hearing.
“It is clear that the medical facilities on Nauru are unequipped to deal with many of the health issues faced by refugees and asylum seekers. In particular, the medical evidence in these cases reflect the fact that there is a lack of ongoing specialist care for children.”
The lawyers also told MPs they were “gravely concerned by the number of reported cases we are receiving from individuals alleging sexual assault on Nauru”.
Efforts by legal and medical groups to shame our parliamentarians out of their collective stupor have been playing out at the same time as Peter Dutton has been attempting to fend off a bunch of questions associated with the au pair controversy.
Dutton has faced political pressure over his use of ministerial powers in 2015, when he approved visitor visas to an Italian and a French au pair facing deportation.
The home affairs minister was lucky to get through his close encounter with a no-confidence motion in the House of Representatives this week because, as the Senate inquiry found this week, the minister misled the chamber when he said in March he didn’t know the intended employer of either of the au pairs. One of them, as it turned out, was a former colleague from his days in the Queensland police force.
Just for the record, Dutton wasn’t asked in March if he was best buddies with the people requesting that he exercise his ministerial discretion. He was asked if he could rule out “any personal connection or any other relationship between you and the intended employer of either of the au pairs”. The minister replied: “I don’t know these people.”
No grey area there. That’s misleading the House.
As well as that problem, Dutton has faced questions about whether the granting of tourist visas was reasonable in the circumstances. There has been a conversation about whether the case study suggests there is one set of rules and outcomes for people with connections, and another set of rules for people without them.
While a couple of au pairs can be rescued, as the Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie pointed out during the parliamentary debate on the no-confidence motion, there are kids on Nauru who have to rely on getting court-ordered transfers to safeguard their physical and mental wellbeing.
Wilkie sketched the obvious counterpoint, wondering how it was OK to intervene on humanitarian grounds for au pairs to come to this country, but not OK for the minister to intervene in cases where kids are in life-threatening situations in offshore immigration detention.
If anyone has a good answer to that question, I’d like to hear it.
Morrison attempted to provide an answer this week, saying he wasn’t prepared to do anything that would weaken the border protection regime. But the fact of the matter is the federal court is intervening to protect some of these children, and Australia, last time I looked, is not being overrun with would-be asylum seekers.
We need to be very clear what is happening on our watch, even if it is happening largely out of sight.
These are children, who have committed no crime, who are suffering as a consequence of a policy mandated by the Australian government. Children, wanting to die, wanting to harm themselves. Kids on hunger strikes. A 14-year-old boy with muscle wastage so severe he might never walk again.
It’s unconscionable. It’s disgraceful.
It’s a stain on the soul of the country, and it needs to end.
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