The government’s position on the Rau case seems pretty clear. Ms Rau was an ‘illegal’, that is, a person found to be in Australia and unable to satisfy the authorities that she had a legitimate right to be here. As was established in apartheid South Africa, where the term originated, illegals have no human or civil rights. They can be locked up in atrocious conditions, denied contact with the outside world and so on. Now the authorities are satisfied about her status, and she has been duly released.
Many commentators, including bloggers, have insisted upon both the term ‘illegal’ and the fact that such people have no human rights. All that is new is the discovery that an ‘illegal’ is anyone the government chooses to detain.
John Quiggin 
So much rhetoric and not much reason, here. Firstly, Ms Rau’s family said last night on the news that they had been open and honest about their shortcomings and their lives had already been exposed to extensive scrutiny. They requested that for this reason alonge there shuld be a similar public inquiry into Cornelia’s treatment.
Secondly, although she has a german passport, from what I can gather she didn’t have it on her. Can anybody disprove this? If so, there was no evidence apart from her self-created identity that she was not an Australian citizen. The question that then arises is by what criteria was her non-citizenship assessed. Are Germans notorious queue jumpers? Do German people regularly turn up in North Queensland as illegal aliens? Perhaps there is a warp in space that we don’t know about?
The elephant that is staring at us is the one that makes the assumption that anybody found wandering around in the country will be assumed to be an illegal alien. This is a consequence of the new kafkaesque regime that has been established by DIMIA. The assumption is that one has to prove one’s innocence(i.e one’s Australianess) rather the other way round. It is a clear breach of the legal tradition of habeas corpus.
The issue is not whether psychiatrist in Brisbane assessed that she was sane or not. Unanswered is firstly the basis of their assessment – were the asked – is she certifiable? – i.e. detainable under the Mental Heaslth Act – or were the asked is she sane/telling the truth etc. The latter question no psychiatrist should be asked when it is a question of detention. It is a question that should be answered in front of a court – as per the principle of habeas corpus.
“The elephant that is staring at us is the one that makes the assumption that anybody found wandering around in the country will be assumed to be an illegal alien.”
This would not be an unreasonable assumption to make if a person claims to be a citizen of a country other than Australia and appears to have no legal basis for being here on the evidence she provides.
Non-resident aliens have contact with Australian authorities on a daily basis. Hardly any of them are detained and even fewer without cause.
“Secondly, although she has a german passport, from what I can gather she didn’t have it on her. Can anybody disprove this?’
She had someone else’s passport on her according to Vanstone. This, coupled with her insistence on being “Anna Schmidt” from Germany, no record of arrival, her ability with German and the likely inability of the German authorities to identify could have led to lengthy searching. The fact that she wasn’t a missing person during her incarceration in Queensland obviously didn’t help.
There are obviously a number of issues here. The way I see it is that people are confusing the fact that (i) Cornelia Rau was wrongly incarcerated and the fact that (ii) the state failed in their duty to care for her whilst this was happening. Amanda Vanstone is accountable for both of these things. Geoff Honour (above) is focussing upon the first of these.
The elephant that continues to beat me around the head is the second one — that we allow people to be treated in the manner that Cornelia Rau has been, regardless of their origin. It is only because Cornelia Rau was assumed to be an ‘illegal’, and then was found to be a permanent resident that her mistreatment has come to light. Strocchi (post #44, above) seems to think that this is OK, because it is not the general rule. I disagree. The very fact that we have a system that holds potential for this to happen is cause for shame. Just because we may have problems with lots of people coming to Australia does not give us cause to treat anyone like this.
The thing that concerns me is what else happens in this place. It gets easier to treat seriously other allegations that have been made. I guess the good thing from the Government’s perspective is that the outraged part of the electorate didn’t vote for them anyway, so there’s little downside for the PM et al.
Ray
Jack,
There’s ‘peecee’ of the Right as well as of the Left, you know. I could name plenty of places (in Canberra!) where you would encounter a rightwing ambience as stridently self-righteous and forbidding as that emanating from a leftwing roomful of Eva Coxes and John Pilgers. So I don’t find that term at all helpful.
I’m not arguing that a nation has no right to protect its borders. I’m saying that the response has been out of proportion to the degree of threat to our national sovereignty and cultural identity (which, like it or not, has been multi since -or before- the First Fleet, and has becoming more so ever since) . There ARE ways, short of slow-torture incarceration, to ensure we get no powderkeg situations here.
But, as a tactical protectionist, I have some sympathy with your sense of isolation…
Ros 28, my immediate source, the Australian today, mind you they confused psychiatrists with psychologists so your point is well made.
As to Ms Rau’s safety, I am ashamed to say I read the SMH and it was not known that someone was looking after her, merely that some chap said he would if she was released into his care. For whatever he says I don’t like the sound of that option much.
Family blaming is unfair so I am sure you won’t try and hold me responsible for my mother’s circumstances. She suffers from dementia, all of us trundling towards it might like to think about our future rights. She is held in custody without any legal foundation for it, we all just look the other way. She has the misfortune to have aggressive symptoms as part of her disease, which means that today I was again trying to avoid her placement at Glenside. If she is placed in the dementia wards at Glenside, 2 things , she is likely to be stuck there until she dies and secondly, Baxter would look great in comparison.
She does not see a psychiatrist for a week after she was admitted to hospital. In the meantime she is put on schizophrenia drugs that are knocking her for a six.
Many elderly Australians are locked up in sterile environments with no law allowing it, if they were just seen as mentally ill there are stringent requirements for incarceration, and for a very limited period. I recognise that this is a problem of mammoth proportions that is very difficult to solve. But I am angered by the shouting about unlawful non citizens and their rights while we ignore the plight of thousands of elderly citizens and the many Australians in goal with mental disorders.
by the way the drugs have not as yet relieved her symptoms, it is very optimiistic to assume that Ms Rau is now warm and safe. it may be that she is one of the unfortunates for whom the drugs don’t work. I wonder how many will be crying shame and help her if she ends up on the streets as so many do.
I remind myself and others of a reprimand I was given by a friend who suffers from Ms Rau’s horrible disease, I may be mad but I am not stupid. So lets give Ms Rau a say in her own issues and needs please.
Else it might look like she is just a cats paw for the anti detention brigade.
We do have to be careful here about mixing several issues which are both logically complex and emotionally compelling.
Theres the question of what this tells us about the treatment of refugees and the potential creeping power of DIMIA. Then there’s an issue about the resources available to treat mental illness – where I think many of the people here have had some experience through advocacy for family and friends and we would agree the situation is terrible. And then there’s the much thornier question of the rights of people with mental illnesses when their beliefs are deluded.
Both these latter issues are richly worth talking through but we should probably keep them separate at the moment.
And Ros – my partner’s father went into the same ward, so I know what you are talking about. And yes, I think we haven’t taken up mental health politics and we should.
“Theres the question of what this tells us about the treatment of refugees and the potential creeping power of DIMIA.”
But David, this is the point that Ros is making. Cornelia Rau never purported to be a refugee. Nor it seems did anyone ever imagine she was. She seems to have ended up in Baxter because no-one seemed to quite know how to resolve her case. A case based ultimately on the fact that she misrepresented her circumstances – a German national with unrecorded entry into Australia – owing to her psychiatric situation. There are obvious questions to be answered – and I deplore the government’s unwillingness to go the full public enquiry route – nevertheless; these matters are not centrally about refugee/asylum-seeker mandatory detention policy.
No-one has commented on the issue raised by JQ in the beginning – viz the term ‘illegal’ (noun). Asylum seekers who are locked up in places like Baxter are formally ‘unlawful non-citizens’. ‘Unlawful’ does not mean ‘illegal’, but merely that their means of arrival in this country was not lawfully authorised. The Immigration Act allows such people to be detained until their refugee status can be determined and also establishes a set of procedures to make this determination that resembles one of Bruce Petty’s machines – vastly complex and at the same time cobbled together with sticky tape and wire. ‘Illegal aliens’ by contrast are people who have breached visa conditions and have no other right to stay in Australia. At any time there are tens of thousands of illegal aliens loose in the country. Although this is a low-priority task, a few illegal aliens are apprehended and usually swifly deported. By contrast the total number of asylum seekers (now designated unlawful non-citizens) arriving in this country over the last 30 years is less than 30,000. Any way, back to JQ’s point – the term ‘illegal’ is a pejorative clearly designed to excite public hatred and to muddy the waters. There is nothing illegal about arriving in Australia without lawful authorisation, otherwise we’d be locking up shipwreck survivors. There is nothing illegal about claiming asylum. Calling these people ‘illegals’ is a deliberate slur. Like so much emerging from the mouths of our Prime Minister and his lieutenants, it dog whistles to the latent racists and xenophobes among the Australian population – ‘it’s ok, you can hate and fear these people and not feel guilty about it!’ That’s why they get away with treating refugees (which is what 19 out of 20 of them are eventually found to be) like dirt.
Why would a Refugee Advocate “miss-speak”? Guild the lily? Be a little casual with the truth? He wouldn’t be trying to make the Government look bad, would he?
Advocate did not contact Govt
February 09, 2005
SOUTH Australia’s public advocate said today that he had not tried to contact immigration officials about Cornelia Rau’s case, contradicting claims he made earlier in the week.
Public advocate John Harley, who has acted as guardian for other mentally ill asylum seekers, said this week he had pressed federal authorities for two months to examine Ms Rau’s case but was stonewalled by the immigration department.
“In 40 years, I have never dealt with such arrogant public servants in all my life,” Mr Harley told ABC Radio on Monday.
“If there is a good side to any of this, it is that it has highlighted the gross inadequacies of mental health services for people in detention,” he said.
“My experience with the Department of Immigration makes me extremely sceptical that anything good would come out of that department.”
But he said today there had been a miscommunication and he had not personally contacted the department about Ms Rau.
He had been aware of the case since last December but thought it was “pointless” speaking to the department because they ignored his representations, he said.
“They don’t take any notice of me because I’m just a state official,” Mr Harley said.
“It’s pointless me trying to get in contact with them.”
Oh, that’s alright then. He never contacted them about the issue, so that makes it a “miscommunication” and the relevant authorities are in error because they should have known he intented to communicate with them.
Harley Lied! Vanstone Died! (He wishes!!)
David I appreciate your empathy and your pain for the awful circumstances in which your partner’s father found himself. However,
“the fact that such people have no human rights�
JQ made his statement about human rights.
So why are the human rights of hundreds of unlawful non citizens a greater priority than the human rights of thousands of elderly Australians and Australians in goal
They are separate; the unlawful non-citizens have choices, limited, but choices. The demented don’t.
Creeping power of DIMIA, I don’t know what your struggle has been like but the defining moment of my fight for my Mum’s rights would have to be the response of the same doctors who control ACAT, the RAH and sit on the boards of nursing homes and visit the patients in those homes. On receipt of a specially sought legal opinion by the Federal dept that they must sign off on my mother’s ACAT assessment, not have a choice but MUST, they replied, well and good but that is not our policy. Their power and arrogance is terrifying. Then I had advice that my application for a formal guardianship and a section 32 might fail because the law required the least restrictive of guardianship and I already had good standing as an informal guardian. I cried as I signed the application but they would not hand her over until I did, and their power meant that I went to court or I signed.
Keep them separate at the moment, are you suggesting that once the issue of unlawful non-citizens is as the compassion industry would require that they will get on to disadvantaged mentally ill Australians. We both know that isn’t going to happen. It just doesn’t have the same ideological attraction does it.
Final whinge
“They can be locked up in atrocious conditions, denied contact with the outside world and so on�
What do you reckon the chances are that the demented will have lawyers banging on about getting in so that they can represent them. And what would we do if they did?
In point 15, John Quiggin writes that “This [in other words, the use of the term “illegal” as a noun] is either a borrowing, or an independent reinvention of a similar usage from apartheid South Africa.”
All I can say is, any South African usage is new to me; I first came across the term in the American media, related to America’s Mexican immigrants.
Harold if you listen you will note that the government and in particular Senator Vanstone and her predecessor Mr Ruddock always refer to unlawful non-citizens. The term illegals is not theirs.
And Razor, don’t miss our new pious Head of Mental Health who regaled us with his fight on behalf of Ms Rau, a fortnight before her release from Baxter I think. He is responsible for Downey House, the place of compassion for the elderly demented at Glenside. Maybe the papers didn’t report his concerns.
Geoff with no honour repeats the old garbage about refugeees destroying their papers.
I worked with two young afghan refugees and they both told me that the gang demanded their documents,which are obviously useful for smuggling purposes.
What strikes me about this debate is that the lock em up brigade don’t care whether the victim is moslem or german,just lock em up.
These people in their blind obedience to the ruddock’s and vanstones of this world only prove that they have no humanity.
Give me a moslem reffo to these australian scumbags anyday.
There are obvious questions to be answered – and I deplore the government’s unwillingness to go the full public enquiry route – nevertheless; these matters are not centrally about refugee/asylum-seeker mandatory detention policy.
Geoff H. Maybe not centrally but I think any taking away of a person’s freedoms should be open to independent public scrutiny. If advocates / community visitors (VIC) had been allowed to wander and talk and report on Baxter inmates as people then this would have emerged earlier. As a mistake maybe but not as a national disgrace.
Every day people more criminal, more cunning, more manipulative, more culpable than Ms Rau, are dealt with by police, mental health and emergency departments. And they are dealt with by these busier people with more dignity and humanity and in shorter time frames than was Ms Rau.
Its not good enough.
This delusion about the different treatment of the persons in detention is driving me mad. Francis sit quietly one day and listen to the lack of respect for the demented, like with the detainees it doesn’t matter that some are good at their job. The dehumanisng and indifference to dignity is heart wrenching. Behave yourself, …you will do as I say…if you, then you will not get…you are wetting yourself and are dirty that is why… listening to an old lady today ask a nurse making a bed, for 10 minutes, to take her to the toilet, the nurse staring at her, and then you should have asked 10 minutes before not 2 seconds. What the hell do I do about this. To the families, their true character comes out when they get dementia, she is not a nice person. Worrying about every bruise. Why don’t the advocates spend some time with Australians. Have you any idea how long an Australian citizen has to wait for an appointment with a psychiatrist. How on earth do you substantiate a claim that the criminal or mentally ill are treated with more humanity and dignity than detainees. You can’t. OK I have said enough, this is pointless, this is not about human rights or human dignity, it is about politics.
Geoff Honor wrote:
This would not be an unreasonable assumption to make if a person claims to be a citizen of a country other than Australia and appears to have no legal basis for being here on the evidence she provides.
I personally know at least one other German speaking Australian resident who regularly claims that she is an alien. She is not locked up or in any way imprisoned. Fortunately for her she wasn’t found in Queensland.
Somebody making the claim that they are from another country is not grounds for locking them up irrespective of whether they have or don’t have papers and whether they do or do not have another language. The assumption that anybody has to prove that they have a legal basis to be here – is a figleaf for facism.
The courts have a role in dealing with indigent or otherwise vagrant persons. And this is where she would have ended up in the days before DIMIA. How is it that DIMIA has ended up abrogating the normal process of the law. This is the question that should be at issue.
“Geoff with no honour repeats the old garbage about refugeees destroying their papers.
I worked with two young afghan refugees and they both told me that the gang demanded their documents,which are obviously useful for smuggling purposes.”
What’s your point?
“Geoff H. Maybe not centrally but I think any taking away of a person’s freedoms should be open to independent public scrutiny.”
So do I Francis. Passionately.
I am angered by the shouting about unlawful non citizens and their rights while we ignore the plight of thousands of elderly citizens and the many Australians in goal with mental disorders.
So, the detention and mistreatment of asylum seekers in concentration camps is helping your mother exactly how, Ros?
Especially because (1) it is helping foster the general climate of callousness and looktheotherway-ism towards people considered difficult or different, and (2) because the “Pacific solution” and desert camps have chewed up billions of our tax money, some of which could have gone to fixing the mental health situation in this country.
paul2 — 9/2/2005 @ 3:14 pm gets closer to the truth:
…test]
Yes. The assylum seekers, at current flow rates, pose little threat to sovereignty or security of this nation. The repellent measures taken – detention, deterrence etc – are out of proportion.
HOwever the govts border protection and cultural identity policy is not aimed at asylum-seekers per se. It is aimed at degrading, demoralising and disempowering Cultural Elites and progressive-liberal sentiment in the community.
One can look at this Culture War as a political stunt, a wedge to put between the working class against outsiders. From this pov Howard’s cultural policies isshameless political cynicism exploiting human misery for power.
Or one can look at this as a policy strategy, as a way of disempowering an inept, iniquitous and unpopular political faction that has done much damage to AUS civic culture. From this pov, Howards conservative-liberalism has patched up damage to the civic culture (ethnic lobbies, Aboriginal welfare dependency, spinster feminists,) inflicted by a generation of policy folly
Obviously I, by and large, take the latter pov. Either way, the Howard govts reactionary Cultural War has been a rousing succes. But I think its time to declare a cease fire to this war (and its attendant “collateral damage” to detainees) as the Wets have well and truly Declined.
I don’t know exactly where this thread is going but my last 2c worth is I’ve always wondered about the rationale of those who support ‘the protection of our borders’ and mandatory detention is that the overwhelming number of illegals come from the US and UK on planes and overstay their visas. But that’s OK there are probably white and non-Muslim.
Also from the last time I heard the figure, Australia was not meeting its yearly refugee intake anyway.
Had to laugh when some of the Pacific Solution refugees ended up settling in Australia anyway. Not to worry it was only our tax dollars being wasted.
Lastly it just occurred to me why we blew our cash on the Pacific Solution. Since our country has had declining levels of foreign aid since the 60’s we just found another way to give them the money and make them work for it as well. Win/Win. Just like it’s better to buy navel boats and pay for detention centres to create local jobs than give foreign aid that would go towards helping them stay in their country of origin in the first place. Who said you couldn’t have your cake and eat it.
“…one can look at this as a policy strategy, as a way of disempowering an inept, iniquitous and unpopular political faction that has done much damage to AUS civic culture. From this pov, Howards conservative-liberalism has patched up damage to the civic culture (ethnic lobbies, Aboriginal welfare dependency, spinster feminists,) inflicted by a generation of policy folly…”
Mandatory detention began under the ALP, Jack. Your argument has no logical footing.
Fyodor on 10/2/2005 @ 11:10 am makes a reasonable point and then tries (foolishly) to score a point:
…test]
Fyodor means empirical, rather than logical, footing since my statement was deficient in factual, rather than logical, value. But I take his point.
Man-det did indeed begin under Keating in the early nineties. However this was a defensive political move by Keating, to RWDB neutralise attacks from the Allan Jones demographic. It proved ineffective as the black day of 1996 proved.
Howard went onto use Man-Det & Bo-Co as an aggressive political tactic, to shift the entire polity to in a conservative-liberal direction and to hive off former ALP leaning cultural populists in Latham’s aspirational Sydney, Hansons battling regions and the Howard’s “Red State” overmortgaged outer suburbs.
The wedge tactic has clearly worked to demoralise Cultural Elites (listen to LNL any night of the week) who have now adopted the foetal position. The high tide of progressive-liberal sentiment has ebbed, as the post-Keating Decline of the Wets proves. If you can cope with several hunderd words of Tony Abbott’s gloating & spinning you can read all about it here.
Howard’s Culture War has also more or less taken the initiative from the progressive-liberal policy agenda. Aboriginal self-government, Multiculturalism, the Republic etc may be a way of allaying AUS cultural elites nagging sense of self-doubt but no-one seriously talks about these policies as a way ameliorating the problems of minorities.
“The wedge tactic has clearly worked to demoralise Cultural Elites (listen to LNL any night of the week) who have now adopted the foetal position. The high tide of progressive-liberal sentiment has ebbed, as the post-Keating Decline of the Wets proves.”
Jack’s reference to the “foetal position” is somewhat Freudian. The Decline Of The Wets thesis doesn’t look so convincing in the light of the current abortion debate, which has disclosed that a large majority of Australians oppose the cultural conservatives’ shibboleth of opposition to abortion, and has also seen the Wets in the Liberal Party being somewhat more vocal than they’ve been for more than a few years.
Over to Jack. . .
Groan. Jack, it’s not logical for you to argue that Howard’s use of mandatory detention was aimed at “disempowering an inept, iniquitous and unpopular political faction”, because mandatory detention was not his policy. Yes, you got your facts wrong, but your logic is also faulty, just as your “Decline of the Wets” thesis is also full of holes, as I’ve demonstrated on several occasions. True to form, however, you don’t let the facts get in the way of your half-baked theory.
“The Decline Of The Wets thesis doesn’t look so convincing in the light of the current abortion debate, which has disclosed that a large majority of Australians oppose the cultural conservatives’ shibboleth of opposition to abortion, and has also seen the Wets in the Liberal Party being somewhat more vocal than they’ve been for more than a few years.”
This argument holds slightly more water than the revisionist claim that the US in fact won the Vietnam War.
The Australian electorate has wearied of the concerns of left-liberals and they are inclined to be in a vengeful mood when reminded about how useful many of those ideas are for the maintenance of a civil society.
And any government can score electoral points by locking up the toy-boxes of the Left and swallowing the key.
So, no more arts funding, no more big, government, funded conferences, no more public-funded “social criticism” from the groves of academe. Even chardonnay is beginning to disappear from the shelves at Dan Murphy’s.
And the punters love it.
I think that most people would agree that referring to any person, as opposed to their conduct, as “illegal” is innaccurate, but I don’t believe that it is commonly used. As for describing the conduct of asylum seekers as “illegal”, the 1951 convention itself uses that terminology:
Article 31
Refugees unlawfully in the country of refuge.
(1)The Contracting States shall not impose penalties, on account of their illegal entry or presence, on refugees who, coming directly from a territory where their life or freedom was threatened in the sense of Article 1, enter or are present in their territory without authorization, provided they present themselves without delay to the authorities and show good cause for their illegal entry or presence.
Paul Norton — 10/2/2005 @ 1:01 pm
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The very fact that high-profile cultural conservatives (eg Abbott) are criticising abortion on demand and cultural progressives (eg Turnbull) are out there encourgaging a higher birthrate refutes Paul Norton’s criticism of my DoW thesis. These positions would not have even been countenanced during the high tide of the Wets (1983-96).
…test]
That would not be difficult as anything above zero is a sign of life.
Further evidence: Beazley, an even more pro-American & hawkish Labor leader, has been re-elected as leader of the ALP.
Fyodor — 10/2/2005 @ 1:33 pm attempts the unusual intellectual feat of revising history in favour of (his) losing team:
…test]
I concede a trivial error of historical fact but my logical inference (in respect of Howards’ aggressive political strategy) was correct.
Fyodor has never demonstrated anything to me apart from a certain blockheadedness regarding his pet political faction. Its probably a hopeless task bringing Fyodor up to speed on politics, let alone philosphy, but here goes.
Its the Culture War, stupid! Seeing as Howard declared Cullture War counterattack, confidently predicted “the times would suit [me]” and gloated about his Culture War victory one would have to be as obtuse as…a dyed in the wool Wet to miss this.
I hate [not] to rub it in, but Fyodor should spend some time lookiing at the past decades scoreboard. It makes a sorry sight for those still in the thrall of progressive-liberal political urges, let alone policy fantasies.
From 1996 (13%) through 2004 (9%) the progressive-liberal parties share of SEN vote declined by 30%!. In the meantime the ALP leader went from Cultural Wet (Keating) to Cultural Dry (Beazley) whilts the LN/P leader went from Cultural Wet (Hewson) to Cultural Dry (Howard). The GREENs know now to downplay ideology in favour of ecology (why else would Garrett have joined the ALP?) And dont get me started on Hanson (do I have to remind commenters that she was the standout political figure of the second half of the nineties?
All this would be obvious to someone whose head wasnt stuck in the sand or some other dark and solipsistic place.
Welcome to Fyodor’s strange world.
A dry argument is a boring one. I bet that at the next election (2008) the progessive-liberal Wet (GREEN/AUS DEM) share of the SEN vote will decline even further. Any takers?
Slightly off topic, but I keep coming back to one thing…how many native speaking Germans actually heard Rau speak German, and preferably some who hadn’t been here for very long. Did she speak her *German* with an accent? If so, that would have alerted someone as to how long she had been away from Germany at least and given a glue as to where she had been. And maybe encouraged more effort along a different line of enquiry. I would be curious if Ros remembers who said Rau’s German was ‘childish’ – because that as well would have been typical of, amongst other things, a first generation migrant or else someone who was not raised in their “native country” and who did not use their language regularly outside home, especially if by “childish” it meant limited vocabulary etc. (Did she speak a German dialect I wonder…)
OK Rau was not exactly found in Cabrammatta – something which I think may have gone against her in this sorry saga. But if this observation of ‘childish German’ was made (has this been reported anywhere Ros? I assume it was by a German speaker) would it have been reasonable – along with where she was found, stolen passport etc etc – for someone to tweak that maybe Rau wasn’t telling the truth about that either.
It was correct to explore the German option..not that that helped…but some of these linguistic clues – if reported correctly in the press, including reports that she sometimes spoke english with an Aussie accent – ight not have precluded a decision that she was an illegal, but might have forced a different line of enquiry for identifying her which might have yielded less tragic results.
And apologies for such a contorted comment – thinking aloud.
One of the questions raised by the events pertaining to Ms Rau is what behaviour is considered normal in any particular setting.
The Courier Mail today tells us that it was the publican at Coen who alerted the police in Cairns. Coen is about halfway between Cairns and the tip of Cape York Peninsula. As such it is very remote. The publican was concerned about a woman identifying as a foreigner unable to pay for a room or food, heading north with no apparent preparations. This was not normal.
She may have found that posing as a German gained her assistance but at that point of remoteness it clearly wasn’t enough.
When she was assessed at the Princess Alexandra hospital her behaviour was apparently within a band of normalcy identifying as a German who had overstayed. On local radio today it was stated that the PA Hospital deemed her well enough to deport. This is very different to giving her a clean bill of health.
At Baxter she was stripping off her clothes, eating dirt, wanting to die, being returned to her cell by four heavies in riot gear, under observation and hence under lighting 24/7 etc. It seems to me her mental condition had deteriorated badly at that point, as it would with indefinite incarceration and a complete loss of hope. I’m interested to know whether and for how long her behaviour in Baxter was considered within the band of normalcy in that institution.
The difficulty with Brian Basnich’s thesis about the insularity of Coen is that it begs the question of whether the rest of Queensland is just as insular.
In the 1890’s the light house keeper at Point King, the entrance to Princess Royal Harbour(Albany’s harbour),lived in a house that was built on a rocky promontory close to the waves.
At the time the Russian Navy was considered a threat to the Empire because of it’s moves in the Sea of Japan.
One dark and stormy night the light house keeper heard a knock at the door. Fearing it was the Russian’s, he refused entry and the poor shipwrecked sailor, who had swum ashore, had to find his way into town 2km away to get assistance.
Like Cornelia Rau, the sailor’s distress was filtered by the paranoia of guilty and ill-gotten power.
Jack,
For the umpteenth time, the decline in the vote for the “progressive liberal” parties, as you call them, was driven by the collapse of the Democrats, for idiosyncratic reasons. The Greens increased their vote substantially. And your assertion that “The GREENs know now to downplay ideology in favour of ecology (why else would Garrett have joined the ALP?)…” would be news to the actual members of the party [which I’m not, BTW].
The fact that Abbott’s spoken up about abortion says nothing about the current political climate – he’s always been opposed to it, and often said so. His views do not represent a shift in the popular mood.
Saint, my memory which may be faulty is that DIMIA did the language thing and concluded that Ms Rau’s German had an accent (not identified as an Aussie one, rather not known) and that her German was childish. But it may have been the German Consul General who made that point. The German Consul also put some effort into trying to locate the family she claimed to have in Germany. I heard this on an ABC News radio report I believe, but don’t hold me to it. Anyway we can all become instant experts now as Beattie has chosen to put her confidential interviews on the radio and TV. I am surprised that her sister was in a position to agree on her behalf. If she did not have a power of attorney, (unlikely to be enduring if she did) and that has a time limit on it, then she was not in a position to give permission. Also one must do as one believes the person one represents would want in life matters. I am absolutely sure that the only person who should have been able to give permission is Ms Rau. I think her sister better start thinking about the very smart operators who are using her in this tragic incident. Beattie would know about powers and privacy law. it might be that Ms Rau’s sister has a formal guardianship under NSW law, but that would have required a hearing at which Ms Rau was present and represented and as she apparently is of the view that she doesn’t love her family and they don’t love her it is hard to imagine that it would have been with her approval
As to the possibility of getting onto a different track re Ms Rau’s nationality, it would certainly not occur to me that if I couldn’t find your info that you were pretending to be an unlawful when actually an Aussie citizen. While the psychiatrists/witchdoctors can claim to make diagnosis long distance and with no information, I would remind people that to be deluded is not to be stupid. How on earth do people think that Ms Rau persuaded the Manly Hospital to let her out when it was clearly her intention to shoot through. She is not dumb, give her some credit folks, and lower your opinions of your own great insight and the value of hindsight.Simon I don’t know an what you base your stats for overstayers and detentions, but I did note that one of the witnesses for the prosecution was the occupier of the next room to Ms Rau, (or so he said) and he was an overstayed visa, English. Who one would guess had ignored requests to leave and as a result had ended up in Baxter.
Helen, the look the other way attitude was well and truly established before the argument with the Liberal government detaining unlawful entries. After evicting mentally ill people onto the streets, for after the clamour about human rights for the mentally ill and the deinstitutionalisation we all know that is what occurred, the compassion crowd moved on. It just isn’t as sexy to argue for the elderly demented would be the kindest interpretation of what gets the clamouring going. As to, if we didn’t spend it on detention centres we would spend it on the elderly, maybe a somewhat unreal understanding of how politics and the carving up of the pie works.
At least there is very little pretence left in this thread that concern for Ms Rau is what is driving the shouting.
Kyan, I think that’s laying it on a bit thick and is a gratuitous swipe at Qld which I don’t particularly want to defend. Nevertheless, I can’t let it pass.
The Coen publican’s concern was for her personal competence and safety. He notified the local cops and gave her a bed in a donga behind the hotel when she couldn’t pay. The cops had a chat with her and she said she was Anna Stromeyer from Munich. They thought something didn’t gel and contacted DIMIA. She shot through first thing in the morning and was found hoofing it 20km north by Primary Industries officers who have a station there. They notified the local police, who already knew from DIMIA that Anna Stromeyer didn’t exist on their records as a legal entrant to Oz. They picked her up as agents of DIMIA and in an inventory of her possessions found some-one else’s passport. They drove her 576km back to Cairns where the cops took her to Brisbane (Cairns is further away from Brisbane than Melbourne) again under DIMIA.
From what Debra Kilroy of Sisters Inside has said, she complained of being wrongfully imprisoned and some harsh treatment at Brisbane Women’s prison, but didn’t present as some-one who was nuts.
To that point it seems to be a case of every-one doing their job and even people looking out for each other.
But the system drew her into a vortex and ground her up. And on a personal/mental health level things held together, it seems, until Baxter, where bereft of hope and help her ‘normal’ behaviour broke down. My point is in part that what is not normal behaviour seems at Baxter to be common and is in effect becoming normalised.
Beattie has apologised to Ms Rau and her family and has called for an open inquiry.
It won’t be open and we may never know what happened, because what happened is clearly a matter of public interest. Meanwhile on the facts presented so far I don’t, as a Queenslander, feel any less hospitable than any other Australian.
Jack Strocchi wrote:
“The very fact that high-profile cultural conservatives (eg Abbott) are criticising abortion on demand and cultural progressives (eg Turnbull) are out there encourgaging a higher birthrate refutes Paul Norton’s criticism of my DoW thesis. These positions would not have even been countenanced during the high tide of the Wets (1983-96).”
To take the last point first, criticisms of (so-called) abortion on demand *were* countenanced during the 1980s, including by high-profile cultural conservatives such as Lachlan Chipman (in Quadrant) and Joh Bjelke-Petersen (e.g. the raids on the Greenslopes Clinic). As well there were punitive (and successful) right-to-life electoral interventions against sitting Labor MPs Barry Cunningham and Michael Maher, both of whom were pro-lifers but were damned for not being hard enough on the issue. Their unseating helped to create a dominant myth within the ALP about the huge electoral clout of the pro-life constituency, which is one reason why pro-choice advocates have generally not made headway within ALP forums which have debated the abortion issue. As for Abbott, he is a combative conviction politician and I’m sure that if he’d been a Coalition MP in the 1980s he’d have been running with the issue then.
This brings me to the first point. It is an open question whether politicians like Abbott and religious conservatives like Pell and Jensen have been emboldened on the issue of abortion because they think there is a cultural conservative tide running their way. But if they do think this, they are wrong, at least on the specific issue of abortion. Public opinion surveys (including those cited by Katherine Betts in the latest edition of People & Place) show a steady and major shift in public opinion towards the pro-choice end of the spectrum. Betts, who is a formidable conservative culture warrior in her own right who shares much of Jack’s antipathy to the “pee-cee po-mo multi-culti agenda”, is unequivocal in her view that her male comrades have misread the mood of the punters and picked the wrong issue to fight on.
On Malcolm Turnbull’s comments about the birthrate, I have closely followed the fertility decline and the wider work and family debate for some time, and I can assure Jack that we cultural progressives (e.g. Peter McDonald, Pru Goward, Adele Horin, Jocelyn Pixley, me) love talking about this issue. We derive much schadenfreude at the expense of cultural conservatives from statistics showing that societies where culturally conservative work-family policies prevail (e.g. southern Europe, Japan) have experienced crashing fertility levels, whilst societies pursuing culturally progressive work-family policies (e.g. some Scandinavian countries) have stabilised their fertility rates. Basically, the cultural progressive camp has discursively pilfered angst about fertility decline in support of our own agenda on gender, family and sexuality.
To cut a long story short, my criticism has not been refuted in the manner that Jack suggests.
Ros, thanks for the info (and yes I sometimes wonder who in the family has the right to speak on behalf of Cornelia Rau, and I agree, Rau seems to have shot through at Manly; not sure how much the influence of her cult friends played there; and from a statement from NSW authorities it seems she may have still been on medication then…)
But….based on Mark’s additional info above on events in Coen and if the assessment on her suitability for deportation reflects what was in the Queensland medical authorities’ report, it is starting to sound as if the authorities were pretty quick in assessing her as an illegal, and the purpose of the Queensland medical assessment was not her care but to deem her fit enough to travel/be deemed rational to support the decision that she was illegal?????. And so, from then on the question was ‘deport to where’. She could have languished in Baxter for ever.
Simon – like this.
“Six-and-a-half years after entering detention, Australia’s current longest-serving asylum seeker, the stateless Indian (Muhammed) Peter Qasim, is facing lifetime detention…
…Mr Qasim’s problem is that he is not wanted by Australia, and no other country will take him.”
I’ve had the chance to think again about the issues raised in my exchange with Jack Strocchi about abortion, and also in a column by Dennis Glover in today’s Age.
Glover’s column, my exchange with Jack, and much of the commentary on this issue posit it (explicitly or implicitly) as an issue of cultural politics and a key battlefield in the culture war between conservatives and progressives. Whilst this characterisation is not false, it misses an essential dimension of the abortion issue which is in front of all our noses, but which we’ve had trouble noticing.
This is that, for most women (and indeed most couples) of reproductive age, the prospect of not being able to terminate an unintended pregnancy, and thereby having to go through with the birth of an unplanned (and perhaps unaffordable) child, is a matter of very fundamental importance to their physical and mental health, their financial circumstances and their career and economic aspirations. Therefore, whether their subjective cultural-political proclivities may be, most Australians of reproductive age (including and especially most of those in the young working family/mortgagee/aspirational demographics which have delivered victory to Howard in recent elections) have a strong objective interest in opposing attempts to limit access to abortion, and this (rather than kulturkamf considerations) will be the prime determinant of their position on the issue. This is reflected in what we know about current public opinion on abortion.
Of course if we look at the abortion issue in this perspective, it somewhat weakens my previous criticism of Jack’s DOTW thesis. If it is a mistake to primarily conceptualise abortion as an issue in the culture wars, it is likewise a mistake to claim majority public support for abortion rights as a victory for the Cultural Left. But this then begs the question of, and demands greater clarity about, exactly what it means to construct an issue as an issue of Cultural Politics. Perhaps such a construction is the luxury of white blokes (e.g. me, Jack, Dennis Glover) who don’t have an exigent objective stake in how such issues are resolved.
Kyan, that lighthouse keeper’s behaviour was not paranoid, for the geopolitical circumstances of that era. It was just that it wasn’t the Russian threat that materialised without notice in the extremities of the empire, it was the German one.
In 1914 a very similar scenario happened to a keeper in the Falkland Islands, spotting a whole German scquadron. His wife miscarried after hurrying to raise the alarm.
PML -it was regarded as paranoid at the time because the reality was that the sailor wasn’t Russian but was shipwrecked and their had been no reports of Russian ships anywhere south of the equator.
My apologies to any Queenslanders offended by my ‘gratuitous swipe’. I should have asked the question that was on my mind. In W.A. the Mental Health Laws have been updated so that anyone ‘sectioned’ under the act has the right to access the courts and can appeal their detention. Has Queensland similarly updated it’s Mental Health Act?
Brian Basnich’s comment suggests that DIMIA seems to have been directing things from the beginning with the Qld authorities acting at their behest. This suggests that what’s at issue here is not a question of miscommunication, or the need for a national missing persons database etc. Instead we should be asking what are the powers of DIMIA acting as if it is a police force? Where were the Federal Police, for instance?
It seems clear that the Federal Government is going to explain it away as a need for a national database and better communication. But, if Cornelia Rau had never had her fingerprints taken, how would DIMIA identify her, photo-recognition. One thing that is clear from the photos published of her, is that her appearance has changed radically since she was an air hostess.
How hard does DIMIA have to try to identify her as a missing person?
This issue is important because when the state can make indigent people ‘disappear’ like this, then it is only one step away from making troublesome people disappear.
kyangadac,
That is the whole problem,why has the DIMIA such authority without any apparent responsibilety?
How long are Australians going to put up with this situation? until there are no dissenters left.
Paul Norton — 11/2/2005 @ 2:42 pm makes many interesting comments
st…test]
I cannot address this evening as my girlfriend has banned me from extended blogging tonight.
Fyodor — 11/2/2005 @ 7:07 am
[test…test…test]
I will deal with you later.
No probs Kyan, but the name is Bahnisch. I get called all sorts of things but the combination of letters you came up with is new.
Saint, it’s me here, Brian, not Mark. Can’t any-one check a name properly?
Turns out I can’t because I gave Cornelia Rau’s alias as Anna Stromeyer, when it should have been Brotmeyer. Oh dear! I can claim I was tired, but what a muddle!
Kyan, I can’t clarify Qld’s Mental Health Act, but it does seem that our police routinely act on behalf of DIMIA. There are no refugee detention facilities here. It has been said that we currently are holding 10 others in prison on behalf of DIMIA.
Ros makes a valid point about who has authority to speak on behalf of Cornelia Rau and the propiety of Beattie releasing a conversation that I understand was held under the condition of confidentiality and anonymity.
There is indeed a lot to worry about in how people can be spirited away. Nor are the mental health people at Princess Alexandra Hospital entirely in the clear. There must have been some reason an assessment was requested and there have been allegations made that decisions on health matters are influenced by the inadequacy of the facilities. On the local media we have heard that the PA Mental Health unit is badly designed physically (although recently reconditioned) for the observation of patients, that the staff are run off their feet and that the facility lacks sufficient beds. A separate Qld investigation has been called for, which Beattie is not about to agree to, it seems.
Under all the circumstances the criticisms of the DIMIA enquiry seem valid. People are not compelled to cooperate and witnesses are given no protection. This is not satisfactory when there appears much to hide.
I tend to think nevertheless that Cornelia Rau was never any-one’s top priority at any time except perhaps the cop who had to drive her from Coen to Cairns. One aspect that definitely doesn’t help is that thanks to Labor the detention system was designed to reduce access to detainees. Hence the marginalised, the oppressed, the overlooked and indeed the ill within the system are more likely to stay that way.
Ms rau claimed to be an illegal under two different names.
Does the immigration department have a computer?
You bet they have,why didn’t they find that there was no entry into australia by either of these two people in the last couple of years?
why didn’t they find that there was no entry into australia by either of these two people in the last couple of years?
marklatham, according to the Courier Mail article I quoted above, they did. Also Germany has a national ID system and she didn’t show up as one of theirs. So they knew her story had to be bogus and Debra Kilroy said she spoke plain English to her in prison in Qld. To Immigration it appears she was just in the too hard basket. I wonder whether any-one actually concentrated their mind on the problem at all.
PML, do you think that a lighthouse might would believe that a Russian sailor, suspected by him to be bent upon the Tsar’s fell purpose of occupying the British Empire one rocky outcrop at a time, would quietly go away after knocking on the lighthouse door and being denied entry?
If so, then there is nothing for it but to lament the passing of the innocent days of yore.