Friday 24 January 2014

Representations of Asylum Seekers: SBS Dateline vs ABC Four Corners



I was disgusted to read the results of a recent poll which suggested that 60 per cent of Australians want the Abbott government to treat asylum seekers more harshly and only 30 per cent believe that most asylum seekers are genuine refugees.[1]  However, I was not surprised, considering that the demonisation of asylum seekers is loud and frequent across a range of institutions from which the Australian public forms its opinions.  Both the Coalition and Labor parties consistently treat asylum seekers as scapegoats for political gain, while much of the mainstream media (and other institutions) reinforce the notion that asylum seekers are illegal, menacing, economic migrants.  As a gay man speaking to other gay men, I don’t need to tell you that representations matter.  Most of us grew up exposed to many negative and narrow stereotypes about what it means to be gay.

Late last year, I wrote about SBS Dateline’s representation of asylum seekers in their segment ‘Village of Tears’ (Screening 01/10/13), a short 6 minute report on the sinking of an asylum seeker boat off the coast of Indonesia, on its way to Australia.  I argued that Dateline falsely and narrowly represented asylum seekers as merely economic migrants.  A month later, ABC’s Four Corners ran a story, ‘Trading Misery’ (18/11/13), a more in-depth, 46-minute piece focusing on the topic of people smuggling from Lebanon.  Interestingly, the Four Corners report features the same village and family that were the focus of the Dateline story.  Here, I will examine some major differences between the ABC and SBS coverage.  I will comment on the way the shows contribute to different narratives, Dateline, racist, simplistically and insidiously reinforcing asylum seekers as economic migrants, and Four Corners, proving a more complex, balanced and considered account of the asylum seeker experience.

Four Corners provides considerable background to the reason why people seek asylum.  It reveals that since the 1970s, people from Northern Lebanon have been emigrating to Australia.  The journalist explains that many have escaped this impoverished, dangerous region, where kidnapping and violence are getting worse.  Four Corners reveals that the village of Qabeit, the focus of the Dateline story, is less than 50 kilometers away from the war in Syria.  The narrator says, “it’s obvious why people would be desperate to leave”. 

Filmed in the same village, but on a sunny and peaceful looking day, the Dateline segment emphasises that it is poverty that is forcing the people of Qabeit to seek a better life in Australia.  There is no mention of the proximity of Qabeit to Syria, the increasing violence in the village, or that dangerous conditions mean that the people of the village cannot get to Beirut for work.  Dateline presents the villagers as nothing other than potential economic migrants.  Emily Howie notes that,

“boat migrants expressed livelihood issues, concerns for their own and their family’s safety, fear of sexual violence, fear of being arrested and detained, discrimination in the job market, poor employment and educational opportunities, land acquisitions and exclusions, the need for medical treatment, the fear of war returning, harassment and interrogation by security forces, fear of reprisals for political activity or speech, the need to secure their family’s financial future and the need to rise above the financial  hole they found themselves in”.[2] 

While Howie writes about asylum seekers fleeing Sri Lanka, her article provides an overview of the range of circumstances facing asylum seekers around the world, issues that over overlooked by the Dateline story.

Dateline encourages the viewer to place blame on the father, Hussein Koder, for the death of his family in the boat sinking tragedy.  Dateline achieves this by reinforcing popular negative stereoypes of Middle-Eastern men as irrational and misogynistic.  Four Corners uses interviews with the same man, Koder, and we see him in a more sympathetic light.  A number of asylum seekers are also interviewed, reinforcing claims that they were told that the boat that would take them to Australia would be safe and well-equipped.  In contrast, Dateline, suggests that Koder knew that the journey to Australia would threaten the life of his family.  Four Corners does not deny that Koder paid $80 000 in cash, in his attempt to get his wife and eight children to Australia, but it is only on Four Corners that we learn that Koder was deceived by the smugglers, who promised to fly (not ship) his family from Indonesia to Australia.  After spending 2.5 months with his family in Jakarta, Koder reveals that the offer to fly his family from Indonesia to Australia had fallen through, but he was again deceived by people smugglers.  He was shown pictures of a large, seaworthy ship that was going to take them from Indonesia to Australia. These vital pieces of information were absent from the Dateline report.  Instead of blaming Hussein for the tragedy, Four Corners helps me identify with his experience.  I too would flee a life-threatening environment that offered no future for my children.

While Dateline focuses on the plight of a single family, Four Corners interviews a number of people that were involved in the boat tragedy.  Four Corners presents a family in Tripoli, living on the most violent street in Lebanon, a frontline between warring Sunni and Shia neighbourhoods.  The mother and the remaining son (the father and the other two sons died when the boat sank) return home to Tripoli, but the son no longer sleeps at home because it is too dangerous.  The journalist provides a tour of the woman’s house and we see dozens of bullet holes in the inside walls.  By including the experience of the family in Tripoli, Four Corners gives a more rounded example of life in Northern Lebanon, where people are not just fleeing poverty, but live under constant threat for their lives.

After the boat sank, accusations emerged that Australian authorities ignored distress calls from the asylum seekers.  Dateline (and the Australian media) provides little evidence of the asylum seekers’ claims that Australia refused to respond to their calls for help. In contrast, Four Corners confirms that Christmas Island ocean patrol communicated directly with the passengers before the tragedy unfolded.  It is revealed that the asylum seekers sent a GPS reading from Koder’s phone.  We learn that Australian rescue planes received (and responded to) this reading, but were refused entry to Indonesian air space. Hours later, the boat was hit by a large wave and capsized, which eventuated in the drowning of 44 of the 72 people on board. It will be interesting to explore the investigation into the claims of ignored phone calls.  The revelation of a refusal of entry into Indonesian air space suggests that the tragedy may have been avoidable.  These vital pieces of information also challenge the incessant blame Dateline prescribes to Hussein Koder.

When we are witness to supposedly credible journalism like Dateline representing asylum seekers as opportunistic economic migrants, it is no surprise that the Australian public hate asylum seekers.  It is predictable that we stand back and let the government treat asylum seekers in ways that have been condemned by the United Nations.  As a gay man, I remember representations of sexuality and gender that were used to deliberately ridicule and victimise those who do not fit neatly into heterosexual, white, male ideal (and those who benefit from this hegemonic masculinity.  I am aware that scapegoating effects the lives of real people, shaping the consciousness of the public.  I hope to undertake more research into the way in which the institutions which powerfully inform us both misrepresent asylum seekers and undertake underlying racism. 

Wednesday 22 January 2014

Notes on Inequality


These are notes in response to Ben Eltham’s 21 January, 2014 article in New Matilda on in the need for Labor to address inequality, if it is to develop a narrative of difference from the Coalition.
  •  In Australia, “our levels of inequality are higher than the OECD average, and on the rise” (Miriam Lyons 2013, ‘Pushing our luck:  Ideas for Australian Progress, eds Lyons, March, Hogan, p. 8). 
  • In ‘The spirit level:  Why more equal societies almost always do better’, R. Wilkinson & K. Pickett explain that the vast majority of the population is harmed by greater inequality.  “Across whole populations, rates of mental illness are five time higher in the most unequal compared to the least unequal societies.  Similarly, in more unequal societies people are five times as likely to be imprisoned, six times as likely to be clinically obese, and murder rates may be many times higher.  The reason why these differences are so big is, quite simply, because the effects of inequality are not confined just to the lease well-off: instead they affect the vast majority of the population” (Wilkinson & Pickett 2009, p.181).
  •  Labor needs to move away from making struggles with the cost of living the focus of election campaigns.  Tax systems need to be appropriate.  “After several rounds of income tax cuts our tax system does less to reduce inequality than it did in the past decades.” (Lyons, 2013, p.8)
  • “Australia’s taxes are among the lowest in the developed world…In 2010, Australia’s taxes were approximately 26 percent of GDP, compared with an OECD average of around 34 percent…Again, Australia has a low proportion of government spending to GDP compared to other developed nations.  In 2012 our spending to GDP ration was around 35 per cent, compared to an OECD average of around 43 per cent”. (Lyons, March, Stebbing & Wilson 2013, pp 22-23)
  •  “Not surprisingly, just as individuals who trust other people are more likely to give to charity, more equal countries are also more generous to poorer countries.  The United Nations’ target for spending on foreign development aid is 0.7 per cent of Gross National Income.  Only Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands meet this target”.  Australia spends less than 0.3 of Gross National Income on Foreign Aid (Wilkinson & Picket 2009, pp 60-61).  
  • Australia ranks 16th in OECD countries for foreign aid.  Before the September election, Labor announced that $879 million would be cut from the aid budget over four years.  “About half of Foreign aid would go to Papua New Guinea, in an effective doubling of its aid program there, in return for support for Labor’s tougher asylum policy to resettle refugees who arrive by boat in PNG”.  (See http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-08-02/unicef-condemns-cuts-to-australia27s-foreign-aid/4862672 )
  • “According to OECD figures, 40.7 per cent of Australia’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) is “tied aid”.  That means it comes with a requirement that it be used to purchase products from Australia.  This may be good for Australia’s exports, but the same goods may be available at a lower price from other countries.  Thus “tied” aid is not worth as much to the recipient as aid that is not tied.  Donors have themselves acknowledged that tying aid represents poor value for money, increasing the costs by 15 to 30 per cent.  Tying such a large proportion of aid maybe in keeping with the view that the “single objective” of Australia’s aid program is to advance Australia’s national interest, but it is more difficult to reconcile with the ethical stance that a wealthy nation like Australia has an obligation to reduce poverty”. (Peter Singer & Tom Gregg 2004,  ‘How ethical is Australia:  An examination of Australia’s record as a global citizen’, p.24)


Monday 13 January 2014

Christopher Pyne appoints paranoid, homophobic, white, nasty Christian man to independently review the National Curriculum



“Given that all Australian schools, under the banner of the ALP’s education revolution, will be made to teach a national curriculum after 2012, it should not surprise if the Greens pressure the Gillard government to incorporate a positive view of LGBTI [Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex] lifestyles in the new curriculum.”[1] (Kevin Donnelly, 2011)

Kevin Donnelly is a former teacher, and director of the Education Standards Institute, a conservative think tank committed to Christian values. The above quote is from Donnelly’s chapter in a book published in 2011, The Greens:  Policies, reality and consequences, in which Donnelly critiques the Australian Greens’ education policies.  Donnelly argues that the Australian Greens attempt to use the school curriculum to assert their policies around anti-discrimination of gender identity and sexual orientation.  Donnelly, a fundamentalist Christian, is unhappy about an embrace of diversity at the expense of his perfect Christian, white, heterosexual fantasy.  In fact, his need to embrace the past makes him particularly paranoid about those individuals or groups that question the value of his opinion.  Despite his fragile and dangerous mind, last week, Education Minister Christopher Pyne appointed him as one of two ‘experts’ that will be responsible for the review of National Curriculum.

Donnelly consistently claims the Australian Labor Party education policy was ideologically driven, a supposed attempt at a radical moral and socialist agenda. Donnelly’s fear about positive representations of LGBTI issues being taught in school is consistent throughout his work.  He argues that the majority of faith-based schools would describe as unacceptable, a school curriculum that provided age-appropriate information about the diversity of sexuality[2].  His grandiose delusions about the destructive nature of diversity does not end at sexual and gender plurality.  Donnelly suffers from a mind-numbing fear of different religions and non-Western cultures.  Particularly threatening to a Donnelly are socialists and radical Islamists.

The Education Standards Institute’s website and the ABC’s ‘The Drum Opinion’ provide avenues for Donnelly to provide unnecessary detail of his thinking. He explains:

at a time of international terrorism represented by radical Islam and jihad there is no attempt to teach students about the liberal, democratic institutions and values that ensure Australia's stability and peace…Christianity barely rates a mention and ignored is that there are some cultural practices that are un-Australian and abhorrent to our way of life and that values like tolerance, civility and a commitment to freedom are a characteristic of Western, liberal democracies”[3].

Donnelly’s claims that Christian values are not being emphasised in the National Curriculum has been strongly rejected by the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), the national body responsible for the curriculum. While conservative commentators and politicians often claim that the curriculum has a left-wing bias, “thousands of teachers, academics and members of the community actively and productively participated in the development process and none of it became the Australian Curriculum until the federal, state and territory education ministers endorsed the final products”[4].

Donnelly’s appointment to review the National Curriculum is curious considering his very vocal support for the exemption of religious schools from anti-discrimination laws. Donnelly believes that Catholic and Independent schools should have the right to be exempt from anti-discrimination laws that would force schools to employ staff and admit students whose way of life and beliefs contradict the Church’s teaching[5].

The ability to discriminate was once considered a worthy attribute, to be guilty of discrimination is now a crime. To be conservative, on the basis that there are some things from the past that are worthwhile holding on to, is to be old-fashioned, out of touch and guilty of continuing past injustices. 

Those critical of feminism are labeled as misogynist, those who view gay/lesbian practices as unacceptable are condemned as homophobic and anyone championing the traditional form of marriage based on heterosexuality is guilty of discrimination and failing to respect the rights of others”[6].

Donnelly goes on to argue that imposing anti-discrimination laws on religious schools, “flies in the face of international human rights agreements and conventions protecting religious freedom”[7].  Ha ha.

Given that Donnelly was responsible for critiquing the Australian Greens’ education policies in the aforementioned 2011 book, his almost exclusive obsession with the issues of sexuality and gender, is curious.  According to the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA) the curriculum focuses, not on a particular ideology, but on how to best engage with students.  The curriculum is about teaching students to think and investigate[8]. A dysfunctional obsession with gender and sexual diversity and paranoia over the role of diversity in the destruction of modern western civilization is not a good starting point for a rational analysis of the National Curriculum.  I am horrified that Pyne has appointed Donnelly as one of the two reviewers of the National Curriculum. 




[1] Kevin Donnelly in McIntyre 2011, The Greens:  Policies, reality and consequences, p. 34)
[2] Kevin Donnelly in McIntyre (2011 p.34)
[3] http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/36006.html, retrieved 13 January 2014)
[5] Donnelly in McIntyre (2011, p.33)
[7] Donnelly in McIntyre (2011, p.33)