Crime, Policy, and Governance: Response to the Australian Government’s Treatment of Refugees and Asylum-seekers

The Australian Federal Government has since 2001 maintained a narrow construction of the refugee and asylum seekers dilemma, framing the issue in political terms, and responding to the problem via harsh and expensive criminal law enforcement policies and sanctions. This has had the effect of masking the underlying problem and limiting the potential for its resolution. The political discourse surrounding refugee and asylum seekers policy has been framed and restricted in scope of the policy-making and response to issues of securitisation instead of humanitarianism. The recent ‘Regional Resettlement Arrangement between Australia and Papua New Guinea’ policy response (hereinafter ‘PNG’), characterised through a bilateral agreement with Papua New Guinea for the mandatory offshore processing, detention and resettlement of asylum seekers arriving to Australia, demonstrates this narrow construction. As it will be discovered, this policy maintains an elite-building narrative of governance through the rhetoric of national security, which is superimposed over Australia’s international obligations to safeguard the rights of refugees to receive access to protection.