I read in the news recently about an Indonesian man who was convicted on a People Smuggling charge and given a mandatory sentence of 5 years. The news article went into detail about how not only the Judge imposing the sentence thinks it is unjust, but also how the courts have no discretion in order to be able to take into account an individual's personal circumstances when sentencing people. This is of course not the first time that Australian law has included mandatory sentencing.
The history of Australia's formation as a British colony includes many stories about individuals convicted harshly for petty crimes being sent as convicts to Australia in what turned out for most to be a life sentence. Those who didn't die on the journey might have died under forced labour, and for the rest a lifetime of exile. Even in recent years, mandatory sentences for impoverish indigenous people in the Northern Territory and Western Australia were controversial not only for the racist aspects of such laws - which is in complete disregard for anti-racism law that has existed here since only as recently as the early 1970's - but also for how such laws failed to take into account both the circumstances of the individuals concerned and the systemic failures that led to such circumstances in the first place.
So I have two serious gripes about all of this. The first is that we have any form of mandatory sentencing at all, and the second is that in spite of the beliefs and intents - I would like to believe - of the majority of Australians, that we harbour such a high degree of racism in this country, and that this racist image is being projected to the rest of the world so that simply by being an Australian, I am effectively painted as a rasict to the rest of the world, regardless of my own personal feelings about the matter.
The case of the people smuggling in particular brings these two elements together in the worst possible way. Ours is a country full of potential, with plenty of space and opportunity. I believe that we have an obligation to help those in need to protect the innocent fleeing their troubled homelands, and persecuted simply for being of a different race or faith. On the slimmest of chances that we might actually stop a terrorist from entering the country by water, our government passes laws that effectively enslave thousands of people every year simply for seeking shelter from persecution, when the reality is that any self-respecting terrorist will most likely get into the country by air, and right under the very noses of the people who are supposed to stop them.
Children are separated from their families to travel on perilous journeys in the small hope that they will be safer than they would be at home. Families flee with little but each other and the clothes on their backs. They turn for the most part to illiterate Indonesian fishermen in order to travel in tiny unseaworthy boats on what they hope will be the last leg of a very long journey, where their chances of surviving the crossing are low, and the chance of capture and detainment is guaranteed if they manage to survive the trip. Once here, they are treated as criminals, with little compassion. The government, and those racist elements in the community label these refugees as "cheats", and the refugees are locked away in detention centers that are little more than concentration camps for years on end. Locked away mind you, without a trial, or a hearing, and without basic human compassion or decency. Without knowing who these people are, we have a situation where women and children are locked away without protection from the potential handful who might be paedophiles and rapists.
And shame on our governments. In my memory of the last 20 years, it has been a stain on the honour of our nation that not only did John Howard and his government promote the idea of making our nation "safe" from "the boat people" during their 3 successive terms, but that the last two Labour terms have also used the imaginary spectre of alleged floods of dangerous fleeing refugee "criminals" as political lever. Of course this was to mask a lack of policy and planning on the part of people in government who have totally lost touch with the Australian people. They hide behind the "boat people" as an "issue" to get elected on, yet are blind to the fact that Kevin Rudd's government only got elected so that we could get rid of John Howard, and Julia Gillard was seen as the only sad option remaining in order to avoid the country getting saddled with Tony Abbott. So in spite of our gratuitous self-promotion as a lucky and free nation, our governments perpetuate shameful policy based purely on fear-mongering, intolerance, racism, and promoting a system of law that restricts our judiciary to little more than a robotic processing system, without benefit of due process or consideration for those in desperate need of help.
This is a country that is long overdue a serious overhaul of its moral principles. Laws should be enacted to protect the innocent rather than causing them further harm, and if the law is unclear or open to interpretation, then our judiciary should be responsible for ensuring that the spirit of the law is upheld without allowing the desperate and the innocent to be criminalized. Our laws regarding racism are clear enough, and our governments should be held accountable for any act by the parliament that breaks such laws, and our politicians should not be allowed to get away with breaches of such laws by hiding behind parliamentary privilege. Every death on the refugee boats that occurs within our waters or within in our detention centers is a shame that hangs firmly around the neck of every politician who has kept their silence about such issues, or who actively sought to use to use the disadvantaged for their own political advantage while doing nothing to try and solve the problems that are without doubt firmly rooted within the government itself.
This is supposed to be a democracy, so let the people's voices actually be heard on such issues. Let a democratically elected government for once lead its country instead of ruling it from afar. I don't truly believe Australia to be a racist, heartless, or immoral country no matter how many individuals we have who might be the opposite. It would be nice to see the country I believe this to be reflected in our government and for once to allow common sense and common decency to bring an end to the laws and policies that allow these atrocities to continue.
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