By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Some federal election candidates in Hotham have shown support for the Back Your Neighbour asylum-seeker campaign, while others shied away.
Greens candidate Louisa Willoughby said she supported the multi-council campaign led by City of Greater Dandenong, which aimed to ensure “fair and humane” resettlement of refugees.
More than 1000 asylum seekers are estimated to be living in Greater Dandenong. Many have been waiting years to apply for permanent protection.
“The current system is cruel and unjust,” Ms Willoughby said.
“Asylum seekers are living destitute in our community for years on end – unable to access basic services like Medicare, Centrelink and AMEP English classes, or to work legally.”
Ms Willoughby said applications needed to be processed in timely fashion so “refugees can get on with rebuilding their lives in Australia”.
“Waiting years – sometimes upwards of 10 years – for a determination of refugee status to be made causes unnecessary stress and trauma for refugees.”
Hotham Labor MP Clare O’Neil was “travelling on a tight schedule for aged care meetings” so unable to provide a “full answer”, a staff member told Star Journal.
“I can advise that Labor does not support Temporary Protection Visas but would create a pathway to permanency for eligible applicants,” the staffer said.
“I do know that Clare is very unhappy with the current process of course. Applications are held up for a ridiculously long time.
“We helped some people from Afghanistan last year. A few manage to get out.
“But a lot of people we were dealing with were held up by the lack of action at this end.”
Candidates from the Liberal Party, United Australia Party and Liberal Democrats did not respond.
The Federal Government recently attacked the ALP’s opposition to TPVs.
The visas – which don’t allow asylum seekers who arrive by boat to permanently resettle – were branded a key plank of Operation Sovereign Borders, Government MPs say.
The ALP has re-iterated its support for the turning-back of boats carrying asylum seekers.
Monash University politics senior lecturer Dr Zareh Ghazarian said the two major parties seemed set on similarly “hard” border protection policies.
“They seemingly want to be seen as ‘tough’ on border protection.
“That concerns a lot of voters. It’s going to be one of those things that may motivate some voters to look for alternatives.”
The four aims of Back Your Neighbour are:
• access to Centrelink, Medicare and support services for asylum seekers,
• replacing TPVs with permanent visas,
• clearing the backlog of asylum applications and appeals,
• overhauling the refugee determination process.
After a recent trip to Canberra, Greater Dandenong’s Labor mayor Jim Memeti claimed there was “very positive” – but informal – support from Labor MPs on all four points.
At the time, Greater Dandenong Greens councillor Rhonda Garad said Labor and Liberal MPs agreed the backlog of claims was a “pressing issue”.
“Both (parties) agreed that they were likely to take action after the election though were not specific about what those changes would be.”
The Greens MPs were “extremely supportive” on all four issues, Cr Garad said.
