Image – www.theaustralian.com.au

For the time being, the moral and legal debates within the Australian nation appear to have been set aside as to whether it is rightful or wrongful to be turning back Asylum Seekers – flouting every contemporary social justice premise in addition to the now disregarded international humanitarian and maritime conventions. The news media has been generally quiet on the confronting predicament of Asylum Seekers hoarded off their rickety boats and forcibly placed in Australian bought sea vessels, presumably unsinkable life craft, and then instructed to head back to Indonesia.

It has been reported that the Australian Government has bought eleven 90 seat lifeboats. This had been confirmed in late January by Operation Sovereign Borders commander Angus Campbell. It had been hoped by the Australian Government that the first wave of returns – eleven – would send a powerful message to Asylum Seekers that they faced very little prospect – indeed ‘no chance’ – of being welcomed to Australian shores. To a significant extent it is working. The Government is hell bent on ‘stopping the boats’ and to ensure this there is an order for another eleven of these ‘unsinkable’ boats with an option for a further eleven. This has not been publicly reported but indeed is the case.

The Government’s secrecy around the turning back of Asylum Seekers and in how they are achieving this is a never-before-seen spectacle in modern Australian politics, and the Australian nation has relatively accepted it. There are no massive people-power marches or rallies around the nation, no substantive furor from the national consciousness.

Conditions in detention centres are of congestion, inadequacies, abuses, maltreatment, pregnant mothers and young children all at-risk, all this is known but it is making less and less impact on the national consciousness – thousands are not railing against Government nor marching in the streets. Suicide attempts are at record levels but it makes no difference. Thousands can rally for this and that but not any longer for Asylum Seekers who are now being hurriedly whisked out of the country – detention centres are one by one being closed down as the number of Asylum Seekers decrease – as they are being made some other nation’s problem, such as Indonesia.

Asylum Seekers who refuse to enter the Government bought vessels are physically forced to, they are threatened, they are left with no choice and the latitude for physical force is a zero tolerance level. However, it is not only Asylum Seekers who are forcibly turned back, indeed Asylum Seekers in offshore and onshore detention centres are being returned or repatriated to their last port of call or to their place of origin despite no assessments having been made on whether it is safe for them to be returned. Many have been returned to Sri Lanka as similarly the Government of Prime Minister Julia Gillard had been doing.

The protest at Christmas Island detention centre was because of the months that had passed without any prospect of processing of applications. Psychological warfare to induce the call to be returned to their place of origin.

We are in strange times where we see Asylum Seekers denied assessment of their applications – United Nations (UNCHR) officials have said to us that they are ‘shocked’ by Australia’s “descent to these deplorable behaviours” and “what message and example is an affluent nation like Australia sending to the rest of the world?” But what is stranger and an indictment is the effective idleness and quiet of the Australian mainstream media on the Kafkaesque conduct by the Australian Government – the zero accountability and transparency of their actions. The moral compass of the Australian national consciousness is not just bent but for now it is broken.

The ‘Australian silence’ is haunting.