Downer: Political poison costing lives

AUSTRALIA'S current refugee policy is putting lives at risk, writes Alexander Downer.

I was sickened to hear of the loss of life yet again when a boatload of asylum seekers overturned and sank.

It made me really angry.

It reminded me of the vile accusations made against the Australian Government in 2001 that it had deliberately allowed over 300 people to drown when a boat identified as SIEV X sank.

The claim was that the Howard government had deliberately done nothing to save the asylum seekers.

The same people who accused the Howard government at that time are miraculously silent now.

It says more about their characters than anything else.

No decent person would blame Julia Gillard and her government as being directly responsible for the latest tragedy. Of course they didn't want anyone to die. Of course they would have saved them if they could. The same is true 11 years ago of the Howard government.

The real issue is this.

Why hasn't this dreadful practice of sending asylum seekers to Australia on small, rickety boats been closed down? Or more to the point, why was this grisly trade allowed to open up again?

The answer can be summed up in one word. Politics. A certain section of the population was totally opposed to the Howard government's so-called Pacific Solution.

Great. Well, I feel very strongly and very personally about this.

I was the author of the Pacific Solution. One evening I called my staff into my office and asked if they had any ideas as to where we could send asylum seekers offshore so as to break the back of the asylum seeker racket.

We'd tried Indonesia, we'd tried Singapore, we'd tried Fiji but none of them would help. Then one of my staff suggested Nauru.

I won't say who she was as she's still a DFAT officer. But she's a hero.

Her idea was brilliant.

I picked up the phone and called the then president of Nauru, Rene Harris. He said fine, he was happy to help out. And the rest is history.

The boats stopped.

But the pro asylum lobby were appalled. They attacked us relentlessly. The ALP heard their ugly siren call and promised to scrap the scheme. Brilliant.

Now look what's happened. The number of dead is mounting up.

I'm not in politics anymore but it's not just the ALP which is responsible for this fiasco. It's the fools who ran a blatantly political campaign against the then government who are responsible.

It's the Greens, the likes of Tony Kevin and Margot Kingston, the Fairfax press and even my old boss Malcolm Fraser who should ask themselves some hard questions today. And senators John Faulkner and Jacinta Collins. You were all wrong. Horribly wrong.

I was one of a tiny group of ministers who pored over intelligence reports inter alia before the 2007 election. The people smugglers were hoping Labor would win the election.

They thought the abandonment of the Pacific Solution would give them the ability to re-open their business. They were right.

I'm sorry if you don't like that and you think it's partisan. It's not. It's a fact and facts matter. Perceptions may be important but a poor perception is no match for the facts.

Well, that's history. What now?

There's a campaign under way to say Tony Abbott should agree to the Malaysian option.

Not Labor or the Greens. The Liberals. Excuse me but they offered bipartisan support to re-establish what once worked and was abandoned for political reasons.

Believe me, the Malaysian solution is a Band-Aid which won't last.

The answer is simple. Go back to what worked. And why won't the Gillard Government do that? The answer is simple. Politics again.

They don't want to accept the Howard government was right.

Politically the Government would be far wiser to accept the ignominy that they were wrong and get on with re-establishing what worked.

Sure, it would be embarrassing but it would save lives. That's the issue now. The public would quickly forget the backflip.

They'd thank the Government for doing the right thing. Doing the right think will always win votes.

All the political poison would be taken out of the issue.

At last we'd all be united around a simple clean policy which worked.

After all, what's wrong with the Pacific Solution? We heard Nauru haven't signed the UN Refugee Convention. That was, for a while, the argument used against Nauru.

But now they've said they will sign that Convention.

And unlike Malaysia, we would have control of how the asylum seekers would be treated in little, financially challenged Nauru.

What is more, when asylum seekers were sent to Nauru they were looked after pretty well.

We provided decent food and accommodation for them. They were processed properly, by us. And sure, some ended up in Australia.

So what? If you were on the side of the asylum seekers that should make you happy. Nauru stopped the boats and gave a good deal for genuine asylum seekers.

And finally, it pays to understand what is going on here. These are not people who see Australia as the first place of asylum.

That is, the first place they've found for safety from persecution.

They've already found safety in Indonesia. They're not being persecuted there. Or in many cases the places like Pakistan from which they've already found safety.

They're people who think Australia is a better place to live than Indonesia or Pakistan. Sure it is.

I can understand that.

But the Refugee Convention isn't about finding the best country in the world to live in.

It's about finding safety from persecution or even death.

The truth is, the boat people program is about people smugglers turning themselves into millionaires by exploiting our goodwill.

Saving people from persecution isn't the issue here. And what is more, by being stupidly compliant in this trade - and that's what it is - we are unintentionally putting people's lives at risk.

I'm sorry but I feel really angry about this. It's one thing to be kind but it's another thing to be dumb.

Alexander Downer was foreign affairs minister in the Howard government from 1996 to 2007