Boat turn-back policy a failure

Warren Kennedy, Mullumbimby

Maynard Keynes once famously said, ‘When the facts change, I change too. What do you do?’. For all Australians the facts changed last week.

Until last week we were told that the government had stopped the boats. But then Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison admitted that their border security policy has failed. They admitted they have turned back 28 boats. They have not stopped the boats.

The Coalition’s justification for their cruel treatment of refugees is that they want to :
a) stop the people smugglers; and
b) stop people risking their lives in leaky boats.

Now we learn that the smugglers are still in business and people are still risking their lives at sea. None of the cruelty Australia has inflicted on the unfortunate refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island has deterred desperate people from seeking refuge or unscrupulous people from exploiting them.

Given this there can, surely, be no justification for persisting in our mistreatment of the detainees. As the boats keep coming it is clear that even an Australian concentration camp is preferable to the risks in their homelands for many desperate people, so this alleged deterrent has failed and there can be no reason for its continuation.

The facts have changed and we must change too. Our priority should be to end the suffering of those unfortunates who looked to Australia for refuge and were treated with contempt and brutality and to find a different way to stop the boats. When rational people’s policies fail they find new ways to achieve their goals. They don’t keep on making the same mistakes while mindlessly chanting three-word slogans.

If the government persists with this discredited policy there can be only one conclusion: the policy is not to stop the boats but to punish those who have the temerity to turn to Australia in their hour of need.

Is that really the sort of people we are?