- July 1, 2009
IT IS a troubled world out there, in parts, and it is not surprising that in the most desperate parts the people with some enterprise and resources decide to strike out for safety and perhaps prosperity somewhere else. Those from Africa, Eastern Europe and West Asia tend to head for the inner European Union, the influx that travels through the Balkans or by precarious boat to Italy and Spain.
A relatively small number head eastwards. Those from Muslim countries get an easy first stage in their flight in Malaysia, thanks to visa-free entry. There they are safe, but without secure status once visas expire, and mostly without work. From Malaysia it is another relatively easy passage through Indonesia, joined by different waves fleeing ethnic conflict in Burma and Sri Lanka.
That is where the easy bit ends. The refugees can remain in the famous "queue" of asylum seekers being sorted by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees for allocation to migration slots opened by countries willing to help. But these chances are small relative to the demand.
The UNHCR has 49,000 refugees on its books in Malaysia, and thinks there may be 45,000 it does not know about. Numbers are building up in Indonesia, too. The UNHCR says there have been nearly 2000 arrivals this year, most hoping for help to move elsewhere. They can expect a long, indefinite wait while savings and borrowed money fritters away. Hence the last stage: a gamble on the services of a people smuggler.
Surprisingly there are still people in Australia who think this is an aberration, or an unwarranted infliction on us by inefficient neighbouring governments, and that by showing the right degree of toughness the problem will go away. The Opposition thinks there is an unmined lode of political gain to be worked here, and may put one of its sharpest schemers, Tony Abbott, onto the case.
Let's hope this does not descend into more dog-whistle politics. The Howard government's post-Tampa approach was costly, ineffective and inhumane. The Christmas Island centre for processing may be filling up, but is a long way from being overwhelmed. The asylum seekers who come into our jurisdiction have a right, under treaty, to have their cases assessed properly and to be treated humanely.
Some day persecution may end in some of the source countries and refugee outflows dwindle. Meanwhile, our best measure is continued co-operation with Indonesia to prevent the criminal enlistment of asylum seekers in unsafe and illegal boat passages, and more commitment, with other wealthy countries, to taking in refugees from the UNHCR lists.
A natural process, until complications
MOTHERS-TO-BE get used to unasked-for advice. Shop assistants will take it upon themselves to question a purchase of cheese, or coffee - let alone a glass of wine. And when advice is sought, even the medical profession - at its worst - can look down on a pregnant woman from a lofty height and deal with her as if she were either foolish to get into the situation, or an irrelevant bystander at the process she has begun, the creation of a child.
With everyone around her feeling entitled to know better about her and her body, the temptation is great for a pregnant woman to reassert control and to say: "I alone know best." The claim is entirely understandable; unfortunately it is not always true.
The home birth movement is partly a product of that visceral rejection of outside control of a woman's body. Its adherents can be motivated by a near-religious zeal to return control to the mother.
The coroner Nick Reimer, investigating the death of Jasper Kosch-Coyne, a newborn who died on the way to hospital from his parents' farm near Byron Bay in 2007, recognised as much when he warned policy makers that home-birthing "will not go away". It is, he said, a mother's inherent right. National uniform legislation is now being prepared to register private midwives, but its effect is to exclude them from assisting at home births, and indeed to ban home births altogether.
Rights exist only where a community grants them. The United States grants its citizens a right to bear arms; Australia does not, yet individuals may legally own guns. Nor should Australia recognise a right to home birth - though it should not be illegal. Home birth is not a popular choice (0.3 per cent of births nationwide in 2006 were home births, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare). Even so, home-birthers rightly argue a ban will not stop it, but will drive it underground.
However, there is no case for governments to indemnify home-birth midwives. Mothers who want to give birth at home should be able to do so - at their expense. If they do not recognise the dangers inherent in giving birth, society does. That is why it invests large amounts in hospital obstetrics units and birth centres, well-equipped and staffed by highly trained doctors and nurses. It should not subsidise the risk-taking of those who wilfully ignore the dangers.
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