Stop Him If You've Heard This One Before

Last Friday, the UK's Court of Appeal found the Conservative government's deeply nasty plan to dump asylum-seekers in Rwanda to be unlawful. PM/Head-Prefect Rishi Sunak is still lobbying for the European Court of Human Rights rules that protect asylum-seekers to be "reformed". If the "disincentive" strategy of sending people who have fled persecution into fresh danger sounds familiar, that's because yes, it was copied directly from Australia's repugnant playbook of the last 20 years. Sunak has even campaigned using the slogan "Stop The Boats". This is perhaps unsurprising, given the cutthroat-desperation of his party and close links between the Australian and UK Tories - despicable Howard-era strategist/former Director of the federal Liberal Party/consultant-for-hire Lynton Crosby worked directly on campaigns for Boris Johnson, David Cameron, and Theresa May. Crosby is notorious for his simple inflammatory slogans, smear campaigns, wedge-politicking, and manufacturing of "dead cat" distractions during scandals - anything for the win, consequences be damned. (In a 2015 moment of triumphalist indulgence, Crosby was awarded a knighthood for "services to politics".)

Just like Australia's boats policy, the UK push exists as a cynical electoral sweetener to further whip-up and catch the hate-vote, while thinly pretending to be all about saving people from leaky vessels and smugglers. And just like our grim undertaking, the cruelty comes no-expense-spared, at an estimated relocation-cost of £169,000 per person. Sunak's administration has refused to disclose the full size of the payment agreed with the Rwandan government (citing “commercial sensitivities"), but Boris Johnson's gang handed over a preliminary £140 million when the deal was originally signed.

A grotesque follow-up concept has been to hold asylum-seekers on massive barges - effectively floating detention centres. The prison hulks of convict times returned, now for the entirely innocent.

The United Nations have stated these policies breach international law and set dangerous precedents for the mistreatment of refugees. The same warnings were repeatedly issued to Australia, yet multiple governments here pressed ahead - leaving a trail of entirely unnecessary human wreckage. Perhaps one day Rishi Sunak will also award himself a comical "I Stopped These" boat-trophy to smirk over in his office, following in the troll-like footsteps of Scott Morrison.

How Australia inspires.

Addendum, from July 20, 2023: As the stumbling rollout of Britain's Australian-inspired policy of asylum-seeker abuse continues (a plan so repulsive that even some Conservative MPs can't stomach it), it turns out the commercial arrangements also have a local connection.

Quick recap, from The Independent: "Although the Bibby Stockholm has arrived in its final destination, asylum seekers are not expected to arrive for at least another week as further work is done to make it suitable for habitation. Two more ships the prime minister said would house asylum seekers have so far been unable to find a berth, and Sky News reported that they had been sent back to their owners.

Richard Drax, the Conservative MP for South Dorset, likened the barge to a “quasi-prison” and has voiced concern about its impact on both asylum seekers and the tourist-dependent local economy.

The exact layout of accommodation on the barge has not been revealed but analysis by The Independent revealed that asylum seekers will have less living space than an average parking space when it reaches full capacity.

An official brochure showed there were only 222 “single en-suite bedrooms” on board before the Home Office-commissioned changes began, meaning that at least two people will have to be crammed into every cabin for the government to achieve its claimed capacity.

An Australian travel firm previously slammed for its handling of Covid quarantine hotels has been quietly handed a £1.6bn contract covering the UK’s new asylum ships. Corporate Travel Management (CTM) was put in charge of the lucrative two-year arrangement in February, weeks before the government revealed it would use a barge as its first offshore accommodation for asylum seekers. The contract was awarded directly to CTM without competition."

CTM has several Australian conservative links - in 2021 it acquired Helloworld, the travel company previously CEOed by the Liberal Party's ex federal treasurer Andrew Burnes (which was notoriously awarded $1billion in gov contracts when spruiker Joe Hockey owned over $1.3m in shares, and which "accidentally" gave free flights to Mathias Cormann); it boasts of its big Roy Hill contract with IPA-Liberal-influencer/bad poet/billionaire Gina Rinehart; and CTM's former chair Tony Bellas was married to the sister of Andrew Liveris (co-architect of Scott Morrison's "gas-led recovery"/board member of Saudi Aramco and formerly of Dow/Trump donor via Dow/member of Trump's manufacturing council/now head of Brisbane's Olympic Games committee).

It's also worth noting that the Chairman of CTM's Board is Ewen Crouch, a former mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer who exited Westpac after the AUSTRAC money-laundering scandal. (Ewen had been chair of the bank's Risk and Compliance committee.) While working at Westpac, Mr Crouch had also been a member of the "independent" Remuneration Tribunal - the statutory body deciding the pay for Commonwealth offices, including federal politicians. (Crouch's colleagues on the Tribunal were drawn from the mining and "wealth management" industries.) In 2019, at the same time retail and hospitality workers were having their penalty rates cut, Crouch and Co happily awarded a 2% wage-rise to Canberra's parliamentarians - a powerful cohort already in the top 5% of income earners nationally. After fully four years of duel service, Crouch departed the Tribunal in the same turbulent month he left Westpac.

Following the UK's reeking barge contract, CTM looked so good to Australia's new "centrist" Labor Party government, that commencing July 1 the company was awarded the Travel Management Services contract for the Whole of Australian Government for an initial four year term, plus a further three years of extension options. The contract will combine travel and accommodation services.

The charity Freedom From Torture has called the barge plan “cruel and inhumane”, and a “catastrophe waiting to happen”. The Fire Brigades Union has similarly warned that overcrowding and fire-exit access make the Bibby Stockholm "a potential deathtrap".

The Sunak administration, shameless as ever, says this is just people playing politics.