Australia: Refugees and Immigrants
By Angela Romano
Immigration is controversial not only in the United States, but in countless other countries as well. Although Australia was a haven for political refugees from East Timor and Kosovo in the late 1990s, since 2001 the nation has been divided politically over how to respond to asylum seekers. Observers believe that much of the angry, disruptive debate has been fueled by the media—in particular talk radio, or talkback radio as it is called in Australia. This is ironic because only a few years before, the same medium was key to pressuring the government to accept Albanian refugees from Kosovo. Public support at that time was broad. As one caller to a popular talkback program put it in the 1990s, “I’d put a couple up, mate. I have a couple of spare beds and plenty of tucker.”
However, the 9/11 terrorist attacks and deteriorating economies in the Middle East have changed the situation drastically. Since 1999, asylum seekers, rather than apply at Australian embassies abroad, have increasingly attempted to arrive by boat and apply directly for refugee status. Although government policies have stemmed the flow of asylum seekers, the political and financial costs have been high. By some estimates, the effort to intercept and detain would-be refugees is costing the country as much as $300 million (Australian) per year—$300,000 for each refugee prevented from entering the country.
Given the issue’s divisiveness, journalism faculty and students at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) began a research project to explore whether a more deliberative form of public discussion on the airwaves might have yielded a differ¬ent outcome. The project places journalists at the centre of community deliberation on the economic and social challenges created by incoming asylum seekers and refugees. The effort did not begin with the belief that a “best answer” already existed; rather, the goal was to explore how the media might gauge public concerns on the issue and cover the news so as to help citizens resolve those concerns.
Although most media coverage relied on official sources in government, busi¬ness, and elsewhere, the QUT group has experimented with approaches that permit ordinary citizens to establish the news agenda. Queenslanders, for example, were asked what concerned them about asylum seekers and refugees and why they held those concerns. The short-term goal is to use this knowledge to produce stories on topics about which citizens feel confused or insufficiently informed. The long-term goal is to develop a guide for further public deliberation that contains key aspects of traditional NIF or Kettering issue books and that reveals how communities (1) nominate or name particular problems, (2) frame them to reveal their true nature or the underlying problems behind them, (3) identify possible solutions, and (4) weigh the benefits and tradeoffs associated with those solutions. Those ideas, accordingly, will then provide both a guide and the material for future radio news on the topic.
Beyond simply offering an example of how journalists can better connect with the public, our research has revealed how journalists’ own framing of the issue—through the use of both sources and language—made it difficult for the public to come to terms with the issue. Few citizens have any direct contact with asylum seekers. The press, as well, has little contact, since journalists’ access to detention centers is severely limited. Because of those restrictions, the media group Reporters Sans Frontiéres (Reporters Without Borders) downgraded Australia’s position on its International Press Freedom Index from 12th to 15th.
Although conservative columnists have criticized the press as “too soft” on asylum seekers, a considerable body of academic research and press commentary presents a very different picture. Rather than being soft, press accounts have often demonized asylum seekers—describing their arrival in terms of invasion, attack, contagious disease, floods, or tidal waves. Numerous media accounts circulated mes¬sages that asylum seekers might include “sleeper” terrorists who threaten national security. When public tension was high, news stories seldom included the voices of asylum seekers or refugees themselves. Mass media outlets, particularly tabloids and talkback radio, reflected the general Australian discomfort with the increased numbers of Middle Eastern and Islamic people among asylum seekers and refugees.
Strict government control of detainees and detention centers created problems for journalists, but other problems sprang from the journalists’ own limited understanding of the issues involved. One example is the so-called Tampa crisis of 2001 when the Howard government refused to allow a group of asylum seekers, who had been rescued by a Norwegian tanker after their boat began sinking, onto Australian soil so that their applications for refugee status could be considered. Press coverage used terms like refugees, boat people, and illegal immigrants as if they were interchangeable.
The press was also so disconnected from the public that it failed to indicate why people were so anxious about asylum seekers when there had been no increase in the number of applicants in several years. The only change had been that more asylum seekers were lodging their applications onshore after travelling to Australia by boat. Our current research project attempts to identify how a deeper understanding of these community concerns could help journalists better address the public’s information needs. The QUT program attempts to use a variety of strategies—stakeholder consultations, community forums, town hall meetings, and focus groups.
Early research identified some significant trends. Public support for refugees accepted through offshore programs was increasing at the same time support was falling for asylum seekers attempting to reach Australian shores by boat. There was, however, little evidence of this nuance in media coverage. Although government policies have greatly reduced the arrival of boat refugees (since 2001 only one boat has arrived), nothing has been done to address the underlying social roots of the public’s particular con¬cern about asylum seekers arriving by boat.
Citizens might work through these issues better if the news they received included the following: more information about the political problems that prompted the increase in the asylum seekers arriving by boat, their experiences, how claims are processed, how Australians might determine whether boat refugees are a threat or a useful addition to society, and what alternative responses Australians might make to their arrival.
To test these ideas we initiated a pilot program, “New Horizons, New Homes,” three 30-minute programs that aired on community radio in March. These productions taught students a great deal, as they had to learn to frame issues, manage and condense a variety and volume of information, and maintain their objectivity and impartiality while doing so.
Balance was a problem. News coverage of the boat people has been largely negative, but few formal groups exist with overtly anti-immigration stances and even fewer were willing to go on the air in support of current or increased government restrictions. This is contrary to the situation in the United States where anti-immigrant groups abound. At the same time, government officials were reluctant to speak with student journalists in detail—making it hard to obtain alternative viewpoints from formal institutions on the issue. This situation, however, had an unexpected benefit, in that it forced students to engage more directly with the local community. Students spoke to more than 130 citizens, and, from those discussions, selected and aired a range of comments that typified community concerns.
In the longer term, this project will explore strategies to build journalism’s role as a mediator of community politics. New models of journalistic practice may ultimately produce better solutions for Australian communities and strengthen Australia’s social fabric.
Angela Romano is a senior lecturer in Journalism at the Queensland University of Technology.
