The Australian Border Force, Closing Detention Centres, and Labor's Slow Shift

Image by Ben Thomson

Congratulations Australia, you have a new government agency: Australian Border Force. Sadly it’s not the long overdue spin-off of the Australian television series Water Rats. Instead it’s the latest in a series of sexed-up names from a government who seems to want every agency to sound like a heading on Steven Seagal’s IMDB page. Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, announced the agency on Friday as the amalgamation of Customs and immigration border operations, part of the 70 agency reshuffle the government has highlighted to reduce expenditure. The merge was recommended by the Commission of Audit and sees the end of Customs and the Border Protection Service from July this year. it also means a wave of job cuts. Surprisingly, the merge also includes the amalgamation of the Classification Review Board and the Refugee Review Tribunal, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal, and the Migration Review Tribunal. Basically now the people who decide what video games you’re allowed to play will also decide on refugee claims. “It brings together enforcement officers, investigation officers, those working beyond our borders, those working at sea, at the airports, sea ports, into an integrated agency that's focused on one thing and that's protecting our most important, I'd argue, national asset—our border”. We have to give it to the PR team behind that gem. As far as rhetoric goes, calling an invisible and man-made line that’s out in the middle of the ocean an asset isn’t too shabby.

–Things have been pretty quiet on the Labor side of politics. Their loss at the hands of Abbott meant a lot of wound licking and highlighted a need for party reform. Eight months after the last election it’s looking like we might finally see some fundamental policy changes on the horizon. It’s been revealed that Labor MPs are seeking to change the party’s position on offshore asylum seeker processing away from support and towards condemnation. West Australian MP Melissa Parke gave notice to colleagues on Monday of a motion to be moved at the next Labor caucus meeting that the party “shall no longer support the transfer of asylum seekers by Australia to Manus Island or Nauru and shall call for the detention centres in those places to be closed down”. Former speaker Anna Burke seconded the motion, with the motion notes highlighting that the February violence on Manus Island was the motivation for the dramatic change of position. –Opponents to immigration detention can rejoice, the government has heard you and will close six centres. Unfortunately they’re all on Australian soil, which will see further pressure placed on foreign detention compounds. As a part of budgetary savings measures the Northern, Darwin, Inverbrackie, Curtin, and two Christmas Island detention centre sites will all be closed by mid-2015. While the government highlights the savings this will bring, they’ve shied away from commenting on the cost of processing asylum seekers overseas. As revealed by the Commission of Audit, the cost of processing asylum seekers in Australia is $239,000 while offshore detention costs $400,000.

– What’s the best possible way to remember the February 17 violence on Manus that killed 23 year old asylum seeker Reza Berati? Souvenir t-shirts of course. Apparently it’s not just students who get humour stupendously wrong, Facebook comments discussing the proposed design reveal the former guards have considered placing the emblem “rock fest 16/17 Feb” on the shirts. One former employee even whipped up a design that says “Survivor MIRPC – outsmart, outlaugh, outfun”. MIRPC stands of course for Manus Island Regional Processing Centre, where Berati was beaten to death. The comments have since been removed from Facebook, and there’s no word on whether the t-shirts made it to production. If anyone’s interested in teaching these people a lesson can we suggest a Maude Flanders style attack with a t-shirt cannon?

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