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To whom do we show compassion?

by Simon Longstaff

While the detention of Cornelia Rau raises serious ethical concerns about her treatment, our response to her harrowing experience also merits some consideration. Reading the newspapers, watching and listening to the news and commentary; it was hard not to form the impression that the outrage was not that an innocent, mentally ill person had been imprisoned but that an innocent Australian had been swept up into the funnel leading to the Baxter detention centre. It was the fact that this could happen to ‘one of us’ that seemed to matter more than that it could happen to anyone at all.

The ethical question that all of this gives rise to is this: who ‘counts’ when it comes to concern and compassion?

The recent wave of sympathy towards the plight of people engulfed by the misery of the Boxing Day tsunami demonstrated that Australians can be generous in their response to total strangers. Children donated their pocket money and pensioners part of their meagre resources in support of people that they would probably never meet. So, the problem raised by the nature of our response to the circumstances of Cornelia Rau would not seem to be that we are focused just on ‘our own’.

This leads me to wonder if, perhaps, we think that illegal immigrants actually deserve whatever fate befalls them when they make an unauthorised entry into Australia. I suspect that this may lie at the heart of much of the apparent indifference about their plight.

Cornelia Rau was not only an Australian in captivity, she was an innocent Australian. Australians know that there are many refugees awaiting resettlement in appalling conditions. Although we may understand the urge to ‘jump the queue’ (and even think that we would do the same in similar circumstances) we are unforgiving of those who do so.

Yet if innocence is the criteria for compassion, what are we to then say about the treatment of children in detention? Many of those held from time to time over the past six years are as innocent as Cornelia Rau. Dragged along by parents ambitious for a better life and willing to risk the worse, the children of asylum seekers can hardly be thought guilty of any offence. Nor can we believe that these children are growing into healthy, happy adults. None of us would wish a life of detention on our own children – somehow believing that they would thrive behind the razor wire.

Despite all of this, there is little evidence to suggest any community outrage at the way the innocent have fared in detention. One reason for this is that the community recognises that the detention of children in the company of their parents is the ‘lesser evil’ when compared to separation. As such, it may be that the least bad option must be accepted as the price to be paid for preserving the integrity of Australia's borders and its policies on immigration and refugees.

This issue of ‘balancing’ competing goods is not just a 'straw man’ – ready to be knocked over. Serious debate about the ethics of our response to mandatory detention of illegal immigrants requires us to give full weight to the arguments of those sincerely concerned about the potentially serious problem of illegal immigration. Our northern approaches are, today, relatively clear. However, it may not always be so.

It's easy to think that the ‘price’ of maintaining our borders is paid exclusively by illegal immigrants and unauthorised refugees (an important distinction in categories). However, perhaps we pay something of a price in having to harden our hearts a little as we turn a blind eye to what we know to be wrong. In doing this, do we also harm ourselves (or at least our sense of ourselves)?

So, we are left to ask: Is the treatment of detainees lawful but inherently unjust? Is it wrong but necessary? Would we support such a policy if we knew that it would be applied to us or our children? How do we respond to the needs of potentially innocent strangers in our midst?

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