Bridging visas for boat refugees

Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard. Photo / Getty Images

Pushed against the wall by the collapse of her asylum-seeker policy in Parliament, Prime Minister Julia Gillard has been forced to treat boat arrivals equally with the far greater number of overstayers who arrive each year by air.

The hair-trigger sensitivities of boats from Indonesia has always ignored the reality of numbers, and has instead refused the special bridging visas routinely given to airline overstayers.

Although limited in access to welfare, the visas allow asylum seekers to live and work in the community until their claims are processed.

In contrast, boat arrivals are arrested and placed in mandatory detention, usually for lengthy periods that studies have repeatedly shown can cause serious mental and physical problems.

Mandatory detention has been condemned by the United Nations, lawyers and human rights groups, refugee advocates and mental health experts.

Research by the Parliamentary Library shows that historically more than 90 per cent of asylum seekers arrived by air, although in the past three years this has slipped to 56 per cent.

Boat arrivals are also far more likely to be accepted as genuine refugees than airline overstayers.

The bitter and opportunistic political war that has been waged over asylum seekers arriving by boat has ensured - for the moment at least - that they will now be treated equally.

Mandatory detention will still apply, but Immigration Minister Chris Bowen confirmed that boat arrivals will also now be given access to bridging visas, and that the existing programme of moving detainees into the community will continue.

There are more than 900 people in detention on Christmas Island, about 2200 in mainland detention centres, and more than 1100 living in the community while their claims are being processed.

But the move to onshore processing and bridging visas - welcomed by human rights and refugee advocates - has come at huge political cost to Gillard's fragile minority Government.

While Labor dumped key aspects of former Prime Minister John Howard's "Pacific solution", including detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, it remained committed to offshore processing.

This denied asylum seekers access to the Australian legal system and was regarded as a key deterrent to people smugglers.

As the number of boats began to rise under Labor the issue descended into political farce.

Gillard supported offshore processing but rejected Nauru and PNG, vainly sought a centre in East Timor, and finally settled on a deal to exchange 400 asylum seekers for 8000 United Nations-accredited refugees from Malaysia.

The High Court scuttled that plan, although Australia will still take the Malaysian refugees.

Opposition Leader Tony Abbott also advocated offshore processing but rejected the Malaysian swap and insisted on re-opening Nauru.

In the following standoff, Gillard suffered humiliating defeat in Parliament by failing to gain the numbers needed to override the High Court, and was forced into onshore processing.

Abbott also killed one of his key policies by defeating Gillard, but won a huge political scorecard that will further weaken the teetering Government.

"What a shabby, miserable, divided and directionless Government this rabble have become," he said.

Gillard hit back: "I mean, how crassly destructive and political can you get?"