"White Australia policy": Post-federation - December 1901 The
White Australia policy is a term used for the historical policies responsible for the exclusion of non-
European origin, especially
Asians (primarily
Chinese) and
Pacific Islanders (primarily
Melanesians) from immigrating to Australia.
World War II refugees: 1930s In the 1930s more than 7,000 refugees from
Nazi Germany were accepted into Australia. In the eight years after the end of
World War II almost 200,000 European refugees settled in Australia. Australia was reluctant to recognise a general "right of asylum" for refugees when the
Universal Declaration of Human Rights was being drafted.
West Papuan refugees on Manus Island: 1960s University of Sydney immigration law specialist Professor
Mary Crock says that Australia's history of offshore processing goes back to the 1960s, when
Manus Island was set up to take refugees from West Papua. Known as "Salasia Camp", it consisted of a few
corrugated iron houses on a bare concrete slab, not far from a beach near the main town
Lorengau. Indonesia was preparing a military takeover of the former
Dutch New Guinea colony in the 1960s, causing thousands of refugees to flee into the then Australian colony of
Papua New Guinea; the first were sent to Manus in 1968 by the Australian government. The camp was built by Australia in order to avoid a diplomatic confrontation with Indonesia, and for this reason they were not granted
refugee status. It was not a detention centre; the refugees were free to come and go, but remained stateless until granted citizenship by PNG in 2017.
Vietnamese boat people: 1970s entered Australia as a refugee in 1982 and was named
Young Australian of the Year in 1998. The first recorded instance of asylum seekers arriving in Australia via unauthorised boat occurred in April 1976. Fleeing
South Vietnam after the
Communist Party victory of 1975, an estimated 2,000 "
Vietnamese boat people" followed between 1976 and 1982. The sporadic arrival of unauthorised boats was a cause of concern for the Australian people. Professor Crock says that a type of offshore processing was used after the
Vietnam War. The regional processing regime established right across
Southeast Asia was designed to stop asylum seekers where they were, process them
in situ, and then to distribute them in an orderly way. In the mid-1990s, numerous boats carrying
Chinese and Sino-Vietnamese refugees were returned to their place of origin after asylum claims were denied. The rapid repatriations meant that many citizens were unaware of the refugees. The event shaped a pivotal change in Australian government policy toward refugees by offering temporary asylum instead of permanent settlement. In 1999, Middle Eastern immigrants fleeing from oppressive regimes in
Afghanistan,
Iran and
Iraq began to arrive in large numbers. Following the
September 11 attacks in the US in 2001, anti-Muslim rhetoric increased in Australia, as Muslims were the primary asylum seekers at the time. The amendments, which became known as the
Pacific Solution, excised Christmas Island and
Ashmore Reef from the Australian migration zone. The combination of the boat arrivals and the September 11 were said to have turned the November 2001 election in
John Howard's favour. The primary concern was that abuse of the process could potentially develop in remote locations, and that immigration control would dominate over child protection issues, children being without an effective guardian. In July 2005, Australia ceased the practice of mandatory detention of children. In 2002, the arrivals dropped from 5,516 the previous year to 1.
End of offshore processing: 2007–2012 After winning the 2007 election, the Labor Party under Prime Minister
Kevin Rudd abandoned the Pacific Solution, installing a more liberal asylum policy. The asylum seekers were taken to Indonesia but refused to disembark until 17 November, after a deal was agreed upon. The asylum seekers were transferred to Indonesian detention, and after a month were determined to be refugees and resettled in several countries. In December 2010,
a boat carrying around 90 asylum seekers sank off the coast of Christmas Island, killing 48 people. Ahead of the
2010 election,
Tony Abbott campaigned on the asylum issue, and with Rudd refusing to engage with him in "a race to the bottom", polls showed the public strongly favouring Abbott's anti-asylum views. By this time, Rudd was struggling in the polls for a number of reasons and had lost the confidence of the Labor Party Caucus, which, fearing defeat in the upcoming election, installed
Julia Gillard in his place. Gillard argued it was wrong to give special privileges to asylum seekers. She was against a return to the Pacific Solution, instead arguing for the establishment of a regional offshore processing centre. Gillard's new position was welcomed in the polls, and in the August 2010 election, Labor retained power in a minority government supported by a number of independents. In 2011, Australia received 2.5% of the world's total number of claims for asylum. During 2012, more than 17,000 asylum seekers arrived via boat. The majority of the refugees came from
Afghanistan,
Iran, and
Sri Lanka.
Offshore processing resumed, PNG solution: 2012–2013 In June 2012, Gillard appointed an expert panel to make recommendations on the asylum issue by August 2012. The report included 22 recommendations. The Nauru processing facility was reopened in September, and the
Manus Island facility in Papua New Guinea reopened in November. However, the centres could not keep up with demand, creating a large backlog. In July 2013, Rudd, who had recently returned to power as Prime Minister, announced that anyone who arrived in Australia by boat without a
visa would not be eligible for asylum. To accommodate the refugees, the
Manus Regional Processing Centre would be enlarged significantly. In exchange for taking the asylum seekers, Papua New Guinea would receive financial aid from Australia. Like Australia, Papua New Guinea is a signatory to United Nations Refugees Convention.
The New York Times described Rudd's decision as likely "part of a concerted effort" to nullify opposition attacks ahead of the
2013 federal election. The
Abbott government clamped down further on boat arrivals, naming their strategy
Operation Sovereign Borders. This was implemented by then immigration minister
Scott Morrison and continued by successor
Peter Dutton from December 2014 and under prime ministers
Malcolm Turnbull and
Scott Morrison, . Their "zero tolerance" policies included the use of boat turn-backs, offshore detention and processing and tight control of information about any arrivals by the government. In 2015, the government rejected suggestions that it would accept
Rohingyas (a persecuted Muslim minority in Myanmar) during the
Rohingya refugee crisis, with the Prime Minister Tony Abbott responding "Nope, nope, nope. We have a very clear refugee and humanitarian program". but , there were 600 asylum seekers still housed on the island in several transit centres near the main town of
Lorengau.
Statistics and assessment: end 2018 Over the period from the Abbott government through to the Morrison government, arrivals dropped to around 1,200. However, the conditions of those left on the islands has continued to garner national and worldwide attention. Immigration law specialist Professor Mary Crock said there was no statistical evidence that offshore processing itself deterred asylum seekers; it was rather boat push-backs that were more successful. People had become aware of the human cost as well as the monetary cost. "We've spent more on this than [the US$5 billion] Trump is asking for his wall," she said.
Medevac Bill & re-opening of Christmas Island: Feb to Dec 2019 On 13 February 2019, a bill which became known as the
"Medevac bill" was narrowly passed by the Australian parliament allowing doctors to have more say in the process by which asylum seekers on Manus and Nauru may be brought to the mainland for treatment. The approval of two doctors is required, but approval may still be overridden by the home affairs minister in one of three areas. The fast-tracked medical transfers will only apply to the existing cohort of refugees and asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru, a point that Mr Morrison refuses to concede. Human rights advocates hailed the decision, with one calling it a "tipping point as a country", with the weight of public opinion believing that sick people need treatment. A few days later, after warning about an influx of asylum seeker boats by both Dutton and Morrison, the prime minister announced the re-opening of the Christmas Island detention facilities, implying that this change in the law would provide the signal for people smugglers to begin operating again. The government later announced a plan to send sick refugees there, rather than hospitals on mainland Australia as was the intention of the Medevac bill. This was seen by
Robert Manne as a turning point in Labor Party policy, after having had almost identical asylum seeker policies as the Coalition for the past five years. He also points out the numerous obstacles any potential people smuggler or asylum seeker would have to face, because the deterrent aspects of the policy are still firmly in place, and the new legislation applies only to the approximately 1000 people still on Nauru and Manus (of whom only a relatively small number will be allowed to access the urgent medical attention they need).
"Biloela family" asylum seekers In a long-running case in which a couple of
Tamil asylum seekers, Kokilapathmapriya Nadesalingam (Priya) and Nadesalingam Murugappan (Nades), were refused refugee status after settling and starting a family in
Biloela in central Queensland, the community rallied to support the family, who became known as "
the Biloela family" in the press. The family was removed in a dawn raid on their home and taken to
Melbourne in March 2018, pending deportation. Various legal avenues were pursued, with the family taken to
Christmas Island Detention Centre in late August 2018. In April 2020 they were awarded costs of more than $200,000 against the federal government, for lack of procedural fairness in assessing their youngest daughter's claim. After election of a Labor government under prime minister
Anthony Albanese, on 25 May 2022 interim home affairs minister
Jim Chalmers granted the family a
bridging visa which would allow the family to live and work in Biloela while they work towards the resolution of their immigration status.
March to May 2020 In March 2020, Home Affairs told the
Senate estimates committee that "211 refugees and asylum seekers remained on Nauru, 228 in Papua New Guinea, and about 1,220, including their dependents, were in Australia to receive medical treatment". Transfer and resettlement of approved refugees in the US was proceeding during the
COVID-19 pandemic. 35 refugees left Port Moresby on 28 May 2020, and others would be flown from their places of detention within Australia, to be resettled in 18 US cities.
July to October 2021 On 31 July 2021, there were 124 adults remaining in PNG and 107 on Nauru. In September 2021, the Minister for Home Affairs signed a new deal with Nauru to keep an ongoing form of asylum seeker processing centre on the island. In October 2021, the Australian Government cut off all support to the remaining men in PNG, leaving the PNG Government to take over responsibility for them. The remaining men were told that their options are transferring to the Nauru processing centre or resettling in PNG.
December 2021 – July 2022 As of December 2021, there were 2,352 "Irregular Maritime Arrivals" (IMAs) who had applied for a protection visa and whose
bridging visa had expired; there are no statistics for non-IMAs under the same conditions. This group has no access to services like
Medicare, no
Centrelink (
social security) payments or other
social services, and are not allowed to work. They rely on free food from charities, given to them in cash by the
Australian Red Cross each month, and live in overcrowded, rundown properties together. It was estimated in July 2022 that there were around 100,000 asylum seekers in Australia, with around 30,000 of those whose applications for refugee status have been rejected, and the rest status as yet undetermined, or on temporary visas. == Changes in 2016 ==