While mainstream media attention is focused on offshore detention, boat turnarounds and relations with Indonesia, for the asylum seekers who manage to make it to Australian shores, the situation is still grim.
The demonisation of asylum seekers lets the government get away with ignoring their welfare rights. Many are left in limbo.
Red Flag’s Kim Doyle spoke to Kon Karapanagiotidis, founder of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, about what life is like for refugees with little or no government support.
The ASRC began as a class project with a group of TAFE students in Footscray, a little food bank providing food to asylum seekers. Twelve and a half years later, they’ve assisted more than 10,000 asylum seekers and have 900 volunteers, more than 40 paid staff and 23 aid programs.
“Seventy-eight and a half percent of the people we work with right now live with no government support at all”, says Kon.
Hunger is a common problem, “because for most community-based asylum seekers, there’s no Centrelink. There’s this Red Cross support, which is 89 percent of Newstart allowance, but the criteria for it are very strict. So there are thousands of people on no income at all.”
If you do manage to get the allowance, you’re on roughly $215 a week. “After you pay rent … you’re on about $3 a day. Three bucks to clothe yourself, feed yourself, pay your utilities.”
Despite the government’s attempts to dehumanise asylum seekers, Kon is not surprised by the generosity of ordinary people. “One of the really beautiful things is, I’ll call it maybe ‘opportunistic humanism’, recognising that the worse things become and the shittier things become … the more people put their hand up.”
Kon is not naive. “The majority of Australians want what’s happening now, but I think they want that based on misinformation and fear and prejudices and the lack of leadership, the lack of a critical media and all those things …”
When Kon started the centre in 2001, “There was hardly anyone coming in to help me. What happen in August of that year? Tampa. Once Tampa happened, people were like, ‘I can’t keep just screaming at the television.’”
The centre is inundated with asylum seekers needing help. “We can’t even reach anywhere near the number of people; we’re wait-listing and there‘s thousands we can’t get to.” These are services that the government should provide.
“Scott Morrison is saying that people whose case is post-RRT [Refugee Review Tribunal] … are deemed to be finally determined, that is, their case is over. So they should be given, when their visas are due for renewal, only six more weeks to stay, and if they don’t depart within six weeks, they will be placed in detention and be removed where possible – that is our understanding.”
The impact of this on the already strained resources of the centre will be devastating. “It’s an attack. It’s going to place an enormous amount of mental distress and trauma on people … It’s going to overwhelm our legal services. It’s going to be catastrophic.”
That’s all the more reason to continue campaigning to defend refugee rights and turn the tide on this atrocious government.
Follow Kim on Twitter @kim_doyle1
