MEDIA RELEASE 13 JULY 2004:

Tony Kevin comments on Government Change of Policy on TPVs

 

Howard, now busily reinventing himself as the Prime Minister for Civility, could no longer be seen as defending gross cruelty towards 9000 TPV holders in Australia – not with an election coming on.

Another broken Howard core promise – after so many broken and damaged asylum-seeker lives.

 

This welcome policy easing (as reported by Cynthia Banham, SMH 13 July 2004) will hopefully end the anxiety about their futures of the seven SIEV X survivors who were living on Temporary Protection Visas in Australia, and of the very much larger number of SIEV X bereaved family members who are in Australia on TPVs – possibly running into several hundreds. (As the 288 women and children who died in SIEV X had their husbands and fathers waiting for them in Australia, in detention or on TPVs)

But let us not kid ourselves that this decision was taken for any but the most crude reasons of its own political survival. The Howard government came under pressure from backbenchers at electoral risk to clean up its act at the last minute, and cynically responded at last.

It could have taken this humanitarian decision at any time since December 2001 when it already knew that its covert people smuggling disruption program, as a result of which hundreds of people drowned, had closed down the people smuggling trade in Indonesia.

The needless cruelty of keeping SIEV X victims and other TPV boat people waiting in anxiety for another 2 ½ years speaks for itself. These people were left in great misery and stress for 2 1/2 years - for nothing.

This latest policy shift – which apparently does not involve revoking the TPV legislation, which seems to be all still in place ready for use when next found politically useful - - is significant for another reason.

It shows that coalition polling must have picked up that the public mood has changed – Australians no longer are comfortable with government cruelty towards boat people.

Howard, now busily reinventing himself as the Prime Minister for Civility, could no longer be seen as defending gross cruelty towards 9000 TPV holders in Australia – not with an election coming on.

Another broken Howard core promise – after so many broken and damaged asylum-seeker lives.

Tony Kevin is the author of "A Certain Maritime Incident: The Sinking of SIEV X"

(Scribe Books, Melbourne - forthcoming release date 2 August 2004).

Further enquiries:

Tony Kevin 02 62956588 or 0414 822 171