Australia’s Foreign Minister Julie Bishop today appeared on BBC Radio 4 to face accusations that Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers is both “inhumane and uncivilised” and to respond to allegations that the government’s immigration policies “cast a very dark shadow over [its] commitment to human rights and fundamental respect for human dignity”, which, naturally, Bishop didn’t accept at all.
When asked if Australia could still somehow find a way to treat asylum seekers humanely, with host John Humphrys suggesting that facilities like Nauru or Manus Island are “breeding grounds for rape, rioting, malaria and mental illness that bear the look and feel of concentration camps”, Bishop counters that “they’re not holiday camps… I have visited there and I am satisfied [that] people are treated appropriately.”
Humphries then puts it to Bishop that Australia is operating “a kind of Guantanamo Bay, only in some ways worse,” and, true to form, Bishop remains undeterred by both his line of questioning and the scrutiny of organisations like the UNHCR, saying “People are being treated with respect, with dignity, they are given healthcare, they are given schooling, their children go to school, they have community centres, there are doctors. I’ve met with the doctors there. The standard of accommodation and the standard of support [asylum seekers] receive, in many instances, is better than that received by the people of Papua New Guinea.”
“Because we have managed to prevent people coming by boat and that’s what we promised in the last election [and] we’re delivering on that promise.”
Photo: Ben Stansall via Getty
