Docility and desert: Government discourses of compassion in Australia s asylum seeker debate

Transcription

1 690926JOS / Journal of SociologyPeterie research-article2017 Article Docility and desert: Government discourses of compassion in Australia s asylum seeker debate Journal of Sociology 2017, Vol. 53(2) The Author(s) 2017 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalspermissions.nav DOI: journals.sagepub.com/home/jos Michelle Peterie University of Sydney, Australia Abstract In the years since 2001, Australian governments on both sides of politics have at times appealed to compassion to justify their asylum seeker policies. This article takes these discourses of compassion contradictory and cynical as they sometimes seem and subjects them to careful and systematic analysis. It seeks to identify the underlying model of compassion that these government discourses employ, and to explain its significance. Ultimately it argues that the model of compassion that has been advanced by successive Australian governments deviates from traditional philosophical understandings of the concept. In reserving compassion for the weak and the passive, government discourses have allowed Australia to understand itself both as good and as powerful. When privilege replaces solidarity as the basis for compassion, discourses of compassion like the hardline rhetoric that scholars have often prioritised in their analyses speak to the fears and insecurities of the Australian people. Keywords asylum seekers, Australia, compassion, discourse, power Australia s asylum seeker debate has routinely identified deserving and undeserving objects of compassion and pitted these groups against each other. Often these categories have been occupied by offshore refugees and irregular maritime arrivals (IMAs) respectively, but this has not always been the case. While the categories themselves have remained relatively constant, they have been occupied by different groups during different Corresponding author: Michelle Peterie, Department of Sociology and Social Policy, School of Social and Political Sciences, School of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney NSW 2006, Australia. michelle.peterie@sydney.edu.au

2 352 Journal of Sociology 53(2) periods of government. The transition from the Howard government to the Rudd government in 2007, for instance, saw undeserving IMAs transformed from unworthy to worthy objects of compassion, and in recent years politicians on both sides of parliament have expressed compassion for IMAs even as they have sought to deter them. This article takes these discourses of compassion contradictory and cynical as they sometimes seem and subjects them to careful analysis. It sets aside questions of whether government policies have, indeed, been compassionate and instead seeks to understand the model of compassion that these governments have employed. Through a systematic analysis of government press statements, this article demonstrates that government discourses have consistently described good refugees and asylum seekers suitable objects of compassion as passive and vulnerable. These suitable objects of compassion have been contrasted against unsuitable objects not, as Aristotelian theory might predict, through the characterisation of one group as similar in their life prospects and the second group as different, but rather through the representation of one group as helpless and the second as different and, by extension, threatening. In Australia s asylum seeker debate, this article ultimately argues, discourses of compassion have functioned not as expressions of equality or solidarity, but as demonstrations of power. Discourses of compassion for refugees and asylum seekers have worked to reconcile Australia s self-conception as a good and decent country, with its overarching desire for power and control. The deserving and undeserving in Australia s asylum seeker debate As the literature has frequently noted, Australia s asylum seeker debate has often involved a binary opposition between those who are thought to deserve compassion and those who are thought not to. Traditionally these categories have been occupied by offshore refugees (the deserving) and IMAs (the undeserving), with compassion reserved for those good refugees and asylum seekers who have sought to enter Australia via the proper channels. These dichotomous representations have involved a number of dimensions: IMAs have been vilified as illegals (Klocker and Dunn, 2003; Pickering, 2001), queue jumpers (Gelber, 2003), economic migrants (Every and Augoustinos, 2008), a danger to Australian values and the Australian way of life (Clyne, 2005; Dunn et al., 2007; Every and Augoustinos, 2007), and potential terrorists (Poynting et al., 2004). People in offshore camps, on the other hand, have been described as genuine and morally upstanding refugees (see, for example, McAdam, 2013; Pickering, 2001; Stevens, 2002). Despite the literature s emphasis upon these constructions of deserving offshore refugees and undeserving IMAs, however, these binary categories have in fact been occupied by different parties during different periods of government. As this article will demonstrate, for instance, the transition from the Howard government to the Rudd government saw IMAs transformed from undeserving 'illegal immigrants' to needy victims who deserved Australia s compassion. In recent years, the way that the language of compassion has been used has also shifted. No longer the sole domain of bleeding heart liberals condemning cruel deterrence policies, compassion discourses have been appropriated by Australia s political right (Neumann, 2007). Controversial deterrence

3 Peterie 353 policies such as mandatory detention, offshore processing and boat turnarounds (where naval vessels intercept IMA boats en route to Australia and force them to turn back) have been described as compassionate attempts to prevent IMAs from risking their lives at sea. As such, while government policies may still distinguish between offshore refugees who deserve asylum in Australia and IMAs who do not, they nonetheless express compassion (however we might understand this) for both groups. It would not be unreasonable, of course, to view these appeals with some cynicism. As Neumann s analysis demonstrates, they can easily be seen as calculated government attempts to protect themselves against allegations of cruelty (Neumann, 2007). Nonetheless, the discourse analytic literature tells us that language generally, and elite discourse in particular, has power and is a worthy object of study (Fairclough and Fairclough, 2012; for a discussion of the relationship between public discourse and community attitudes towards asylum seekers see, for example, Klocker, 2004; Marr and Wilkinson, 2003; Pedersen et al., 2006). As Burack argues in relation to the discourses of America s Christian right: Compassion can function as a strategy that immunizes political actors and ideologies against accusations of hatred and extremism. However, if compassion campaigns have other effects besides such political payoffs effects such as calling for compassion from [ ] followers and defining for many the appropriate boundaries of compassion such campaigns require more careful assessment. (Burack, 2009: 49) This article thus takes Australia s compassion discourses seriously. It sets aside questions such as whether specific government policies are, in fact, compassionate, and even whether responses to suffering might be better located within the realm of rights. Instead it seeks to understand the underlying model of compassion that these discourses employ to map its contours and its boundaries. Once these features have been identified, the article turns to consider what this knowledge contributes to our broader comprehension of Australia s asylum seeker debate. The idea of compassion Much of the contemporary compassion scholarship draws, directly or otherwise, on the work of Aristotle. According to Nussbaum, Aristotelian compassion involves three key judgements: (1) the belief that the suffering is serious rather than trivial; (2) the belief that the suffering was not caused primarily by the person s own culpable actions; and (3) the belief that the pitier s own possibilities are similar to those of the sufferer. (Nussbaum 1996: 31) This model stresses the thought processes of the compassionate one, with each judgement made from their perspective rather than by the sufferer themselves (Nussbaum, 2003: 14). While Nussbaum has been praised for foregrounding the cognitive dimensions of compassion (Hoggett, 2006: 142) (emotions have at times been dismissed for their perceived irrationality [Clarke et al., 2006: 4]), her characterisation has not been universally

4 354 Journal of Sociology 53(2) accepted. Scholars have been quick to note exceptions to these rules examples of people feeling compassion for trivial or self-inflicted suffering or being moved by stories of distant or different sufferers (for example, Crisp, 2008). Hoggett has gone further, problematising Nussbaum s model by noting that many of those who suffer in contemporary societies would not qualify for compassion according to Nussbaum s definition as they would not be considered innocent (Hoggett, 2006). While this innocence requirement is no doubt potentially exclusionary, Nussbaum s third criterion namely the judgement of similar possibilities entails a more inclusive potential. Some have criticised this third criterion on the basis that it limits compassion to those we imagine to be similar to us, and certainly it would be problematic to suggest that compassion can only be felt for those with comparable life circumstances. An alternate reading of this criterion, however, understands the similar possibilities judgement as an invitation to recognise the shared humanity and moral equality of the suffering Other. Understood in this way, the notion of similar possibilities foregrounds the structural factors that contribute to social suffering; this model of compassion entails an explicit acknowledgement (on the part of the compassionate one) that many life privileges are neither guaranteed nor deserved. Understanding Nussbaum s third criterion in this light, this article will argue that Australian government discourses surrounding refugees and asylum seekers employ a model of compassion that denies the possibility of similar prospects. Worthy objects of compassion are not constructed as three-dimensional equals in situations that (given the inequalities that come with birth as well as living) could have befallen anyone; rather, they are presented as passive victims in need of saving. As such, this article argues, government discourses of compassion function not as expressions of solidarity but as performances of power and goodness. Research design The study that informs this article involved the collection, coding and analysis of the major press statements that Australia s prime ministers, immigration ministers and their shadow counterparts released on the topic of refugees and asylum seekers between and Over 400 press statements were considered in total, with the study focusing on (and sourcing statements from) election campaigns 2 and other periods of heightened debate and/or political significance. 3 This article will briefly discuss the discourses of each government, sacrificing some degree of detail in order to highlight the general contours of the compassion discourses that these governments have employed over time. The study focused on press statements for two main reasons. First, they are calculated attempts to shape the media agenda (the media often relies on these statements for content [Klocker and Dunn, 2003]) and, by extension, to influence public opinion (Louw, 2007: 164). As such, they constitute an inventory of the main rhetorical strategies that politicians are employing at any given time. During election campaigns, when discourses are refined and intensified, they are a particularly rich sources of data. Second, Australian government press statements are available online through the Hansard database Parlinfo, meaning these statements are accessible and the data source is complete. Statements were located using the search terms asylum, refugee, illegal and boat ; this collection

5 Peterie 355 method facilitated the systematic analysis of government discourses by providing comparable data from across the period in question. The collected statements were coded in NVivo against three categories, each of which corresponded to one of the Aristotelian criterion outlined above: (1) severe suffering, (2) innocence, and (3) similar possibilities. This coding process revealed when and on what basis refugees and asylum seekers were portrayed as deserving or undeserving of compassion; it also highlighted the ways in which government discourses of compassion compared to (and at times deviated from) this Aristotelian understanding of the concept. As has been foreshadowed and will be elaborated below, this analysis revealed a clear pattern in Australia s political discourses regarding refugees and asylum seekers. It showed that, in the years since 2001, governments have constructed suitable and unsuitable objects of compassion, but that these categories have not always been occupied by the same groups. Further, it demonstrated that the model of compassion that has been used to construct undeserving objects of compassion does appear to be Aristotelian. In these representations, governments have simply negated all three Aristotelian criteria to exclude people from Australia s compassion. When the government has sought to present deserving objects of compassion, however, they have done this not by describing people who fit all three criteria, but by describing people who fit only the first two. The significance of this will be discussed shortly, after a government-by-government description of Australia s key compassion discourses. The Howard government The events surrounding the 2001 election Howard s turning back of Tampa IMAs in a stand-off that received international attention; the introduction of the Pacific Solution, which instigated offshore processing, reduced Australia s migration zone and removed intercepted IMAs from the jurisdiction of Australia s courts; the terrorist attacks of September 11; and what came to be known as the Children Overboard Affair (for an in-depth analysis see Marr and Wilkinson, 2003) brought asylum seeker policy to the forefront of the campaign and, arguably, changed the shape of Australia s asylum seeker debate (McMaster, 2001). Viewed through the lens of Aristotelian theory, it is clear that the Howard government s discourse framed IMAs as unsuitable objects of compassion. This disqualification was achieved through a representation that (1) framed IMA suffering not just as trivial, but as fictional; (2) presented IMAs as culpable in their present situations; and (3) emphasised differences between IMAs and Australians. This representation functioned to reconcile Australia s self-image as a compassionate country with the punitive policies that the government was championing. The idea that IMAs were not experiencing real or significant suffering (according to the government, there were high levels of abuse of the asylum system in Australia [Ruddock, 2001c]) was communicated through the language of genuine and non-genuine refugees. The tautology genuine refugee recurred in the Howard government s discourse (for example, Howard, 2001b, 2001e; Ruddock, 2001b, 2001d), and the binary that it created acted to delegitimise all boat arrivals. IMAs, the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Philip Ruddock said, take scarce resettlement places which would otherwise be available to refugees identified overseas as being in greatest need

6 356 Journal of Sociology 53(2) (2001a). Far from having their suffering validated as severe (the first Aristotelian criterion), IMAs were recast as perpetrators of suffering both against the genuinely needy (IMAs stole their resettlement places) and against Australia. Government press releases went so far as to describe IMAs as criminals and potential terrorists (Howard, 2001e, 2001f) (a physical threat to Australia); as economic migrants (Ruddock, 2001e) (a danger to Australia s economy); and as will be elaborated in relation to Aristotle s similar possibilities judgement as a cultural hazard (Howard, 2001a). Aristotle s second criterion for compassion is the judgement of innocence. As flagged above with reference to allegations of criminality, the Howard government portrayed IMAs as anything but blameless. The ubiquitous use of illegal within government communications (for example, Howard, 2001d; Ruddock, 2001b, 2001e) conveyed criminality and guilt. Having come to Australia via the wrong channels, this discourse suggested, IMAs could not expect a warm reception. As Howard put it: We have a refugee programme and one of the things that we are arguing is that the people who are trying to come here illegally should be assessed like the refugees by the United Nations in accordance with the consistent procedure and not try and come here illegally and not to try and come here by courtesy of the people smugglers. (2001d) While the notion that IMAs were fleeing suffering had already been dismissed, these aspersions disqualified IMAs from compassion with respect to any future suffering that might be caused by government policy. IMAs, the government insisted, were criminals; they could not complain if they were treated as such. In relation to Aristotle s third criterion a comparable pattern emerges. Here, the idea that IMAs had come to Australia the wrong way was again important, as it suggested that IMAs had violated the Australian ideal of the fair go. The notion that IMAs were not like us that their values were fundamentally different from Australia s recurred in Howard s 2001 statements. Speaking in the context of the Children Overboard Affair, Howard declared: I can t comprehend how genuine refugees would throw their children overboard. I find that it is against the natural instinct, people leave a regime, leave a country, flee persecution to give a better life and to give a future to their children. Not to put it at risk in the way that, apparently, some of those people have done. (2001b) Hindsight tells us that those people were innocent of these charges (Saxton, 2003), but that the government used these allegations for their own political benefit (Marr and Wilkinson, 2003). This characterisation of IMAs cast them as unsuitable objects of compassion and all but demanded a punitive policy response. If Aristotelian compassion entails an acknowledgement of shared humanity and moral equality, if it requires the observer to recognise that they too are vulnerable to undeserved suffering, then Howard s suggestion that IMAs defied basic human instincts was significant indeed. In addition to presenting an object of condemnation, the Howard government constructed a binary opposite a group that was seen to deserve Australia s compassion. Under Howard, this position was occupied by offshore refugees languishing in refugee camps (Ruddock, 2001a). Nussbaum s Aristotelian model would predict that these

7 Peterie 357 deserving refugees were constructed as (1) suffering, (2) innocent, and (3) similar to us. A review of the Howard government s press statements suggests that this was not quite the case. Certainly offshore refugees were said to be experiencing severe suffering; as has already been discussed, the government reserved genuine refugee status for those residing in offshore camps. It is similarly true that offshore refugees were framed as innocent. Again, this innocence was largely established through allusions to the guilt of their onshore counterparts who unlike offshore refugees had sought to enter Australia illegally (for example, Ruddock, 2001a). Contrary to what might be expected, however, offshore refugees were not described as similar to the Australian us. Not, at least, in any way that signified equality. Ultimately, IMAs had been condemned on the basis that they sought to take control of their situations, rather than allowing countries like Australia to control their destinies (Howard, 2001c). As Green has observed, we learn from the Australian government that the only good refugee is a docile, obedient, domesticated person rescued from the UNHCR camps and given a home (Green, 2003: 9 10). Howard s construction thus saw offshore refugees as suitable objects of compassion, not because they were autonomous individuals like us (on this level, Australians seemingly had more in common with IMAs), but because unlike us and indeed unlike IMAs who threatened Australia s autonomy, they were helpless victims. They did not constitute a threat. The Rudd Gillard Rudd government 2007 saw the Australian Labor Party elected after more than 11 years of Coalition government. While Rudd positioned himself as a socially progressive alternative to Howard, boat arrivals received little direct attention in Rudd s campaign press releases. Indeed, despite Rudd s plan to dismantle the Pacific Solution and use the facility on Christmas Island (Rudd, 2007) to process IMAs, the Parliamentary Library s election analysis makes no reference to the issue (Bennett and Barber, 2009). Asylum seeker policy returned to prominence shortly after the election. In February 2008, Rudd announced that Australia s Manus Island and Nauru detention centres would be closed (Phillips and Spinks, 2013a: 11). Accompanying this change was a marked shift in government discourse. The binary opposition that Howard had constructed between IMAs and offshore refugees was abandoned and a new binary was introduced. Like his predecessor, Rudd constructed two groups in his discourse one that deserved condemnation and a second that deserved compassion. Rudd s discourses resembled Howard s in suggesting that those in the former group were (1) not suffering, (2) guilty, and (3) Other, while those in the latter were (1) suffering, (2) innocent, and (3) passive victims. In contrast to the Howard government, Rudd s construction did not pit IMAs against offshore refugees. Rather, IMAs and offshore refugees were both positioned as deserving of compassion, while a new national Other the people-smuggler (see also Cameron, 2013; Suhnan et al., 2012) was said to deserve punishment. While the policies and discourses that the Rudd government initially presented were different from Howard s, the model of compassion that they employed had much in common. To transform IMAs from Australia s Other into worthy recipients of compassion, Rudd transformed them from autonomous agents to victims.

8 358 Journal of Sociology 53(2) The Rudd government s representation of people-smugglers precluded any notion that crew members might themselves be worthy of compassion: they were not suffering, they were guilty, and they were Other. Crew members were not represented as equal humans (people who had made rational choices in complex circumstances, perhaps in some cases to escape poverty and suffering themselves); rather, their motivations were described as evil. Far from experiencing suffering in their own lives, people-smugglers were said to exploit the misery and misfortune of others, causing unfathomable suffering when they did so. For this, as well as for their attempts to abuse Australia s immigration system, people-smugglers were deemed guilty. In describing this group as evil and in removing all nuance from their representation, the Rudd government represented people-smugglers as fundamentally different from decent Australians. People-smugglers, Rudd suggested, deserved not compassion but the full force of Australia s righteous anger. Initially, this construction worked to justify less punitive policies where IMAs were concerned. By vilifying people-smugglers and presenting IMAs as their exploited victims, government discourses both validated the suffering of those who arrived by boat ( desperation was said to have led to these voyages) and absolved IMAs of guilt. Aristotle s first two criteria were satisfied. As Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Chris Evans stated, [w]e recognise that tackling people-smuggling, rather than vilifying its exploited clients, should be the focus of government policy (Evans, 2008). This construction saw Australia cast as powerful rescuer. The biblical injunction to care for the stranger in our midst is clear. The parable of the Good Samaritan is but one of the many which deal with the matter of how we should respond to the vulnerable stranger in our midst. (Rudd, 2006) Howard s preference for the weak and the vulnerable, as well as his casting of Australia as saviour and hero, thus continued. While Rudd s policies differed from Howard s, his discourses continued to understand compassion as an exercise in power and moral virtue, as distinct from an expression of equality and solidarity. While this construction was initially used to justify a softer approach to IMAs, it was later employed to warrant the opposite. As boat numbers increased and community concern grew, the government declared that tougher policies were needed to protect asylum seekers from people-smugglers (Rudd, 2009). The paternalism that characterised Rudd s initial construction was taken to its logical conclusion as the Rudd (and soon after the Gillard) government proposed tougher policy settings on the purported basis that they would deter IMAs from boarding boats and thus prevent deaths at sea. Gillard put forward a number of asylum seeker policies during her prime ministership, but all were underpinned by the idea that humanitarian compassion and border protection could be brought together in tough anti-people-smuggling policies. Gillard used the figure of the people-smuggler to reconcile Australia s preferred moral identity with her government s commitment to stopping IMA boats. There is nothing humane about a voyage across dangerous seas with the ever present risk of death in leaky boats captained by people smugglers (Gillard, 2010), Gillard said.

9 Peterie 359 The people-smuggler/ima binary was not the only dichotomy that Gillard employed; she also communicating a clear preference for offshore refugees over IMAs. The government s Malaysia People Swap Deal, for instance, (a policy proposal that would see Australia 'swap' 800 IMAs for 4000 UNHCR-recognised refugees) described IMAs and genuine refugees as mutually exclusive (Gillard, 2011) and assumed the existence of an orderly queue and a proper means of arrival. What we re aiming to do here is to break the people smuggler s business model, so if you get on a boat you end up at the back of the queue in Malaysia whilst we take 4000 more genuine refugees from the front of the queue (2011), Gillard said. The Gillard government s utilisation of these two seemingly contradictory narratives was summed up by immigration minister Bowen in his justification of no advantage processing, 4 a 2012 policy that saw some IMAs again subject to offshore processing. The government s policies, Bowen said, were guided by the dual principles of fairness and safety (2012). Significantly, these two principles corresponded with and made use of the dominant discourses of the Howard and Rudd government s respectively. The fairness principle utilised Howard s dichotomy of IMA and offshore refugees, suggesting that it would be unfair if IMAs were given priority over out of sight refugees waiting patiently in offshore camps. The safety principle, on the other hand, made use of Rudd s IMA/people-smuggler binary, suggesting that the kindest thing the government could do would be to remove the incentives that saw people boarding dangerous boats. Where the Rudd government s paternalism had portrayed IMAs as victims to be rescued (the man in the Good Samaritan story had been robbed, beaten and left for dead), Gillard s thus saw them as something akin to naughty children. While IMAs continued to be portrayed as the (1) suffering, (2) (relatively) innocent, and (3) exploited victims of people-smugglers, government discourses now incorporated a proviso: while IMAs deserved compassion, their actions (in jumping the queue to Australia) should not be encouraged or rewarded. In the lead-up to the 2013 federal election, amid Labor Party fears that Gillard could not lead the government to victory, Rudd again took leadership of the government. IMAs featured prominently in Rudd s election campaign. His approach, however, was markedly different from that of From now on, Rudd declared, any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees. I understand that this is a very hardline decision (in Welch, 2014: 102). Rudd proposed to achieve this outcome through a Regional Resettlement Arrangement. This arrangement would see new IMAs processed in Papua New Guinea or Nauru, and also resettled in these countries if they were found to be refugees (Refugee Council of Australia February, 2014). IMAs who were found not to be refugees would be returned to their countries or detained indefinitely. Gillard s most recent policy had seen IMAs threatened with the possibility of no advantage offshore processing, but only a selection of IMAs had actually been subject to the practice. The risk of no advantage offshore processing, it had been thought, was a sufficient deterrent. Rudd s policy, in contrast, would apply to all new IMAs. This was no advantage taken a step further. Asylum seekers would not simply receive no advantage if they came to Australia by boat; they would be actively disadvantaged. Rudd s 2013 campaign thus saw Howard s IMA/offshore refugee binary returned to sole prominence.

10 360 Journal of Sociology 53(2) The Abbott Turnbull government The 2013 federal election campaign has been widely described as a race to the bottom on the issue of asylum seekers. As Rudd announced his new Regional Resettlement Arrangement, Abbott unveiled a suite of hardline measures similar to those implemented in He described his policy using a (tellingly) military lexis; the name of the policy was Operation Sovereign Borders. Operation Sovereign Borders was built around three main pillars. Abbott planned to turn back boats wherever possible, to send all IMAs to Nauru or Manus Island for processing, and to reintroduce Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) (Abbott and Morrison, 2013). In promoting these policies, Abbott borrowed heavily from Howard s 2001 campaign, and he emphasised these similarities. [T]his is our country and we determine who comes here, he said (Abbott, 2013b). As Howard had done before him, Abbott described IMAs as unworthy of compassion by representing them as (1) non-genuine in their refugee claims; (2) guilty of crime, unfairness and manipulation; and (3) culturally Other. Abbott questioned the credentials of those arriving by boat, suggesting that IMAs were seeking to exploit Australia s generosity (and the flawed system that the Labor Party had introduced) by lodging fraudulent protection claims. Speaking to the statistic that [o]ver nine out of ten people who are coming by boats are being recognised [as refugees] under Labor s scheme (Abbott, 2013b), the Coalition challenged the accuracy of these status determinations. I ve said many times that Labor s been running a tick and flick approach when it comes to these assessments I mean the fact that they are giving the benefit of the doubt to people who are known to have thrown their documents away, goes completely against the policy proposals of the Coalition. (Morrison, 2013c) Echoing Ruddock (2001a), the Coalition insisted that they would not give IMAs the benefit of the doubt if it seemed likely that they had destroyed their identity documentation (Morrison, 2013a). Where Aristotle s judgements of suffering and innocence were concerned, IMAs were found wanting. This pattern continued with respect to the similar possibilities measure. Again, the idea that IMAs had employed stealth to enter Australia illegally was important, as it suggested that IMAs had questionable morals and did not share Australia s commitment to fairness. The Abbott opposition s campaign was also infused with a subtle racism. The government expressed a clear preference for Christian families, and implied that many of the IMAs coming to Australia were dangerous Muslim men (Morrison, 2013b). While references to biology were avoided, Morrison presented IMAs as threatening cultural Others. Juxtaposing this representation, refugees in offshore camps were once again presented as suitable objects of compassion. Coalition policies were described as humanitarian in nature because they prevented IMAs from stealing resettlement places that might otherwise be available to offshore refugees refugees, significantly, who were again characterised as genuine, innocent and helpless (see, for example, Abbott, 2013a). Through a discourse of concern for offshore refugees, the Abbott government thus insisted that its hardline policy settings were in fact compassionate. Abbott was replaced as prime minister by fellow Liberal Party minister Malcolm Turnbull on 15 September While it is perhaps too early to draw firm conclusions

11 Peterie 361 regarding Turnbull s approach to IMAs, his first year as prime minister has seen a clear pattern emerge. Where Abbott represented the Coalition s policies, first and foremost, as tough towards IMAs, Turnbull has preferred to describe them as compassionate (see, for example, Turnbull, 2016a). Turnbull went to the 2016 election with a familiar policy platform. The Coalition s three pillars [of] boat turnbacks, offshore processing and temporary protection visas had not changed (Turnbull, 2016i) and the government s approach was by Turnbull s own admission tough, even harsh (2016e). Rather than emphasising these qualities, however, Turnbull appropriated the Labor government s vocabulary of compassion and humanitarianism to frame these policies as kindnesses. We have denied the people smugglers the product they want to market. They cannot get their boats to Australia. That is why we are not seeing thousands of people put on boats, leaky boats, many of them drowning at sea. That has been a profoundly humanitarian act and we have been successful. (2016c) Rudd Gillard s discourse of evil people-smugglers and exploited IMAs with all the paternalism that that construction entailed thus returned to prominence. At the same time that he emphasised the humanitarian credentials of his own policies, Turnbull condemned alternative approaches as inhumane. In the aftermath of Rudd s decision to dismantle the Pacific Solution, the Turnbull government frequently recalled, there had been 50,000 unauthorised arrivals [and at least] 1200 deaths at sea (Turnbull, 2016h; see also Turnbull, 2016b, 2016d, 2016e, 2016f, 2016g; Dutton, 2016a, 2016b). Progressive policies that traditionally might have been described as compassionate were thus recast as cruel. Coalition policies were promoted for their capacity to save IMAs lives, but the dangers faced by those who were prevented from making these voyages were not discussed. As Hamilton (2011) has noted, the idea that death at sea in an unsafe boat is the greatest peril that asylum seekers have to fear, that they are the passive and deluded victims of people smugglers, and that their lives will benefit if people smugglers are neutered is clearly naïve. As such, the Turnbull government s discourses have resembled those of previous Australian governments in their reproduction of a model of compassion that denies the equal humanity and similar prospects of even worthy sufferers. Cast as victims who have been exploited by people-smugglers, IMAs have been described as (1) suffering and (2) innocent, but have been denied the nuance and autonomy of full humanity. The cultural politics of compassion in Australia s asylum seeker debate As this sweeping (and admittedly abridged) analysis of 15 years of Australian government press statements evidences, discourses of compassion are a well-established feature of Australia s asylum seeker debate. Viewed through the lens of Nussbaum s three Aristotelian criteria, it is clear that the model of compassion that successive Australian governments have evoked has deviated from a traditional Aristotelian understanding of compassion in one significant respect. As Nussbaum s exegesis would predict, governments have denied

12 362 Journal of Sociology 53(2) people compassion by casting doubt upon their (1) suffering; (2) innocence; and (3) similarity to us. At the same time, fitting objects of compassion have been validated as (1) suffering and (2) innocent, but have been denied the equal humanity implicit in Aristotelian compassion. Whatever else might be said about Nussbaum s Aristotelian model (Hoggett s [2006] critique is certainly convincing), the idea that we might bring Others into our circle of care by recognising their equal humanity is a powerful one. It is thus significant that Australian government discourses follow the contours of Nussbaum s Aristotelian model with this single exception. Where Aristotelian compassion entails the possibility of expanded solidarities, the model of compassion that is evoked in Australian government discourses surrounding IMAs involves the framing of deserving sufferers not as equals but as dependents. There is another way of thinking about compassion that has implications here. For scholars such as Berlant, contemporary compassion refers first and foremost to a particular kind of social relation (Berlant, 2004: 9); it is a term that denotes privilege (Berlant, 2004: 4). As Hutchinson explains, humanitarian narratives at times take on a colonial logic, perpetuating ideas concerning the inherent dependence of the developing world victims by casting the West as hero and rescuer (2014: 13). Understood in this way, compassion and indeed the sense of moral virtue associated with its expression (Hutchinson, 2014: 15) is a luxury of the privileged. More than this, expressing compassion can be seen as a demonstration both of virtue (King, 2000) and of power. Scholars such as Papastergiadis (2004) and McMaster (2002) have argued that border insecurities and invasion fears are well entrenched in the Australian psyche, and have framed hardline securitisation discourses as calculated performances aimed at anxious domestic audiences. Hardline policies and rhetoric, however, show Australia only its power. For a country that identifies as generous and kind, this is not enough. Discourses of compassion have gained traction in Australia s asylum seeker debate because they reconcile Australia s preferred self-image as a decent country with its underlying insecurities and need for control. Acknowledgements Thank you to Dr David Neil (University of Wollongong), Prof. Stephen Castles (University of Sydney) and Dr Susan Banki (University of Sydney), who reviewed earlier versions of this article and provided generous feedback and discussion. Funding This research was supported by an Australian Government Research Training Program (RTP) Scholarship. Notes 1. Australia s 2001 federal election campaign has received significant scholarly attention and is often considered a turning point in Australia s treatment of IMAs. It has become an analytical benchmark in the Australian literature, and is thus a suitable starting point for this analysis. 2. The periods studied were: 8 October 10 November 2001, 31 August 9 October 2004, 17 October 24 November 2007, 19 July 21 August 2010, 5 August 7 September 2013 and 9

13 Peterie 363 May 2 July All press statements matching the search terms were reviewed from these periods. 3. The dataset also included, for example, press statements from and/or concerning: the Rudd government s first year of office, the Gillard government s Malaysia people-swap announcement, the release of the Houston Report, and the release of the Forgotten Children Report. All press statements matching the search terms were reviewed from these periods. The periods themselves, however, were not as clearly defined as the election campaigns. Noteworthy time periods were identified through a review of the existing scholarship and commentaries. 4. The no advantage policy was introduced in response to the government-commissioned Houston Report. The Houston Report, as the government represented it in the days and weeks following its release, hinged on the principle that asylum seekers should not derive any advantage from travelling to Australia by boat. Under the government s implementation of the no advantage principle, Australia s processing centres on Nauru and Manus Island would be reopened and a selection of IMAs would be sent to these centres to have their refugee claims assessed. Those who were granted refugee status would not be resettled immediately, however. Rather, they would be made to wait for approximately the same period of time that they would have waited had they remained offshore (Phillips and Spinks, 2013b). Australia s mainland was also excised from the country s immigration zone so that all asylum seekers would be on the same legal footing regardless of whether they entered Australian waters. References Abbott, T. (2013a) Clearing Labor s 30,000 Illegal Arrivals Backlog, Parlinfo, 16 August. Abbott, T. (2013b) Transcript of the Hon. Tony Abbott MHR Joint Press Conference with Mr Scott Morrison MHR, Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Melbourne, Parlinfo, 16 August. Abbott, T. and S. Morrison (2013) Kevin Rudd s 50,000 Illegal Arrivals by Boat, Parlinfo, 7 August. Australian Government (2012) Report of the Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers. URL (consulted January 2017): expert_panel_on_asylum_seekers_full_report.pdf Bennett, S. and S. Barber (2009) Commonwealth Election 2007 Reissue, Parliamentary Library of Australia. Berlant, L. (2004) Introduction: Compassion (and Withholding), pp in Lauren Berlant (ed.) Compassion: The Culture and Politics of an Emotion. New York: Routledge. Bowen, C. (2012) Australia s Moral Obligations Towards People Seeking Asylum: Address to the Second Annual Bishop Joseph Grech Colloquium on Ethics and Migration, Parlinfo, 30 August. Burack, C. (2009) Compassion Campaigns and Antigay Politics: What Would Arendt Do?, Politics and Religion 2: Cameron, M. (2013) From Queue Jumpers to Absolute Scum of the Earth : Refugee and Organised Criminal Deviance in Australian Asylum Policy, Australian Journal of Politics and History 59: Clarke, S., P. Hoggett and S. Thompson (2006) The Study of Emotion: An Introduction, pp in S. Clarke, P. Hoggett and S. Thompson (eds) Emotion, Politics and Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Clyne, M. (2005) The Use of Exclusionary Language to Manipulate Opinion: John Howard, Asylum Seekers and the Reemergence of Political Incorrectness in Australia, Journal of Language and Politics 4:

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