A refugee rights advocate believes Tasmania could be at the heart of a humane compromise on the asylum seeker debate. The Sunday Examiner's CALLA WAHLQUIST reports.
FORGET Nauru, the Malaysian solution or overcrowded isolated detention centres - barrister and refugee rights advocate Julian Burnside, QC, has a better idea.
Let's call it the Tasmanian solution.
"I think the island of Tasmania should be declared a place of detention, and asylum seekers could be sent down there to live in the community and we could say that technically they are in detention," Mr Burnside said.
He suggested the idea tongue- in-cheek to some Tasmanian friends after seeing how the Pontville community responded to the arrival of 300 asylum seekers last September, but now he's serious about it.
"It costs around $800 to $900 million a year to keep people in centres like Christmas Island, so the federal government could make a saving and give half that amount to Tasmania," he said.
"So refugees get to be in the community and the Tasmanian Government gets a half-a-billion bonus."
The high-profile barrister warmed to his idea as we spoke on the phone.
He said the asylum seekers would need housing, so that was a benefit to the construction industry and perhaps an opportunity to improve Tasmania's public housing stock.
But most importantly, he said, it would subvert the "indefensible" practice of holding people in bleak, overcrowded detention centres.
His preferred solution would be to throw out the model of long- term mandatory detention, but failing that - Tasmania.
"I wouldn't argue it's an indefensible hardship to send people to live in Tasmania," Mr Burnside joked.
"It's one way I can think of where you can maintain the figleaf of mandatory detention while allowing people to live in the community."
Having sketched out the plan, he's curious to see what the Tasmanian public think of it.
"Mention the half a billion dollars ... that should get the government," he said.
Mr Burnside said Tasmanian views on asylum seekers were more moderate than those north of Bass Strait.
"I don't know why that is - perhaps Tasmanians are just better people than the rest of us," he said.
With the exception of the Pontville detention centre, Tasmania has been left out of the border protection debate.
The arrival on Thursday of accused people smuggler Henki Bire has changed that.
The Indonesian national is alleged to have helped smuggle 47 people into Australia by boat and has been charged in Tasmania as part of a federal scheme to share the cost of prosecuting under the Migration Act.
Mr Bire is charged with aggravated people smuggling because of the number of people he is alleged to have smuggled.
Under the act's mandatory sentencing provisions, he will be jailed for eight to 20 years if convicted.
Mr Burnside said the perception of people smugglers as evil criminal masterminds - a "Mr Big" character - did not encompass the spectrum of people who could be charged under the act.
He said that while some undoubtedly organised the voyages for a profit, others were asylum seekers themselves or "for want of a better way to make a living" had taken a job on a boat.
"If anyone is to be punished for people smuggling, it should be the Mr Bigs, and not the rest," he said.
"But we tend to ignore the fact that people smugglers, whatever you might think of them, are providing a service that people actually need.
"Even the worst people smugglers are helping refugees find a place of safety."
It is not known what role Mr Bire, or the four other accused people smugglers expected to arrive in Tasmania this month, are alleged to have played.
Mr Burnside said he had a "cunning plan" to "ruin the people smugglers business model" by placing each asylum seeker to arrive in Indonesia on a numbered list, from which Australia would commit to take 10,000 people each year.
After all, there's no need to jump a queue if you can see it moving steadily.
If not, there's always the Tasmanian solution.
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