Communication (Journalism) Honours Thesis at Deakin University, Australia Faculty of Arts and Education June

The Australian Environment 
Refugees Then and Now 
After World War II ended in May 1945, Europe was in chaos, and this led to the migration of 
millions of Europeans to different parts of the world. This wave of migration prompted the 
setting up of the 1951 Refugee Convention at Geneva. The convention, which was at first 
limited to European refugees of World War II, was adopted at a United Nations conference in 
1951 and implemented in 1954 (Refugee Council 2016). In 1967, its geographical and temporal 
restrictions were removed. Ratified by 145 countries including Australia, the convention 
defines the term 
‘refuge’ and outlines the ‘rights of refugee’, as well as the ‘legal obligations 
of countries
’ to protect them. According to this convention, a refugee is a person outside their 
country of nationality who has a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country for 
reasons of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group, or political 
opinion. These people should be able to apply as a refugee in a second country (Refugee 
Council 2016).

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Wasted Lives 16 
Sigmund Freud, Isabel Allende, Cabrera Infante, Ismail Kadare, Camille Pissarro, Thomas 
Mann, Vladimir Nabokov, and Milan Kundera are a few names among the hundreds of high-
profile refugees who changed the world for the better. Moreover, the world would have lost a 
lot of beautiful and profound thoughts if these refugees were refused asylum in a safe country.
Australia has a long history of accepting refugees. Between 1945 and 1954, 182,159 people 
sponsored by the International Refugee Organisation (IRO) to resettle in Australia from Europe 
and 164,100 of them came by boat. Although this group of refugees came to Australia by ship, 
they have never been called 
‘boat people’ but ‘The Fifth Fleet’. ‘The Fifth Fleet is the name 
that I have given to the ships which, chartered by the IRO, brought about 164,100 displaced 
persons from Germany to Australia after World War II between 1947 and 1951
’ (Fifth Fleet, 
2011, para 1).
Nevertheless, the term 
‘boat people’ became popular in Australian when people from war-torn 
Vietnam crossed the sea by boat and sought asylum in Australia between 1976 and 1981 
(Parliament of Australia, 2013). Although there is no accurate information about the refugees 
who came by boat who were killed or drowned during the sea crossing, it is certain that a large 
number never reached Australia. 
‘From 1975 to 1990 many people left Vietnam by boat, and 
they became Vietnamese refugees or boat people. Though just about 60% of the boat people 
got lucky to come to the country they liked, another 40% died on the sea or were killed by 
Thailand's pirates
’ (Vuong Thanh Loc, 2010, ‘From there (Vietnam) to here (Australia)’, 
Migration Heritage Centre, para1). 
After the arrival of the Vietnamese boat people, Australia experienced two other refugee waves.
These were the Indochinese people from 1989 to 1998 (because of the Cambodian conflict) 
and primarily people from the Middle East from 1999 until now (because of Middle East 
conflicts). There were also a smaller number of refugees from other countries during this time; 
for example, Tamils from Sri Lanka. It was in the 1990s that the Australian government cracked 
down on what it called 
‘unauthorised’ arrivals. They introduced offshore detention programs 
in 2001 to deter asylum seekers. The Labor Government introduced the policy of mandatory 
detention in Australia in 1992 (Parliamentary Library, 2013, 
‘Immigration Detention in 
Australia
’). Since then, the conditions, consequences, and period that refugees are kept in the 
camps of Australia (on and offshore) have been controversial, nationally and internationally. 
Suhnan, A, Pedersen, A, and Hartley, L.K 2012, re-examining prejudice against asylum 

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Wasted Lives 17 
seekers in Australia: The role of people smugglers, the perception of threat, and acceptance of 
false beliefs’ (Suhnan, A, Pedersen, A, and Hartley, L.K 2012).
People from the Middle East (including Iranians) started seeking asylum in Australia from 
1999. In 1999, the Howard Government introduced Temporary Protection Visas hoping this 
visa would remove the incentives for boat asylum seekers. Between 1999 and 2004, out of a 
total of 8,912 refugees, 472 were Iranians (Parliamentary Library Department of Parliamentary 
Service 2004). 
In August 2001, the Government brought in another 
‘solution’: the Pacific Solution. According 
to this policy, asylum seekers who arrived by boat were not allowed to stay in Australia. They 
were transferred to Nauru and to Manus Island in Papua New Guinea until they were granted 
a protection visa and moved to Australia or a third country. The official website of the 
Parliament of Australia noted that in 2002 there were only 5 Iranians out of 1,155 boat arrivals 
in Nauru and 4 out of 356 in Manus Island (Phillips J 2012, 
‘The Pacific Solution revisited: a 
statistical guide to the asylum seekers caseloads on Nauru and Manus Island
’, 4 September).
This policy was stopped in 2008 by the Rudd Government, although it started again later in 
July 2013 under the same government named 
‘PNG Solution’. The solution has been called by