27 November, 2014
New migration bill “a disaster for human dignity”
The Government’s proposed new migration laws are the most draconian since White Australia, and will deprive asylum seekers of human dignity and the most basic human rights, according to ethicist Revd Dr Gordon Preece, chairman of the Social Responsibilities Committee of the Melbourne Anglican Church.
“When a massive increase in the bill of human misery is being prepared for asylum seekers, we self-interestedly ask for whom the bill tolls, forgetting that as part of humanity, it also tolls for us,” Dr Preece said.
He urged the Senate to speak up for unrepresented and de-voiced asylum seekers as they did last week for victims of unscrupulous financial advisers, and to reject the proposed Migration and Maritime Powers bill, which has passed through the lower house.
“Will the Senate again refuse railroading by short-term national self-interest for the sake of justice, compassion and prudence?”
Dr Preece said the bill was barbaric, because it unilaterally removed references to the universally recognised cornerstone of refugee protection, the UN Refugees Convention. It would be a disaster for human dignity and for accountability.
For example, asylum seekers’ babies, even if born here, were rendered stateless, creating “profound, negative effects on children’s identities and development, and greater risks of children experiencing labour and sexual exploitation, trafficking, poverty and discrimination,” (UNICEF Australia), he said. They would be denied health care, legal protection, education and job opportunities, on top of a detention system that 80 per cent of paediatricians labelled child abuse.
Dr Preece said the Senate should again stand against a short-term nationalistic self-interest. “Turkey have welcomed 1.8 million Syrian and Iraqi refugees. Its PM told the G20: ‘we cannot close our borders because they are … our neighbours, but before everything they are human beings’.”
For more information, contact:
Dr Gordon Preece on 0401 653 328 or preece.gordon@hotmail.com<mailto:preece.gordon@hotmail.com>
Melbourne Anglican communications adviser Barney Zwartz on 0422 373 891, or bzwartz@melbourneanglican.org.au<mailto:bzwartz@melbourneanglican.org.au>.