Australia's cruel immigrant policies are being adopted globall

The bill is currently before the House of Commons. What, perhaps, has not been made as clear is the degree to which this bill is copied from Australian practice - one urged on the British by prominent Australians.

However, what would be familiar to us would be a political leader - in this case British PM, Rishi Sunak on March 7, standing behind a lectern labelled with the words "stop the boats".

His speech made a pledge to hold people seeking asylum in detention without right of appeal, to disallow asylum claims by them and to forcibly remove them to poor, third world, countries. These are all things we have been doing for years.

Suella Braverman, the UK Home Secretary, made the frank but astounding admission - in the introduction to the bill - that she could not "make a statement that, in my view, the provisions of the Illegal Migration Bill are compatible with convention rights, but the government nevertheless wishes the House to proceed with the bill."

The convention referred to is the European Convention on Human Rights.

The new legislation allows for detention in Britain for 28 days without hope of bail, removal to a "safe" third country and permanent exclusion from the UK for those who arrive without a visa - usually by boat across the channel. This applies to unaccompanied children as well.

Even protections for those who have been slave trafficked have been removed. Much of this is the Australian playbook of how to deal with boat arrivals and has been consciously copied from it. Sunak referenced Australia in the speech.

The prime candidate for the UK's version of Nauru or Manus Island is Rwanda, following an agreement made last April with Rwandan President Paul Kagame. Under it, those who attempt to enter the UK to apply for asylum without a visa were to be sent there. No processing of their asylum claims would be done in Britain. They would be permanently excluded from it.

The first flight to Rwanda was held up due to legal challenges but Braverman said last October that the transportation of asylum seekers there remains her "dream" and "obsession". Rwanda is as unlikely to be a suitable place to settle distraught people seeking asylum as are the offshore detention places Australia established - in PNG and Nauru. Australia must take some responsibility for the UK plan and similar ones being hatched in Denmark (which has also negotiated a deal with Rwanda) and elsewhere.

Particularly since John Howard announced the "Pacific solution" - with PNG and Nauru bribed to imprison asylum seekers - right-wing European political figures have urged its adoption. Nigel Farage, the former leader of the right-wing UK Independence Party (UKIP), said: "...if the European Union had the right policy, people would know they would not be accepted by coming across the water, just as the Australians dealt with this problem".

Some, chillingly, began to speak of the "Australian solution". Frits Bolkestein, the former leader of Holland's far-right VVD party, was brutally explicit.

"The better we treat them, the more they come.... If you don't want them to come, you should not treat them all that well, which is what the Australians do ... Do we want them to come here? No, we don't, so what do we do? Australian solution!"

Former PM, Tony Abbott made a speech in London in October 2015 urging Europe to take the Australian path. He said that rescuing people on sinking boats is "a facilitator [for migration] rather than a deterrent".

Even more direct copying of Australia is taking place. In September 2021, Alexander Downer, the Australian foreign minister who helped negotiate offshore detention on Manus Island and Nauru, wrote a UK newspaper piece calling for adoption of Australian policies on boat turnbacks and offshore detention. He was then appointed to review the UK's Border Force. Last October, Suella Braverman appointed him to provide "independent" oversight of the Rwanda deal. Downer is continuing his campaign - in March again publishing in the Daily Mail a call for the copying of Australian policies.

Every humanitarian organisation of note from United Nations bodies down have opposed Australian refugee policies and those now planned in Britain.

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Here, they have caused enormous harm to tens of thousands of people for decades. With the teal independents there are now more voices in parliament raised against these policies. Our own independent senator for the ACT, David Pocock, will speak against them this year in Canberra at the Palm Sunday rally for refugees on April 2. Recently, he said in Parliament that "successive Australian governments have been in what seems to be a race to the bottom, campaigning on fear, division and cruelty".

Now, that race to the bottom is not just between Australia's major political parties. It is international.

Knowing that Australian policies are providing a template for causing such harm on a much greater scale elsewhere gives this and other such protests even greater urgency.