The Howard Government's Response to Asylum Seekers, Refugees, Aborigines and Welfare Recipients

Australia was, until 1788, a multicultural land. Various Indigenous nations, based on language groups owned this continent. Trading routes extended for thousands of miles. For over four hundred years Macassan seafarers, from Indonesia, made annual visits to the northern coast of Australia. Contact was maintained across the Torres Strait. Extraordinary cultural diversity existed. Complex mechanisms existed for resolving conflict. Religious, cultural and family arrangements combined to ensure that no one starved, whilst there was food to eat. Indigenous Australia maintained a finer welfare system than exists today.

From 1788 on, invasion, theft, rape and genocide was the British contribution to cultural diversity. There has been 214 years of continuing race war waged by the invaders since that time. The Howard Liberal Government's policies of 'practical reconciliation' and its 1998 revisions to the Native Title Act exemplify the repugnant Australian tradition that allows Indigenous Australians use of land and resources until such time as white Australians desire them. In the old days guns and poison were the tools of dispossession, nowadays removal of Indigenous property rights is achieved by the grant of mining leases or by legislative amendment.

From the earliest days of colonialization, the "new chums" feared others coming to and taking over this continent: first the French or the Russians and later the 'Asiatic hordes'. The current bogeymen are Muslim refugees.

The white Australia policy was not dropped as official policy until just before the election of the Whitlam Labor Government in 1972. In the first decade of the 20th Century attempts were made to repatriate Kanak laborers and Asians, particularly the Chinese.

The end of the Second World War saw a huge influx of migrants brought from Europe driven by Australian Government's desire to "populate or perish" in the face of the perceived threat from Asia.

Following the Vietnam War a considerable number of Vietnamese people settled here. Many of the early arrivals had arrived by boat. It was the Labor Party, which introduced the policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers arriving without visas. Keating Labor also introduced a six-month social security waiting period for newly arrived migrants, which Howard extended to two years.

The first Federal social security payments were the Age and Invalid Pensions introduced in 1909. Asian Australians were not paid social security until the 1940s. By the late 1960s Aboriginal people living in the cities were paid social security and this was extended to include rural and remote Aborigines by the mid 1970s. Unemployment benefit is still not paid on many Aboriginal communities, instead a form of 'work for the dole' was installed.

Throughout most of the 20th Century the system of welfare income provision became more widespread, generous and comprehensive. But with the exception of the 1947 consolidation of social security legislation, there was little effort made to conceive of it as a unified system of income support. The first serious attempt to cut back on the comprehensive nature of income support began under Labor in 1985.

The equal pay cases in respect to both women and Aborigines in 1967 resulted in at least formal equality with white men. However, because of the gender segregated nature of Australian industry, income equality between men and women has yet to occur. The Aboriginal equal pay judgment was hedged around with slow worker provisions and a three-year phase-in period. It also resulted in many Aboriginal people being driven off their traditional country by infuriated white pastoralists who could no longer avoid paying Indigenous workers in their employ.

In 1967 the Liberals agreed to hold a referendum to change the constitution so that the Commonwealth could pass laws in respect to Aborigines and so it could count them in the Census.

The Whitlam Government came to power with ideas of building a multicultural society, getting out of the Vietnam war, promoting gender equality, improving the welfare system, introducing a national health insurance, improving the lot of Indigenous Australians and promoting the idea that ordinary people (including those receiving welfare payments) had rights which could and should be enforced.

Between 1973 and 1978 sole parents who had custody of children were included under the social security umbrella. In the last years of the Fraser and the early years of the Hawke Governments, a system of financial support was introduced for low-income families who worked. This was the last major improvement in income security provision.

From the late 1960s until the early 1980s there was a contest between a welfare system based on noblesse oblige and a fully articulated system of rights. There seemed to be a feeling that even when people spoke about rights that they were driven by sense of "there but for the grace of God go I." That is, in the minds of many politicians and bureaucrats, rights were not securely anchored to international covenants and conventions or to a clear ideological commitment to ideologies predicated upon support for equality, mutuality and freedom or justice.

The situation, which culminated in the Howard ascendancy, has a long lineage in Australia. Some writers point to the 1975 Budget as the first step on the slippery slope. Certainly there were economic fundamentalist tendencies observable during Malcolm Fraser's rule. By the time Hawke Labor came to power, the views of Milton Friedman, Friedrich Hayek, Margaret Thatcher, Ronald Regan, and a multitude of right wing think-tanks were influencing Australian Government thinking.

Howard has boasted that he is the most conservative Prime Minister in Australia's history. He most clearly articulated the Government's domestic policy orientations in his 1999 Roundtable paper and his 2000 "quest for a decent society" article in which he set out the argument for his type of social coalition. This coalition is between government, business, the church, the family and individuals. He sees the cement for such a coalition being what he terms "mutual obligation"- whereby those who receive something from the Government are expected to give something back. He defines his political orientation as an amalgam between social conservatism and neo-liberal economics.

Despite Howard's fine words, about the mutuality in "mutual obligation" the Government sees itself has having fully met its obligation to unemployed people by simply paying below poverty line income-the obligation is then on the unemployed person to meet "their obligation" to Government. Last year 380,000 breaches were imposed on the poorest Australians often for a minor infringement such as being late for an appointment. Many researchers have described the philosophical underpinnings of participation income as unethical. The practical outcomes for those who are breached are socially disastrous.

The McClure Report's concept of "participation income" is a euphemism for compulsory labor. There has been a constant chorus of denigration of people who are forced to rely on social security because of the failure of the Government and industry to create sufficient jobs. The hysterical denunciation of "welfare dependency" and particularly intergenerational "welfare dependency" is based on a myth. There have been no intergenerational studies of long-term social security receipt in Australia. Recent overseas long-term panel studies do not support such assertions.

The McClure Report recommended that not only were unemployed people be compelled "to participate" but that single parents and people receiving Disability Support Pensions should also be compelled 'to participate'.

The last officially organized punitive raid was (according to Professor Charles Rowley) carried out, in 1942, in the North of South Australia. Though police and settlers continued to kill and maim small groups of Aborigines in remote Australia until at least the early 1980s. In cities, with the notable exception of incidents like the slaughter of David Gundy, the police content themselves with severe bashings of Indigenous Australians. There have been a few honorable moments in white Australia's treatment of Indigenous Australians, which stand in sharp contrast to the Howard Government's 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act. Howard removed the property rights, which the High Court found Indigenous Australians to have retained after 200 odd years of colonial invasion. They did this in order that they might give those same rights to pastoralists and miners who (the High Court had found) did not own them.

Whether it is: (1) the response to the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racism Report condemning Australia's 1998 amendments to the Native Title Act, (2) the failure to do something about the 20 year differential between white and Indigenous average age of death, (3) the inordinately high imprisonment rate of Indigenous Australians, (4) the AUS$3 billion Indigenous housing backlog, (5) the promotion of a welfarized "practical reconciliation" over self determination, (6) the refusal to countenance the signing a treaty with Indigenous Australians, or (7) the finding of new ways to remove property rights from Indigenous Australians this Howard Government is depressingly consistent.

Perhaps the best measure of the intensity of racist hatred of Indigenous people which inspires this Howard Government was revealed by the Commonwealth Government's counsel who, during the Hindmarsh Bridge Case in the High Court, whilst being examined by Mr. Justice Michael Kirby, suggested that the 1967 Referendum would allow the Commonwealth to introduce Nazi style racially discriminatory legislation.

Fear of other races has not been far beneath the surface of white Australian consciousness since 1788. The international opprobrium which followed our flouting of the International Conventions of the Sea in relation to the Tampa may not influence the Howard Government but it will cost the Australian people dearly. Howard came to power with the promise of smaller government. Professor Stilwell points out it is doubtful, in economic terms, if he has done more than change in the functions of the state from service provision to regulation of private providers. Yet in relation to the Migration Act the Howard Government can justly claim it has not only made the Government smaller it has made Australia smaller by its exclusion of off shore islands and simultaneously decreased the moral regard the rest of the world has for Australian citizens.

The connection between Australian troops invading other countries and subsequent refugee outpourings from those countries has long been acknowledged. Interestingly enough this has not led the Howard Government to be wary of entering new theatres of war or to taking a sympathetic approach towards asylum seekers from countries it has invaded or blockaded. The Government is refusing assistance to many refugees from Afghanistan and Iraq. It is currently moving to send home 1,600 Timorese with temporary visas even though they have been here for 10 years. At the same time Howard has joined with the British Prime Minister in the role of cheerleader for George W. Bush's new war on Iraq.

The Howard Government has dedicated itself to installing what Kemsall terms a "market welfare state" where the only fully functioning citizens are self-providers and the rest are marginalised. It totally rejects the idea of creating what Sztompka calls a "moral community," based on trust, preferring to individualize risk and creating a "do it yourself welfare state." It has totally forsaken Beveridge's desire to abolish the five giants of "squalor, want, ignorance, disease and idleness." which inspired the 1947 consolidation of social security legislative provisions in Australia. The Howard Government has replaced the ideology of noblesse oblige with a compelled conservative compact: one, which is becoming increasingly more prescriptive and proscriptive. Its breaching regime is reminiscent of the deserving and undeserving divide enshrined in the 1601 and 1834 Poor Laws.

The Howard Government is determined to maintain Indigenous Australians in their time honored role of "native" and to refuse to recognize their claims to sovereignty. It will continue to welfarize Indigenous people through its declared policy of "practical reconciliation." The alternatives of self-determination, a treaty, an apology, economic self-sufficiency, land rights, secure native title and decolonization are totally verboten.

It will, whenever able, reinforce downward envy. Nowhere more so than in the way it responds to asylum seekers and refugees. Recent questioning by Senator Falkner clearly suggests that it knowingly or unknowingly was a party to the sabotage of the Siev-X in which 353 asylum seekers drowned. There may have been at least four other ships sunk as the result of sabotage by agents (operating in Indonesia) who were employed by the Australian Government.

Howard regards the "little Aussie Battler" as a racist who must be appeased than to accept that low-income workers are struggling to comprehend an increasingly globalized and insecure world. In such a situation a more progressive leadership might attempt to increase income security for those on low incomes and work to defuse racism, sexism, ageism, disableism, classism and urbanism. It could do that by introducing a universal Basic Income, by adopting a full employment policy, expanding humanitarian refugee policies and coming to an accommodation with Indigenous Australians.

by John Tomlinson (Queensland University of Technology)

Suggested Readings

Cunneen, C. (2001) Conflict, Politics and Crime: Aboriginal Communities and the Police, Allen & Unwin: Crows Nest, Australia.

Goodin, R. (2001), False Principles of Welfare Reform, Australian Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 36, No. 3, August. pp. 189-206.

Goodin, R.; Headey, B.; Muffels, R. and Dirven, H. (1999), The Real Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Cambridge University: Cambridge, UK.

Gregory, B. (2000), A Longer Run Perspective on Australian Unemployment, Centre for Economic Policy Research, Discussion Paper, No. 425, December.

Howard, J. (2000), Quest for a Decent Society, The Australian, Jan. 12, p.11.

Howard, J. (1999), Building a Stronger and Fairer Australia: Liberalisation in Economic Policy and Modern Conservatism in Social Policy, address to Australia Unlimited Roundtable, May 4.

Keating, P. (1994), Working Nation. AGPS, Canberra.

Kemshall, H. (2002), Risk, Social Policy and Welfare. Open University, Buckingham.

Kinnear, P. (2000), Mutual Obligation: Ethical and Social Implications, The Australia Institute, Discussion Paper, No. 32, August.

Lock, J.; Quenault, M. and Tomlinson, J. (2002), Australia Should Abolish the Detention of Asylum Seekers, Social Alternatives, Vo.21, No. 3, Winter.

McClure, P. (2000), Participation Support for a More Equitable Society, Report of the Reference Group on Welfare Reform, Department of Family and Community Services: Canberra.

Page, R. (1998), The Prospects for British Social Welfare, in R. Page and R. Silburn (eds.), British Social Welfare in the Twentieth Century, Macmillian: Basingstoke, UK.

Pusey, M. (1991), Economic Rationalism in Canberra, Cambridge University: Cambridge, UK.

Rowley, C. (1972), The Destruction of Aboriginal Society, Penguin: Harmondsworth, UK.

Schooneveldt, S. (2002), Do the Lived Experiences of People Who Have Been Breached by Centrelink Match the Expectation and Intent of the Howard Government?, thesis, Queensland University of Technology: Brisbane, Australia.

Stilwell, F. (2002), Political Economy, Oxford University Press: Oxford, UK.

Sztompka, P. (1999), Trust: A Sociological Theory, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, UK.

Timmins, N. (1995), The Five Giants: A Biography of the Welfare State, Harper Collins: Hammersmith, UK.

Tomlinson, J. (2002), Income Support for Unemployed People: Human Rights Versus Utilitarian Rights, Journal of Economic and Social Policy, Vol. 6, No.2, Winter, pp.36-55.

Tomlinson, J. (2001a), The Basic Solution to Unemployment, Australian Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 36, No. 3, August. pp.189-206.