In a multi-part series, Resolved delves into the murky waters of the asylum seeker’s debate, exploring the reasons why people get aboard leaky boats bound for Australia, in the hope of a new life.

We will be chatting to two guests from a Christian, refugee activist group known as Love Makes A Way.

Interview Transcript:

Nick: Welcome to Resolved. Now what would motivate you to sell all your possessions, flee your homeland, board a leaky boat and effectively risk life and limb to come to Australia?

Yes, today we’re delving into the deep waters of the asylum seeker debate and joining us in the studio to discuss this are Matt Anslow and Jody Lightfoot from Love Makes A Way, Gentlemen, welcome to you both.

Matt: Thanks for having us.

Jody: Thanks for having us, Nick.

Nick: Why are people getting on boats, what’s the story there?

Matt: That’s a great question, and in some ways, it’s the question that frames this whole debate about asylum seekers and refugees. People, ultimately get on boats because that’s how bad things are for them.

We can debate about people getting on boats and how dangerous it is, but ultimately, people will get on boats and they will seek asylum in safe countries like Australia, not because they’re economic migrations, but because they are people who are in desperate situations, whether it’s a situation of persecution, some kind of oppression, or even the danger of being murdered or killed, for their faith or who they are or whatever it might be, people are in those situations and they will always get on boats as a result.

Jody: A friend of mine shared with me a metaphor and if you imagine for a moment that you live in a complex and in that complex, there are a hundred apartment buildings and each of those apartment buildings have a family. Suddenly, a fire engulfs the complex, it blocks the exits and you call out for help and the fire brigade come. The problem is, the fire brigade only have one ladder and that enables them to help one family escape safely from the flames.

Now this is the situation of asylum seekers in that, the UNHCR has capacity to resettle less than one percent of all asylum seekers and so they have the choice, the remaining nighty nine percent to stay and be engulfed by the flames or to jump and many asylum seekers are risking everything for the chance of a life for their families.

So the short version of that is people get on boats for the same reason people jump from burning buildings, they’ll actually die if they stay.

Nick: So, what do you say to people who run this claim that they’re queue jumpers, they’re skipping this process and for every person we take illegally, we’re taking less person through the proper means?

Jody: There’s this narrative that it’s not actually legal for asylum seekers to come by boat. The truth is, under the refugee convention, it is legal for asylum seekers to come to Australia, regardless of what the means are and ninety percent of people who have come by boat have been found to be genuine refugees.

The queue is also a myth, there is actually no queue. One of the things Australia could really do is just increase our humanitarian intake and that’s sort of action as well as other actions can actually create an incentive for people not to get on boats and create safer pathways to Australia.

Matt: Part of the problem at the moment is that Australia links its humanitarian intake with arrivals via boat or whatever, which ultimately limits the amount of people that we take from the so called “queue”. But as Jody said, all commentators who know about this issue, argue that there is no queue, there is no orderly process and there is no sense that if you arrive first in a refugee camp in another country, seeking to come to a country which has signed the refugee convention, there’s no guarantee that because you get there first, you will be settled first. It doesn’t work like that.

People have lived in camps for years and years, some families for more than one generation, just waiting to be settled in another country. I mean the queue, as Jody said, is a myth and one that we need to continually uncover because it keeps coming up.

Nick: When this topic of asylum seekers is raised, people seem to have a very strong reaction, one way or the other. Why do you guys think that is?

Matt: I think that in Australia, we have been unfortunately sold a kind of myth about strangers, about people from different places, people who are different from us. That leads us to be afraid. The reaction that a lot of people have to asylum seekers where they express vitriol, or anger, or outrage, or whatever it might be, I think that it’s actually based in fear, not in anger per say, I think that the anger is a symptom of the fear that we feel.

Part of that, I think, relates to our history. I have a friend in Brisbane, a very wise, sage type figure named Dave Andrews and he has suggested, many times, that we are afraid of asylum seekers coming here and taking what we have or whatever because that’s we did! I mean, the history of Australia is such that we disposed a people of this land and somewhere in our psyche, somewhere in our national spirit, or whatever we might call it, we’re worried that there might actually be people who will come and do the same thing.

In a sense, until we resolve our national history, maybe we’ll never come to terms with that, I don’t know. But I think fear is at the base of how people react to this.

Jody: And I guess the flip side of fear-based reactions, you’d have people operating in a different narrative, if you believe that people are genuinely seeking to come to Australia to have a chance at life and then we see them placed in indefinite detention, places that experts have called factories of mental illness, including children, then that’s going to illicit a very different response based on a different emotion.

Nick: Do you think that there’s been an intentional agenda to dehumanise these people and if so, to what end?

Jody: Mark Blyth has got a book, it’s called The History of a Dangerous Idea and it talks about the history of non-violent movements, and one of the key takeaways of the book is that whenever a country or a group of people seeks to oppress another group, whether it be slavery, or systems of apartheid, what happens first is the dehumanisation of that group and that dehumanisation seeks to create a sort of justification that allows that oppression to continue.

The dehumanisation of asylum seekers, as labelled as illegals, or queue jumpers, or whatever it might be, that’s almost created a justification for us to have a system like indefinite detention. I think there has been quite an intentional campaign to create those fear-based narratives, and I think part of our role is to create narratives that talk about the incredible diversity that asylum seekers can bring to Australia where we celebrate and welcome them as people.

Matt: Yeah, I think my answer to the question of whether the dehumanisation of asylum seekers is intentional is kind of a 50/50. Of course, there is a sense that people are making choices, conscience choices to dehumanise a certain group of people. Why do they do it? I’m not really sure and I wouldn’t be bold enough to judge their motivations.

I suspect it does have something to do with wrangling political support and gaining political power through fear and I mean that’s a tactic that is not related to just this issue, but a broad range of issues in world history. Fear is an incredibly powerful way to get people to be loyal to you if you say that you have the solution.

I also think that there’s an element which it’s not necessarily intentional, like I genuinely believe that our politicians who are leading the charge on the rhetoric of fear on this issue are actually themselves victims of something bigger, like a kind of bigger structure, a bigger set of attitudes that have manifested themselves in the Australian community. They are at the whim of this kind of structure as much as everyone else.

Nick: How do you respond though to people that react with this vitriolic hatred towards asylum seekers? What can you say to take the heat out of the topic? Can you say anything to really take the heat out of the topic with some people?

Matt: Look, I think sometimes the answer is no. I mean, that’s the unfortunate truth, isn’t it? I mean, it doesn’t matter what you say to some people, in that moment, you are not going to change their minds. That’s the reality, and we need to just come to terms with that and be at peace with it.

But I think in the longer term, after that conversation happens or whatever it might be, I think there are possibilities, I think people are able to change their minds. I don’t think fear is the strongest emotion, I don’t think hatred is stronger than love, I think people can change their minds.

It’s not so much about what you say, even though that is important, I think it’s about how you say it. Very rarely are people convinced by arguments at the time, I think it’s when they go away and think about what has been said. But that only really works if you have treated that person with respect and that’s part of the conversation that we want to have with the politicians, part of our actions with Love Makes A Way comes out of our philosophy on these things.

You can’t say that we want to love asylum seekers and then express hatred for politicians, like that doesn’t work. I mean, apart from that being hypocritical, you’re never going to transform the whole system by doing that. You need to speak to politicians and speak of politicians in such a way as to suggest that “yeah, they are doing the wrong thing, the policies are wrong, they are evil policies”, but the people behind them, they’re not evil people. They’re people that are caught up in this larger structure that is causing them to do things that I don’t even think, deep down, they think are right.

Jody: What we like to do is try and share facts. We hear a myth being perpetuated about asylum seekers and we think “if people would just know the facts, then we’ll be able to change hearts and minds”, but what we know through a lot of research is that people are changed through stories.

Whether it’s through developing personal relationships with asylum seekers through initiatives like “Welcome to my place”, or if it’s hearing why you personally care and I guess in your own personal story of why you care about asylum seekers, it really goes into who’s delivering the message to whom.

One of the roles we can play in our communities is that “I’m going to be a really effective messenger for my communities, my identity groups, like Christians, my family”, but I’m not going to be able to influence other communities and other identity groups in the same way and so, if we have multiple messengers and each of us communicating stories about asylum seekers and humanising them, then we can really begin to shift the story in Australia and how we think about them.

Matt: And part of that is trying to find situations for people to actually meet asylum seekers. I mean there’s not that many, so in terms of people who have just recently come to Australia, seeking asylum, there’s not that many, I mean a few dozen-thousand is actually a very small number.

But if people can meet them or at least hear their stories in person, I think that makes a huge difference, because you realise we’re not talking about things, we’re talking about people.

I think that’s pretty transformative for people.