From White Australia to woomera - Mixed Media - Book Review

New Internationalist, June, 2003 by George Fisher

by James Jupp

(Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0 521 53140 3)

Millions around the globe have seen Australia's people-caging fences thrown up by a supposedly multicultural society in a supposedly borderless world. This harsh response to asylum seekers has been almost universally condemned.

Australia now acts as police, prison guard, judge, jury, and often deporter, usually for people who may technically be defined as refugees, but who have come from dire situations and who deserve a humanitarian response. The events of the past year have been the most shameful episode in Australian history since the end of the White Australia Policy. Thankfully Jupp offers not only a 'How come?' but also a 'Where to from here?'

There has been growing concern about Australia's policy of mandatory detention of asylum seekers without visas. No other democracy detains all people arriving without documents.

Concern increased after the notorious recently mothballed Woomera Detention Centre was opened in 1999. It rose further with Australia's heavy-handed intervention on the refugee-carrying Tampa cargo ship in August 2001; this gave a conservative government the opportunity to mine the issue of 'illegal migration' for all it could.

The Government knew that no connection between asylum seekers and terrorism had ever been established either in Australia or elsewhere. Public debate in Australia has, however, been corrupted by official evasions, outright lies and even hysteria.

The literature on refugees and asylum seekers is often angry and judgmental. James Jupp writes with passion and force but without the ideologue's spin. He also writes with thoroughness, accuracy and solid documentation that are rare in this genre. Anyone thinking through the issue of asylum seekers will find this book serves them well.

Rating ****

STAR RATING

EXCELLENT *****

VERY GOOD ****

GOOD ***

FAIR **

POOR *