Boat Signal

In May 2017, four years after the Abbott government introduced the military-led Operation Sovereign Borders, Jon Kudelka suggested that asylum seekers and boat arrivals had been a politically expedient tool. Although then Immigration and Border Protection Minister Peter Dutton chose not to comment on ‘on-water matters’ – as had the minister before him, Scott Morrison – the threat of boat arrivals and border security remained a hot-button issue.

In his response to Kudelka’s cartoon, Behrouz Boochani reflects on the changes in policy, and how asylum seekers view Australian navy vessels:

This work reminds me of the moment that refugees on boats are expected to be seen by the Australian navy. Refugees who come by boat to Australia consider seeing the Australian Navy as the moment that their journey has finished because, according to international law, they should be rescued from the water and then they are eligible to seek asylum. What has changed since 19 July 2013 is the policy of returning boats to where they come from. This is a significant change in border policy in Australia, and since 2013 many boats have been returned to Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Also, this work represents, in effect, a ‘border’ industry, whereby the government has spent more than $14 billion on what they call ‘protecting the borders’.