So much for a fair go
For as long as Australia has been a go-to destination for “boatpeople” from places like Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran and Sri Lanka, the issue has been used as a political football to score points with the growing xenophobic constituency in that country. Indeed, Australia recently found itself in the international dog-box when news of (then) Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s “PNG Solution” hit headlines.On July 19, the newly-re-instated-and-since ousted-again K-Rudd announced that no person arriving by boat without a visa will ever be granted asylum in Australia, regardless of whether they’re found to be a genuine refugee or not. Instead, such arrivals will be deflected to Papua New Guinea (PNG), a country that has been teetering on the edge of failed statehood for decades, or Nauru, a tiny rock in the middle of the South Pacific that Australia has ruthlessly mined for its phosphate since its independence in the late 1960s. (Ironically, the day will eventually come when Nauru’s 9,000-ish inhabitants will become environmental refugees themselves, and there’s no prize for guessing which country they’ll be turning to for resettlement.) From there, the arrivals will be detained for processing and settled in either PNG, a third country, or sent back home – a choice that often amounts to a death sentence.
Australia’s “PNG Solution” violates various international human rights laws and abrogates its responsibilities under the 1951 United Nations Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees that Australia signed voluntarily in 1954. Unsurprisingly, the policy triggered condemnation from the UN, Amnesty International and others, who contemplated with horror what they saw as the first step towards what could possibly – should Australia’s “solution” set a catastrophic precedent for other signatories of the UN Convention – be an inexorable collapse of the international refugee framework.
Aotearoa: land of tenuous moral superiority
As protests against the “PNG Solution” erupted in every major Australian city, I found myself basking in something like schadenfreude as I thought about how great New Zealand is by comparison. Not only do we now have gay marriage to lord over those bronzed, well-paid bastards across the ditch, I could also rest smugly in the assumption that my country would never dream of passing such a draconian, mean-spirited piece of legislation (especially if someone were to order a hit on Immigration Minister Michael Woodhouse).I mean, hello! We just gave permanent residency to 30 Afghan interpreters! We helped bring down apartheid by refusing to play rugby with racist Yarpies! We said no to visits from nuclear-capable ships, we were first to give women the vote, and we are even (somewhat alarmingly) held up as a model for indigenous rights! New Zealand is, by all accounts, a noble David in an international arena full of megalomaniac Goliaths. Right?
Wrong. The sad fact is, while we may after all be “100% Pure” in our milk products, this purity does not extend to our conscience. Our embarrassingly high child abuse, child poverty, teen pregnancy, youth suicide and obesity rates notwithstanding, we can also add another fun fact to our list of shortcomings: we fail to do our bit when it comes to refugees. That’s right. We’re even (severely) behind … Australia.
Proof
In fact, our trans-Tasmanian sibling aims to resettle 20,000 refugees every year, compared to our 750 (150 of which are earmarked, under John Key and Julia Gillard’s agreement from February this year, to absorb refugees arriving in Australia). In this way, Australia takes five times the refugees per capita as New Zealand. Though we like to compare ourselves to socialist paradises like Sweden, we’re actually ranked 97th in the world for refugees per capita, just above developing countries Tajikistan and Malawi. New Zealand, however, doesn’t have an economic excuse to be stingy: we are now second in the OECD (behind only Australia) with regards to GDP growth and unemployment.Don’t be fooled by Michael Woodhouse’s claim that New Zealand comes sixth in the world for our UN High Commission for Refugees resettlement quota. In fact, there are two ways to become a refugee, and the system to which Woodhouse refers is the much less common path. Most refugees are settled after being assessed as asylum seekers – in other words, they have already fled their home country and are in now transit, “seeking” a new one. In 2011, New Zealand settled only 85 refugees in this manner, compared with the United Kingdom’s 12,202.
The time has come to Do Our Bit
Thankfully, Wellington-based former Critic columnist and inadvertent human rights activist Murdoch Stephens has launched a national campaign to change this. It began with a trip to Iran in 2009, where Stephens stumbled across an abandoned detention center in the middle of the Persian desert and discovered thousands of photographs of Afghan refugees who had been housed there from 1989-2005. Taking considerable pains to smuggle the photographs home, and following consultation with New Zealand’s local Afghan community, Stephens’ photographs are now on exhibition at Pataka Gallery in Wellington, affording us a profound insight into what it means to be a victim of one’s own geography.The exhibition will hopefully be shown around the country before being archived at Kabul University. It accompanies a social media campaign entitled “Doing Our Bit,” the goal of which is, according to Stephens, “very political and very direct: I want the refugee resettlement quota (so that’s not asylum seekers but people who have been assessed to be genuine refugees overseas) to be doubled, and I want funding for all the refugee-related services in New Zealand to be doubled as well.” As well as a website, the campaign has a presence on Facebook, Twitter and Avaaz, where you can sign an online petition to increase New Zealand’s refugee quota.
Just a guy
Stephens has never worked with any refugee-related organisation and is not affiliated with any particular interest group. He is just a guy who has taken very much to heart the embarrassment of being from such a well-regarded country that fails to live up to its hospitable reputation. For Stephens, “it’s not even about being nice to refugees, it’s just simply the fact that we do so little and yet we think we do so much.” Stephens believes that if more New Zealanders knew about the issue, they would want to rectify this cognitive dissonance: “from a lot of people I’ve spoken with, the assumption is that we are doing our bit, and when they find out how little we’re doing, they’re shocked.”Though Stephens is in communication with the National party, its stance on the issue of New Zealand’s refugee quota was made clear in July when Woodhouse said National would keep the quota at 750 for the next three-year term. However, Stephens says that “if it came down to a conscience vote amongst MPs, I think it would pass easily.”
The bare minimum
Despite this, National’s announcement seems to have done little to dash Stephens’ hopes. After all, the goal is not actually a particularly lofty one, even though talk of “doubling” New Zealand’s refugee quota can sound intimidating at first. “The refugee quota was introduced in 1987 as 800 people and if it had kept pace with [population growth] it would be 1,000 by now,” he explains. “In fact, National reduced it to 750 in 1995, but even if 750 had kept pace … we’d be at 1,000 by now, considering our population has grown.” Stephens emphasises that, “even if we do double our quota, we’re not going to be world leaders.”The response from the general public, the media, and the Green and Labour Parties has been enthusiastic and supportive; indeed, Stephens admits he “never would have dreamed that it would have gone this well.” National Radio and various national newspapers have covered the campaign, and the Green Party’s Immigration spokeswoman Jan Logie has endorsed it on her blog. In fact, the Greens already have a policy that would see our refugee quota increased to 1,000, which Stephens concedes “is a good start.”
He had another victory when deputy Labour leader Grant Robertson visited the refugee community in Porirua to discuss the issue. With Labour currently reviewing its refugee policy, Stephens sees it as only a matter of time before the quota is increased, and New Zealanders “won’t have to be embarrassed” any longer.
Concerns
One of the concerns raised about Stephens’ campaign pertains to where the money that would be required to resettle twice the number of refugees, and double the funding for refugee-related services, would come from. According to Stephens, “the problem isn’t the money.” Indeed, though Woodhouse claims that $58 million is spent on refugees every year, appropriations in the budget list the expenditure as $16 million, a figure substantiated by Woodhouse’s own office.But shouldn’t any extra cash be spent on struggling New Zealanders? Stephens argues that, “though refugees may be a short-term cost, in the long term they’re keen to pay their own way.” Indeed, in Australia, refugees are more likely to look for and find paid employment, and have a lower crime rate, than Australians in general. People tend to focus on the immediate costs of such a policy, but as Stephens says, “it’s not like were just throwing that money away – we’re actually creating new New Zealanders.” And with our ageing population and declining birth rate, maybe we need refugees almost as much as they need us.
There is also the notion that refugees don’t assimilate. To this, Stephens replies that, “maybe in the short term, these people look different so they don’t fit in. But because their parents went through such trauma to get here, there’s a lot of pressure on their children to succeed. It is worth noting that John Key himself is a second-generation refugee. His mother fled Austria in 1939 and at that time, New Zealanders were very scared of Jewish people coming in. And as Stephens notes, “we might not agree with Key’s particular ambitions, but no one could say he lacks them.”
Tich & Takunda
I wanted to speak to students who might have particular insight into this issue, so I caught up with Tich and Takunda, two fourth-year guys from Zimbabwe. Though not refugees, both know what is to find their country suddenly unlivable, and to have to look for a new place to call home.Tich’s parents were wealthy medical professionals in Zimbabwe before the political situation and hyperinflation under the Mugabe regime “ate into all my father’s business interests and we went from being very wealthy to being average in the space of a few days.” He moved to New Zealand with his little sister on his nineteenth birthday. Takunda came to New Zealand for similar reasons: “it was more the unpredictableness of everything, it’s better to have some kind of stability – you don’t want to have everything today and then have to line up for bread tomorrow.”
Both guys and their families found New Zealanders to be very friendly and welcoming. Tich says he was struck by the fact that “back home, you walk around and go about your business, but here you say ‘hi’ to someone and most of the time they’ll actually stop and have a decent conversation with you.” Takunda agrees: “even in school, the kids really helped me settle in. I never felt out of place or faced any kind of racism. For me, it was a great advantage and made me appreciate the country even more.”
In light of this, did they have any thoughts about doubling the refugee quota? Takunda pointed out that “people aren’t just coming to your country because they see opportunities, but they also see the values that you have and they want to be a part of that. People are saying that your country is offering something that they can’t get in their country, and that shows the kind of standards that they live by.” Indeed, at the end of the day, Tich feels “it comes down to your humanity.”
