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Research Articles 

The 'Castle Doctrine' and its implications in Australia hard-line asylum seeker policy

2/12/2018

1 Comment

 
Isaac Eyalama
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This paper is (re)written in light of the recent focus on the plight of detained asylum seeker children (and families) with many refugee advocates and professionals rallying in the ‘bring them here’ campaign (The Guardian Australia, 2018).  

This comes in a time of continued uncertainty not only for the current Australian Federal Government but also in in the Australian asylum seeker policy environment (Reuters, 2018).

In deed successive Australian governments since circa 2010 have either introduced new policies or reverted to the old ones in addressing the question of asylum seekers. For example, while the Rudd Labor government (3 December 2007- 24 June 2010) was hailed for having officially disbanded the Howard era (March 11, 1996- December 3, 2007) "Pacific Solution" policy, the Gillard Labor government (24 June 2010- 27 June 2013) soon reverted back to what looked a lot like Howard era policies, by attempting to send asylum seekers to other countries like Malaysia in what was referred to as the "Malaysian Solution".

What is even more intriguing for many is that upon his return as Prime Minister of Australia, the Kevin Rudd (June 27, 2013- September 18, 2013), who had disbanded the Pacific Solution "re-invented" it in his Regional Resettlement Agreement with the government of Papua New Guinea. This was a political kneejerk response not only to process asylum seekers offshore but to resettle them there or a third country destination permanently.

And then the change of Australian leadership in the 2013 elections saw the Abbott Coalition government introduce the Operation Sovereign Borders policy. A government policy to intercept and turn back at sea any vessel with persons destined to Australia back to where it came from-usually Indonesia.

This also means that detention of asylum seekers continues (in 2018) in a number of offshore facilities in other countries outside Australia's legal territorial boundaries ‘infamously’ the Nauru and Papua New Guinea (PNG) Offshore Detention facilities.

As writers like Bostock (2002), Magner (2004) and Cooke (2015) have noted, from the start of the twenty first century, Australian asylum seeker policy has both ignored international law and violated certain fundamental human rights which the frame of the Refugee Convention accorded asylum seekers.

Critics of Australia’s policies also pointed to evidence of considerable harm done to the asylum seekers themselves, especially children (for example, UN 2015). That this policy has to a great extent become part of a bi-partisan conventional wisdom on both sides of Australian two major political parties, even if punctuated by periods of intense controversy, has doubtless helped to cover up this uncomfortable knowledge.

This paper critically analyses a particular language (metaphors), as originating from the Australians’ (read politicians) understanding of the Castle Doctrine, and its unconsciously invoked application in Australia’s asylum seeker political discourse and how this language has played an indispensable role in helping to constitute the problem for which the policies are the solution.

This also ties to Bacchi (2009, p. 262) argument that, policies are problematisations by their very nature since they make proposals for change based on what a government holds to be the problem. Attention to the language therefore is a key to understanding the motivations that have shaped Australia’s asylum seeker policy.


Metaphors and the Australia Asylum Seeker "Problem"

Metaphors are often used widely and unconsciously in language, action and thought in every day communication. The use of metaphors is much more than a figure of speech we employ in everyday conversation, or read in poetry and novels. Metaphors help us make sense of the world.

Cognitive scientists like Lakoff have alluded to the fact that “….Words don’t have meanings in isolation. Words are defined relative to a conceptual system…” (Lakoff 2002: 29).

In the case of Australian political discourse, and eventually the adoption of  a hard-line asylum seekers policy, five key metaphors are identifiable. It is these metaphors employed in political talk that explicate what successive Australian governments have treated as the key problems, and the course of action it took based on its problematisations.

Before I briefly introduce the five key metaphors, it is important to note that these metaphors are not isolated but are clustered, imbricated and held in place rather like the tiles on a roof. That is, they are overlapping. Each metaphor relies on the existence of the other metaphors for support and reinforcement for representing what the problem is and what action is required. This also characterises the cognitive, emotional, ethical and rhetorical appeals they are expected to make to ordinary Australians.

  1. The “country as home” metaphor. This metaphor represents the problem of “illegal” boat arrivals by constructing Australia as a “house” or “home” under threat from asylum seekers attempting to break in through the country’s “side windows” or “front and back doors”. This metaphor encourages us to associate the normal behaviour of entering a home with how people coming to Australia ought also to enter a country. This includes considering the good and acceptable non-citizens as “guests” who as guests normally enter through the “front door” because they have been invited to do so. This metaphor aligns well with the “queue” metaphor.
  2. The “queue” metaphor. This metaphor relies on the country being thought of as a “home”, because the asylum seeker system is depicted as if it were a queue, which has formed out the front of the “Australian home”. The queue consists of people who in reality are in refugee camps, waiting patiently for an invitation to enter Australia. On the other hand, another group of people jump or bypass the “queue”, but in reality arrive in Australia by boat. This group of people disrupt the asylum seeker process by violating the key principles associated with queuing viz impartiality and fairness. Accordingly, the “queue” jumpers are framed as though they are “illegitimate” and “undeserving”. They are also uninvited and they prevent “genuine” refugees from receiving an invitation into the home.
  3. The third metaphor constitutes the arrival of asylum seeker boats as a “natural disaster”. The “asylum seeker as natural disaster” metaphor dehumanises asylum seekers and at the same time leads us to believe that like any disaster, they pose a serious threat, but in the form of job insecurity, resources such as housing and transport, and also issues of identity. The first three metaphors serve to represent how and why the Australian “home” is under threat and what it is under threat from. 
  4. The fourth metaphor justifies the government’s chosen course of action. The “state as a person” metaphor, in conjunction with the “country as home” metaphor locates the government as Australia’s “homeowner” that has rights to take action to protect the home and its inhabitants from the “problems” constructed through the first three metaphors. Like a person, a state is conceived in terms of having inherent dispositions. In this case, the politicians espouse the state’s “generous” and “humanitarian” qualities and in doing so argue that the course of action it chooses to take in relation to boat arrivals or deaths of asylum seekers at sea is justified. Further, the discourse highlights that the state is determined to pursue its chosen course of action.
  5. The fifth and final metaphor is the “war” metaphor. Underlying the previous four metaphors, the “war” metaphor comes in two manifestations: the depiction of boat arrivals as an “invading army” and “politics as war” by other means. Likening the arrival of asylum seeker boats to an invading army was made easy by the use of metaphors of war. It also provided the grounds for the government to adopt a war-like response without taking into consideration the humanitarian concerns of those people the policy affects. The metaphor also helps to increase the supposed severity of the problem and increases the entertainment value to retain public interest. The latter point was particularly pertinent months preceding September 2013, given an election was imminent, no little wonder that the rhetoric, especially from the opposition Liberal Coalition parties that won the 2013 election focussed on “stopping the boats”.

These five metaphors present a particular representation of the asylum seeker problem in policy both before and after 2007. This unfortunately continues to date, and there is no sign or hope of abating in the foreseeable future.

While much of the discourse overtly refers to asylum seekers arriving by boat as ”unlawful”, ”criminal”, ”illegitimate” and so forth, this is not my key concern. Rather, my focus is to highlight the sometimes subtle and sometimes not so subtle use of metaphors that problematises the boat arrivals issue in a certain way, giving rise to a particular course of action (the Malaysian Solution) over another. The function that metaphors play is to represent the “way things are” as well as simultaneously evoke feelings and mobilise moral sentiment of a political kind and so serve to factually, emotionally and practically justify certain kinds of political action. This helps to clarify the kinds of cognitive, emotional, and ethical appeals they make to us. Let me now show how these metaphors work.

The state as a person metaphor

Metaphors that conceive of the state in terms of a person are not at all unique to the development of asylum seeker policy. Chilton and Ilyin (1995: 37) for example, claim the metaphor is so embedded within the field of international relations that states are mostly conceived as “people” in international relations discourse, and that this metaphor prevents us from thinking about the state in terms outside of the categories that it engages.

To offer some insight into this, the term “international relations” itself assumes that states can engage in relations with each other in the same way human beings do. States are also assigned human attributes such as rationality, interests, beliefs and even identities (Wendt, 2004, p. 289). Within the realm of world affairs, states, in their relationships with each other are seen to have inherent dispositions, or identities, and as such can be regarded as being peaceful, aggressive, secretive, industrious, and irresponsible and so on.

In this sense when as a new Prime Minister Abbott was merely rehearsing a well-used metaphor when he declared that:

…the test of a sovereign country and a sovereign government is its ability to control its borders and we will never again tolerate a situation where an important part of our immigration programme has been subcontracted out to people smugglers (Abbott 2013).
 
In conjunction with the “country as home” metaphor, the land-mass that a state occupies is its home; it lives in a neighbourhood and has neighbours (Lakoff, 1999, p. 3). In conjunction with the “war” metaphor, which I will examine, a state can also have friends and enemies, and form allies and coalitions.

Indeed the “state as a person” metaphor is not just ubiquitous in international relations discourse, but also in our thinking about the state more locally as citizens, in the media, by politicians in the formation of policy. Wendt (2004, p. 289) argues since the eighteenth century, Western international and intra-state discourse has primarily presented the state as a person.

In my analysis, the discourse presents the state as a homeowner who possesses three distinct types of personhood: psychological, legal and moral. The homeowner’s psychological attributes are supposedly those of generosity and humanitarianism displayed through its refugee resettlement program.

The homeowner is a legal person in the sense that it has rights and obligations under national and international law, including the right to protect its sovereignty and promote its interests and that it had no legal obligation to accept the uninvited guests aboard a boat travelling to Australia. Morally, the state was eager to show strong determination in its handling of the “threat” posed by asylum seekers.
 
Country as a home metaphor

There has been persistent recourse to the country as home metaphor. Prime Minister Rudd invoked this metaphor in 2009 when he said:

We have been stuck too often with people turning up on our doorstep. They have been coming in as uninvited guests … Unless you can come through the front door in the way that we want you to, you’re not coming through the window. Only thieves and people who want to abuse families living inside come through the window… line up and come through the front door, as you should.

This statement not only invites the reader to visualise a country in the same way one visualises a home, but also represents the asylum seeker as a “robber”, or “thief” who presents a genuine threat to the Australian country/home. Statements that framed boat arrivals as though they were robbers, thieves and criminals attempting to “break in” were relatively widespread. Prime Minister Gillard likewise emphasised the representation of the problem as the problem of “border protection”. In her first major speech as Prime Minister she said:

Today I am announcing steps to strengthen Australia’s border protection arrangements. I am setting out the long-term approach we will take to dealing with the pressure of unauthorized arrivals. (Gillard 2010)

Opposition spokespeople reinforced this metaphor. Opposition spokespeople who were drawing a long bow when comparing asylum seekers to paedophiles did so by relying on the country is a home metaphor. Then opposition senator Scott Morrison for example, suggested that “police and communities should be alerted when asylum seekers move into their neighbourhood” (Mehrebin 2013). Senator Eric Abetz for example, said that:

 … if we are to have a cohesive society I would have thought it would be a good idea to say that somebody’s moving next door to you that might not be able to have all the English language skills that you might normally expect” (Cited Mehrebin 2013)

Then Opposition Leader Abbott likewise relied on the country as home metaphor when he argued that "I don’t think it’s a very unchristian thing to come in by the back door rather than the front door” (Nicholson 2012).

When in government the Abbott Coalition government drew on the “country as a home” metaphor. Then Prime Minister Abbott made his views plain in 2015 when he said,  "Nope, nope, nope," to any suggestion he might allow resettlement in Australia of Rohingyan asylum seekers tossed at sea[1]. He said the prospect of resettlement in Western countries would encourage more people to risk their lives on leaky boats. "If you want to start a new life, you come through the front door, not through the back door," he said (SBS 2015)

The Coalition Government in introducing the Migration Amendment (Regaining Control of Australia’s Protection Obligations) Bill 2013, reasoned that “it is not appropriate for complementary protection to be considered as part of a protection visa application and that non-refoulement obligations are a matter for the government to attend to in other ways”. This was the classic example of the home owner changing the rules of entry to the house. The government now sought to have the migration minister exercise his or her non-compellable intervention powers to grant protection visas in situations where complementary protection applied in the previous legislative arrangements.

As then Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison used the “country as home” metaphor when announcing tough new measures to remove resettlement eligibility in Australia by likening the option of resettlement to sugar on the table attracting vermin to break and enter Australia: "This is designed to stop people flowing into Indonesia and to support Indonesia and for them not to become a destination country. It’s taking the sugar off the table" (Woodley 2014).

What is clear here was that with the new policy in place the government was now acting out the home owner metaphor, in considering asylum seekers as guests who should only gain entry through the front door (approved channels), it changed rules in effect to ensure that any one entering through the window (coming by boat) would ultimately be processed offshore and not even the ruling of the High Court would stop this home owner.

This also cemented the representation of asylum seekers arriving by boat as “intruders” in to the home. And whereas many had hailed the High Court ruling as having failed the “Malaysian Solution” (Foster 2012), the government went ahead to prove that …..”the government has sufficient power to implement offshore processing arrangements” and it explicitly expressed that “….the government of the day can determine the border protection policy that it believes is in the national interest”. See for example, Paragraph 3 of the Explanatory Memorandum of the Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and other Measures) Bill 2011.

And to further exemplify the “state as a person” metaphor already referred to, the government went ahead to qualify and define what it meant by “national interest” This was to be understood as broadly referring to Australia’s standing, security and interests and went further by giving examples that included “governmental concerns that relate to such matters as public safety, border protection, national security, defence, Australia’s economic interests et cetera”. It thus not only located and reinforced Australia in the “home owner metaphor” but also introduced the “war metaphor” when matters of defence and national security were added into the policy mix.

We also see the powerful use of the “Australia as home” metaphor in the advertising of the Operation Sovereign Orders policy. Central to that policy frame has been the message: “You will not be resettled in Australia if you come by boat”.
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Source:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Sovereign_Borders#/media/File:Stop_the_boats_-_Operation_Sovereign_Borders.jpgcommunication

Under the Regional Resettlement Arrangement with PNG, any unauthorised Irregular Maritime Arrival (IMA) is to be transferred to Manus Island for processing and resettlement for those found to be genuine refugees. And detention or deportation for those found not to be refugees as determined by PNG. Initial security and health checks were to be undertaken by Australian authorities. The clear message of Operation Sovereign Orders is that you are never welcome, and can never make Australia “home” if you come by boat.

The “queue” metaphor

The Australian Governments have persistently used the “queue” metaphor by contrasting refugees in UN camps claiming they are:

…genuine refugees who fear for their lives and are persecuted, have no money to pay people smugglers and have no other options. Their only option is to wait and wait and wait, while others who do have the money… can pay people smugglers. People who have access to such funds are not those who are destitute and without resources. They jump ahead of genuine refugees who wait patiently for their opportunity to come”.

The political discourse represents the asylum seeker system metaphorically as though it is a queue and draws on this metaphor to position asylum seekers arriving in boats as “illegitimate”, “impatient”, “unfair” and “dishonest”. In contrast, those people waiting “in the queue” in refugee camps are “honest”, “fair”, “legitimate” and “patient”. Furthermore the illegitimate group disadvantages the genuine group by jumping the asylum seeker queue and effectively extending the period of time before the genuine group can receive an invitation into the Australian home. In her first major speech as Prime Minister Gillard insisted for example, that among the principles that mattered was the idea of an orderly queue:

The rule of law in a just society is part of what attracts so many people to Australia. It must be applied properly to those who seek asylum, just as it must be applied to all of us; no one should have an unfair advantage and be able to subvert orderly migration programs;

Then Opposition leader Abbott could not have agreed more strongly:

I think the people we accept should be coming the right way and not the wrong way. If you pay a people-smuggler, if you jump the queue, if you take yourself and your family on a leaky boat, that’s doing the wrong thing, not the right thing, and we shouldn’t encourage it." (Nicholson 2012)

Asylum seekers as a “natural disaster” metaphor

There has been an urge to treat the arrival of asylum seekers as akin to a natural disaster. Since 2007, media outlets have continued to routinely refer to the idea of a “flood”, a “tidal wave” or a “tsunami” when characterising the arrivals: The Australian in particular has repeatedly talked for example, about the need for an “Asylum tide swamping solution”(Australian 2013). This seems to continue to feature to some extent and in spite of some research showing a decrease in the use of these kinds of metaphors in media outlets. Romano for example, has argued that by the late 2000”s that journalists were no longer employing metaphors like “national emergency”, “invasion”, “attack”, “assaults on our shores”, “contagious disease”, “floods” or “tidal waves” to describe asylum seeker and refugee arrivals. As she notes even metaphors like “queue jumpers” used to describe boatpeople is usually used put in inverted commas or with the words “so-called” in front of it, to indicate the contentious nature of the term (Romano 2007, pp.2007:2-3).

It can be argued that both the Labor and Coalition governments have used the undoubted fact that there were deaths at sea due to drowning of people on ill-fated boats making the journey to Australia, especially between 2011-2013, to embellish and augment the “asylum seeker as natural disaster metaphor”.

This possibly leads many Australians to think that like any disaster, the drownings could be avoided simply if asylum seekers took the “right routes” to enter Australia. While this does not only reinforce the “queue metaphor” that portrays asylum seekers as illegitimate, it is also responsible for a number of other policy focuses of government such as the excisions of Australia’s territories and offshore processing.

As Briskman (2013) has argued “… compassion for asylum seekers can be used opportunistically to portray the tragedy of death at sea as a justification for stricter policies against people trying hard to seek sanctuary in Australia”. She argues that increases in the number of arrivals of people by boat to Australia after 2010, and the losses of lives at sea due to boat capsizes resulted in heightened attention politically which assisted in building a foundation for harsher policies (Briskman 2013).

This was evident when then Prime Minister Julia Gillard appointed an Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers in June 2012 to “provide advice on policy options to prevent asylum seekers from risking their lives on dangerous boat journey’s to Australia”. It was framed to provide advice on policy options to prevent asylum seekers from “risking their lives on dangerous boat journeys to Australia”. In essence, the language and discourse focused more on people risking their lives on ill-fated and dangerous and less on those that would later detain or deport those who survived through the “dangerous boat journeys” at sea.

In their final report the Expert Panel Report the panel made 22 recommendations in the form of short-term and long-term proposals. Indeed the panel, after generating views far and wide, noted that there were no quick or simple solutions (Anonymous 2012). However, what followed as a consequence was that Government was quick to introduce legislation such as the Migration Amendment (Unauthorised Maritime Arrivals and Other Measures) Bill 2012 to reinstate offshore processing that passed in parliament with the support of the federal opposition. By August 13th, 2012, legislation had approved the processing of asylum seekers in both Nauru and Manus Island where asylum seekers would be held in detention for unspecified period of time. Those already onshore were held on the new “no advantage test” which meant that no onshore “boat arrival” (asylum seeker) would be processed in less time than those waiting for processing in third countries.

Policy as “war” metaphor

As then Prime Minister, Mr Abbott persistently used the policy as war metaphor in justifying the turn back the boats policy: "If we were at war, we would not be giving out information that is of use to the enemy." Australia was engaged in a "fierce contest" with the people smugglers and Australia had to stop the boats because it to do so central to the maintenance of national sovereignty (McCallum 2014).

This stance was justified on all sorts of grounds. Sometimes it simply rested on the premise that Australia was being challenged by illegal activities threatening our security because asylum seekers were just like “drug runners” as Opposition Leader Abbott had promised for example, that:

Within a week of taking office, I would go to Indonesia to renew our cooperation against people smuggling. I would, of course, politely explain to the Indonesian government that we take as dim a view of Indonesian boats disgorging illegal arrivals in Australia as they take of Australians importing drugs into Bali. (Abbott 2012)

Once in government the Coalition moved to implement its Operation Sovereign Borders. In August 2013 it had indicated what that policy entailed:

To stop the boats coming to Australia, it’s necessary to work upstream to stop the planes coming into the region and disrupt people’s movements through the region. If you can stop the planes, you can stop the boats. Once the smugglers place their passengers on the boat to Australia, all of Australia’s available deterrence measures become more dangerous and more expensive. That is why the Coalition’s Operation Sovereign Borders prioritises deterrence to entering the region from source countries and the disruption of movement throughout the region as well as action on our northern seas.

As we have seen asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat have been persistently represented as a serious threat to Australia’s security and borders. Numerous policies are peppered metaphors reiterating the threat to Australia’s security brought about by “the waves of boat arrivals”. This framing proved critical to the formation and constitution of the “Operation Sovereign Borders” (OSB). This policy was initiated on the premise that previous Labor governments had failed to stop “an influx” of boats - people arriving in Australia by boat. So a military style led operation aimed at stopping, repulsing and stopping any boat at sea, trying to enter Australian territory was needed. At the announcement and formation of the OSB, -a senior army officer, the Lieutenant General Angus Campbell was then drafted to lead the operations of the border security operation in conjunction with other government agencies and entities.

With this military style operation in place it has proved increasingly difficult to monitor and audit the activities of the border protection task force as it was operating in secrecy - in true military classified definition as there was an imposed information blankness purposely created and defended by the minister to which many refugee advocates and activists slammed[1] [2]. This information vacuum ordered by the government and by General Campbell was designed “so as not to give tactical advantage to people smugglers and to “protect” his people (the defence force) in the conduct of their military duties.

The representation of that policy involved repeated use of military and war metaphors. The then Immigration Minister Scott Morrison insisted for example, in October 2013 that “"I wish to stress that the full arsenal of measures represented in the Coalition’s policies to stop the boats remain available to be deployed by the government” (Morrison 2013). Prime Minister Tony Abbott himself declared elsewhere that

...we are in a fierce contest with people smugglers. And if we were at war, we wouldn’t be giving out information that is of use to the enemy just because we have an idle curiosity about it ourselves”.

The “enemy” here is now the “people smugglers” and the “asylum seekers” linked together in a syndicated arrangement to enter Australia. Therefore they are seen as a problem-people, simply able to pay themselves on to the boats to Australia and thereby fanning the illicit people smuggling syndicates in the South East Asia region. The classified information about Operation Sovereign Borders operations and the curious people referred to here are the media, refugee advocates, lawyers, activists and the general public. Operation Sovereign Borders is a thoroughly military-style operation, facilitated by an all-style military capabilities in structure, composition and nature with hardware and equipment reminiscent of one employed in country-to-country border wars. Australia it seems is now engaged in a full-scale war - against the asylum seeker (the boat arrival) and people smugglers. As then Immigration Minister Scott Morrison insisted:

The people smuggling rackets were profiting or successful in their ventures of smuggling and needed to be stopped. “What the people smugglers and anyone they are trying to get on a boat need to understand is that this Australian government will take the actions necessary to protect Australian sovereignty and stop the boats (Barlow 2013).
The very metaphors used seem to have encouraged the government to establish Operation Sovereign Borders as a military style operation to turn back asylum seeker boats. By October 2013 Australia’s military officials were reinforcing the message. The then Acting Commander of Operation Sovereign Borders, Air Marshall Mark Binskin, for example, said:

 We are not going to give our posture or talk about our tactics or what is happening on the water … That gives away key intelligence to the people smugglers ... and we don’t want to give those criminals this sort of information (Barlow 2013)

In February 2104, then Minister Morrison for example, justified his refusal to supply information to the Senate on military security grounds:

[It] includes but is not limited to on water tactics, training procedures, operational instructions, specific incident reports, intelligence, posturing and deployment of assets, timing and occurrence of operations, and the identification of attempted individual voyages, passenger information, including nationalities." (Morrison 2014)

The “Castle Doctrine” unconsciously invoked.

We need to go deeper to search out the possible origins of these metaphors. While there are limitations, and for the purposes of staying on course to the objectives set out in this research, I will not delve too deeply in trying to trace the origins of these metaphors. Nonetheless I will go ahead and state the possibility that these metaphors are formed out of the unconscious interpretation and application of certain principles. It is very possible, and it can indeed be argued that these metaphors originate from an unconscious interpretation and application of the major tenet of the “Castle Doctrine”.

The Castle doctrine emanates from the 17th Century English common law dictum that “a man’s house is his castle” (Vickery 2008). It is the concept of the inviolability of the home that has been known in much of the western civilisation. A castle doctrine law gives a homeowner the legal right to use force (even deadly force) to defend himself or herself and the family against an intruder. It was/is the interpretation that allowed a person to have certain protections and immunities that permit(ed) them to use force (in certain circumstances) to defend themselves against an intruder and yet remain free from legal responsibility.

These set of principles became so entrenched in the western civilisation and resulted in the English Common law dictum that an “English man’s home is his castle”. These legal or illegal interpretations have since been carried forward to mean refer to a person’s absolute right to exclude anyone from his home. Indeed “…the notion that our homes are our sanctuaries and that we can defend an intruder within them is hardly new….”(Jansen and Nugent-Borakove 2007: 3).

​There is no doubt that the ground and the application of laws to defend oneself from an intruder has been built in many components and concepts of law in the modern world (Carpenter 2008; Drake 2008) with scholars tracing the history and development of certain laws such as the USA’s Fourth Amendment to the to this doctrine (Lasson 1970). This doctrine has allowed individuals to use reasonable force, including deadly force to protect themselves or others against an intruder in the homes (Jansen and Nugent-Borakove 2007).

If taken from the personal application into the arena of political discourse on Australia as a home, this doctrine, it can be argued, has effects on how asylum seekers can been represented as the intruders.

Whereas the Castle Doctrine is not principally defined by law in Australia, it none the less gets expressed in the asylum seeker debate and subsequently influences asylum seeker policy, albeit quietly. As has already been discussed earlier under metaphors, I will again make reference to the statement below from the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott commentary on Australian sovereignty and asylum seekers.

…the test of a sovereign country and a sovereign government is its ability to control its borders and we will never again tolerate a situation where an important part of our immigration programme has been subcontracted out to people smugglers (Abbott 2013).
 
Conclusion

While there is a considerable body of research that focuses on the plight of people seeking asylum in Australia, there is little or limited specific focus on why Australia has adopted the increasingly punitive and deterrent framework that now characterises its asylum seeker policy.

Therefore Australia’s hard-line policy on asylum seekers and the particular discursive language (metaphors) employed, originate from the Australians’ (read politicians) understanding of the Castle Doctrine, the concept of the inviolability of the home that has been known in much of the western civilisation.

It is this foundation that consequently gives the homeowner (Australia) the legal right to use force (even deadly force) to defend herself (borders) against the intruder (asylum seeker) yet remain ‘free’ from obligations under international law .

What this analysis of political discourse regarding asylum seekers clearly shows is that contemporary asylum seeker policy is more about a policy aimed at deterring asylum seekers from coming to Australia rather than finding ways of discharging Australia’s obligations to asylum seekers under international law by protecting those seeking asylum.
 
 
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