Choosing 'the most palatable of two unpalatable choices': Amanda Vanstone, Child Refugees and Australian History

From October 2003 to January 2007, Liberal Party Senator Amanda Vanstone held the role of Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, the only woman to have been Immigration Minister in Australia. In her time in this role, Vanstone would regularly speak about Australia having a 'big heart' when it came to dealings with refugees.

When asked about the government’s policy of mandatory detention for asylum seekers who arrived by boat on Australian territory, and particularly about the detention of children, Vanstone commented that 'no-one would like to see children in detention. But if you let the children out, you can’t do that without letting the parents out.' She went on to suggest that 'you don’t want children in detention, but you’ve got to find a way to stop this [movement of people seeking to come to Australia] and so you choose, if you like, the… the most palatable of two unpalatable choices.'

Using a range of different oral history interviews, this paper will explore the ways Vanstone ventriloquised discourses of humanitarian concern while asserting a desire to police the entrance of asylum seekers into Australia. More particularly, this paper will ask, how were these discourses and practices of border control uniquely gendered by virtue of Vanstone’s place within the Australian political class? By foregrounding ideas of femininity and governmental control, and the history of child refugees in Australia, this paper will offer new ways of understanding the gendered relationships between borders, asylum seekers and the governmental control of different populations.