Conflicts of interest

Seeking Asylum Alone Mary Crock Themis Press, 129 pages, $39.95 Reviewed by David Corlett In his 2004 Quarterly Essay, Breach of Trust, Raimond Gaita wrote of discussing asylum seeker policy with locals in rural Victoria where he had rented a cottage in which to write. His interlocutors were, Gaita tells us, generally supportive of the government’s harsh policies. But when pressed on the question of detaining children behind razor wire, “without exception” they agreed that, because of the damage that could result to the children, such a practice was unjustified. Children represent at the same time a particular sort of vulnerability (due to their age and stage of development) and all the hopes and possibilities of the future. To harm children seems both especially cowardly and, because of the risk of stifling their potential, particularly cruel. It is understandable, then, that children have featured prominently in the debate about how Australia responds to asylum seekers. There were the Bahktiyari boys, children of Australia’s most well-known asylum seeker family, who escaped from Woomera and after three weeks on the run ended up back behind the razor wire. Their escape drew attention to the detention of children and to the strange practice whereby, because their father had come out separately from them, they could not be reunited with him even though he was recognised as a refugee. There were the terrible images smuggled out of Sydney’s Villawood detention centre in August 2001 of Shayan Badraie. Shayan could not walk, talk or eat. His plight focused the nation, momentarily, on the impact of long-term, mandatory detention on children. And, of course, there was the untrue story that asylum seekers had thrown their children into the sea. It is hardly coincidental that the most significant “official” study of the impact of the government’s detention policies - the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission’s, A Last Resort? - also focused on children. Mary Crock’s latest contribution to asylum seeker policy and debate, Seeking Asylum Alone, focuses on a particular subset of refugee children - those who come seeking protection without an adult relative or guardian. While children are often dislocated by war and persecution - 40-50 per cent of the world’s refugees are children - the numbers of children seeking asylum alone in western countries has, according to Crock, “escalated dramatically” over the past decade. About 290 such children came to Australia without prior authorisation by boat between January 1999 and January 2003. Crock and her research team have spoken to 85 five of these children as part of the research for the report. Child refugees and asylum seekers face the same difficulties as older refugees - war, persecution, dislocation, the search for safety - but they are also at particular risk because of their youth. According to Crock, “Unaccompanied and separated children face an increased risk of military recruitment, sexual violence, exploitation and abuse, forced labour, denial of access to education and basic assistance and detention.” Once in Australia, they must navigate the complex legal and administrative environment of asylum seeker decision-making. The flaws in Australia’s reception and determination systems are well-known. There is the unaccountable “screening” process whereby immigration officials determine whether or not unauthorised arrivals are even eligible to apply for protection. There are questions about asylum seekers’ access to legal advice, the role of interpreters, the quality of decision-making within Immigration Department and the Refugee Review Tribunal. There is the absence of a complementary protection regime for people who, while not meeting a narrowly interpreted legal definition of a refugee nonetheless have protection needs. There is mandatory detention which, although softened in mid-2005 stipulating that children should only be detained as a “last resort,” still allows for the detention of children and adults. (Crock notes that in February 2006 “refugee advocates estimated that 13 unaccompanied children were being held in community detention, of which five were under guard in hotel accommodation.”) There is the temporary protection regime whose uncertainty undermines the ability of refugees - children and adults alike - to get on with their lives. And there is the Pacific Solution with its substandard protection determination procedures and its lack of durable protection outcomes. With all this, children seeking asylum alone are particularly marginalised. Crock writes that Australian law and policy is not “attuned” to the needs and experiences of young people travelling alone. Practice is “generally blind to children.” A central problem for unaccompanied and separated children in Australia is the conflict of interest in the immigration minister’s role as guardian of the children, as final decision-maker in visa applications and as the person in charge of their detention. Although the latter issue has become less pressing since the 2005 changes to mandatory detention, the conflict inherent in the minister’s role as guardian and enforcer of immigration control persists. For this reason, Crock calls for a separation of these functions. Children seeking asylum alone should be appointed an independent guardian whose focus is unambiguously on the best interests of the child. The broader topic of Crock’s work - Australia’s response to asylum seekers - is one that has been at the centre of political debate in Australia since the end of the last century. (Crock has herself been working in the area for much longer, having edited the seminal book on Australia’s detention regime, Protection or Punishment, in 1993) Yet Seeking Asylum Alone is not at all polemical. Instead, it lets the facts speak for themselves. Most striking is the use of the stories of the 85 young people with whom the researchers spoke. The strength of these stories lies in their use by the author to expose the true implications of Australian policy and practice. Seeking Asylum Alone is meticulously researched and well written. It is essential reading for anyone working with refugee children. But the author’s ability to elucidate the broader legal, policy and practical aspects of Australia’s approach to asylum seekers makes it a report that should be read even more widely. • David Corlett is author of Following Them Home: The Fate of the Returned Asylum Seekers (Black Inc) and has been involved as a caseworker, researcher and academic on refugee and asylum seeker issues for more than a decade. Photo: Karina Tischlinger/iStockphoto.co