My Take | Australia’s indefinite detention system ends, but anti-immigration sentiment still well alive
- Instead of celebrating the end of a cruel policy, lawmakers are stoking fear among Australians of so-called imported criminals
- It isn’t the first time that public sentiment and migrants have been weaponised by politicians in tough times
Australia’s 20-year indefinite detention system for immigrants may have been finally brought to its knees, but systemic problems in governments that gave it life have not.
After the High Court last month ruled that politicians had for too long been punishing people by locking them up in de facto prisons, lawmakers have cashed in on the stresses of the Australian people for political mileage instead of celebrating the end of a cruel regime.
When around 140 detainees – some with criminal records – were freed in accordance with the law, opposition parties accused the government of releasing “criminals” into society.
That created a media storm and public outrage, or what Australian political writer Rachel Withers termed “selective outrage”. On social media and at pub conversations, people are suddenly upset that the government has put them in harm’s way.
Right-wing senator Pauline Hanson, famed for her 1996 comment that Australia was being “swamped by Asians”, on Wednesday chastised the government in parliament, saying: “You have made it unsafe for a lot of people, and the Australian people are concerned about who is now living among them.”
Here’s a quick reality check. Data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that across Australia, more than 170 people – some with “most serious offences/charges” – are released from jail every day. More than 80 per cent of those people are born in Australia. Around 60 per cent of the prison population has been incarcerated more than once, and that’s the highest the reoffending rate has been in the past decade, according to a report by Institute of Public Affairs.
Selective outrage indeed.