Politicians and church leaders to urge asylum policy rethink after Syria crisis
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Version 0 of 1. Politicians will work with religious leaders on creating a new, humane asylum seeker policy, after conceding that public opinion on the issue has shifted. The 5/5 working group, containing five politicians from different parties and five cross-denominational religious leaders, was created during a forum in Parliament House on Thursday. Which politicians and religious leaders who would make up the group will be determined shortly, and the group is expected to convene within a month. Around 50 leaders representing Christian, Muslim and Jewish faith groups met with 15 politicians from the Liberal, National, Labor and Greens parties on how to create a “solution c” on asylum seekers, away from the polarising “stopping the boats” rhetoric that has surrounded the debate. The former house speaker, Labor backbencher Anna Burke, argued that both major parties had used the suffering of asylum seekers as “an election-winning process”. “We’ve used people as a political football,” she said. The Liberal backbencher, Russell Broadbent, foreshadowed the softening public opinion on asylums seekers, as reflected in the resoundingly positive reaction to the government’s decision to resettle 12,000 extra refugees from Syria. “I saw this coming,” he told the forum. He foreshadowed a subsequent change in the way politicians handle the issue, saying “there is no more powerful court than the court of public opinion”. The president of the Uniting Church, Stuart McMillan, agreed. “In increasing numbers, courageous citizens are expressing their concerns about the inhumane and illegal treatment of people seeking asylum, especially children,” he said. “I congratulate MPs of principle and good faith who are not letting this matter rest in their party rooms or in public.” Broadbent ramped up pressure on the government to release all asylum seeker children from immigration detention, arguing that keeping them in immigration detention is “unacceptable”. Religious, community and aid groups echoed Broadbent’s sentiments on Thursday. “We request that all children and their families be released into the community in Australia,” one of the religious forum’s organisers, Sister Anne Lane from Catholic Religious Australia, said. “Stopping asylum seekers coming by boat cannot justify locking children up indefinitely in detention centres and on Nauru and putting at risk their mental, physical and sexual wellbeing,” Marc Purcell from the Australian Council For International Development (ACFID) said in a statement issued early on Thursday morning. “Let us be absolutely clear: nothing can ever justify putting children at risk of harm – nothing.” The head of the Australian Council for Social Service (Acoss), Cassandra Goldie, wanted all allegations of abuse relating to children in immigration detention referred directly to the royal commission on institutionalised sexual abuse. “ACFID and Acoss also call on the government to establish an independent children’s guardian to represent the best interests of children seeking asylum in Australia,” Goldie said. The federal government will press on with its plan to resettle Syrian refugees before Christmas, though the assistant social services minister, Concetta Fierravanti-Wells, could not say exactly when the first group would arrive. “Hopefully by the end of the year,” she told reporters, saying that health and security checks were being conducted and could take some time. Fierravanti-Wells also rejected suggestions that the Commonwealth had decided how many of the refugees would be resettled in each state and territory. That would depend on the make-up of the group and whether or not they had existing family ties in certain cities. |