The Hindu : International : Australia softens line on immigrants

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Friday, Jun 24, 2005

International

International

Australia softens line on immigrants

Ben Sandilands

Howard frees the refugee children from their razor wire cages

CANBERRA: Less than a week before assuming total control of both houses of the Australian Parliament, Prime Minister John Howard has broken the harshest shackles that his administration had been imposing on illegal immigrants.

Those with children will no longer be kept behind the double-caged, razor-wire-topped detention centres that had become synonymous with the Australian Government's attempts to deter the smuggling of people without visas into the country.

Instead they will await determination of their refugee or immigration status in "community detention", meaning they will live normal lives in suburban homes until examination of their cases results in their being allowed to remain in Australia, or being deported.

However this change of heart by the avowedly conservative Liberal Prime Minister, John Howard is being dissected more in terms of sudden change in the structure of Australian politics than the humanitarian benefits for at least 52 children and several hundred adults in detention centres.

A professor in history and politics at Curtin University, Dr. David Black, says: "John Howard's decision to soften his hard line on mandatory detention of suspected illegal immigrants may be a sign he is thinking about how history will judge him. He is also making concessions on Indigenous affairs and expressing more liberal or tolerant views in other areas. This is a sign he may have his eye on the big picture. He's very anxious about the place he's going to have in Australian history and having weighed up the situation, has decided he can adopt decisive changes that he can chalk up to his own credit."

John Howard is by title the leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party of Australia, even though he has always described himself and his party as conservative.

Until a party room revolt by four progressive or liberal liberals led by backbencher Petro Georgiou disrupted the conservative agenda a month ago, all signs where that from 1 July this year the Howard administration would carry out the most comprehensive pro-business anti-union reforms seen in the 104 years since a collection of former British colonies were federated into a nation.

The first of July is when Senators elected to the upper house in the general election of last October take their seats, and give the Government of the day a majority in both houses of Parliament for the first time in 24 years. But the moderates, orchestrated by Mr. Georgiou, threatened Mr. Howard's grip on policy settings right on the eve of gaining total control of Parliament by issuing a challenge involving the ethical foundations of the party in relation to human rights and those of children in particular.

They drew up a private members bill that would have totally dismantled the Government's punitive illegal immigration laws and received saturation media coverage for being rebels with a cause within the coalition ranks. Confronted by an Opposition he could not squash by having the numbers in both house of Parliament, because it existed within his own party's much swollen ranks, Mr. Howard did a deal. Mandatory detention would be turned into a process more than a punishment, with lots of safeguards, and family groups would be conditionally released into the community, and the Mr. Georgiou bill would be withdrawn.

— © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2004

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