If the notion of “breaking the people smugglers’ business model” sounds weird to you, particularly as whatever the government is doing, that is not the current effect, then please explore the ideas here. Originally published in The Conversation and slightly amended here for clarity and to incorporate feedback.

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With its revamped Pacific Solution, the Australian government has decided to make the choice to take a boat to Australia more horrendous in its implications, by increasing the likelihood of disasters at sea, and then punishing those who manage to survive the crossing.

But nothing has been done on two critical fronts – addressing the conditions that create refugees; and providing alternatives that break the incentive cycle promoted by the government and opposition, and facilitated by the people smugglers.

As the child of refugees who survived through the venal self-interest of people smugglers two generations ago, I am particularly aware of the contradictions involved.

The application of some cognitive theory and economic choice theory may help understand what is really going on; and why government and opposition are playing a doomed game they cannot win.

Cognitive dissonance and sunk cost

The concept of cognitive dissonance may be helpful in understanding the social psychology of asylum seekers who have entered the smuggler chain. This approach also throws light on the policy assumptions of government about the ways in which smuggler “business models” may be most effectively disrupted, thus interrupting the flow of asylum seekers to Australia.

Cognitive dissonance has been described as the “mental discomfort provoked by trying to believe two mutually contradictory propositions”. More strictly, it refers to the emotional investment people make in a particular belief, their tendency to try to line up belief and behaviour when the dissonance between them becomes salient. Somewhat counter-intuitively, beliefs will often adapt to justify behaviour, though interventions focused on the disjunction between behaviour and belief can “force” the process in the opposite direction.

In parallel to this cognitive state, there is what game and argumentation theory refers to as the “sunk-cost error”. This is the supposed irrationality of the observed tendency for people to stick with a behaviour even when it appears increasingly unlikely to produce the desired outcome or is very dangerous, and the original cost cannot be recovered no matter what their decision.

The psychological journey

Put this together in a simple narrative. A young man realises or is told by trusted others (family, senior community people) he is in mortal danger, so his family invests money in “buying” him an escape. Those who pick him up tell him he has no other option than to obey their instructions at every point.

His self-concept has been modified in a number of ways. He carries the responsibility for the positive outcome of his family’s investment which may be all they have. At every step, the smugglers “prove” they are trustworthy, thus reinforcing the self-concept of the individual as a survivor, an identity increasingly elaborated as that of an “asylum seeker” (though this may not be clarified until much later in the process).

He reaches the penultimate point in the voyage – Indonesia, probably – and his “objective” identity (in the form of papers) is removed or demonstrated to be no longer valid. His emotional investment in trusting the asylum seekers is huge, and every day his behaviour reinforces his new identity. He has no other trusted or credible sources of information. His heightened anxiety level will not allow him to modify his behaviour. In his mind, his survivor status now depends totally on the smuggler.

There are no accessible and testable competing sources of information that can reduce the anxiety through offering alternative pathways, other than those that would immediately “lose” the value of his family’s sunk investment.

The Australian government’s now even more corrupted Pacific Solution asks why he would not abandon the trip and apply to the UNHCR. Such a policy misses two features: the massive acquired anxiety resulting from months of managing cognitive dissonance; and the fact people will not acknowledge that their investment of money and time is a sunk cost.

Psychological interventions

So how can we help change asylum seeker behaviour?

First, we must accept that sunk cost is a factor which smugglers depend on for power over, and retention of, their clients. Recognition that the cost is lost will be a necessary but insufficient part of any intervention strategy.

Asylum seekers have a massive commitment to the belief that the sunk cost is not lost. The more the government messes with its policy, the clearer the balance skews towards the side adopted by the asylum seeker rather than that desired by the government.

A variety of interventions can address the cognitive dissonance problem. These include countering information from a credible source; providing a rational argument for behavioural change based on desired outcomes; and tapping the moral values of the asylum seekers. (Interestingly, The same dynamics could work on changing Australian attitudes towards asylum seekers).

The intervention is most useful where individuals are addressed in groups, when there is widely available accurate and positive information, and where they are induced to proselytise the desired changes to their peers.

This kind of approach can change behaviour remarkably quickly. False information that reinforces anxieties can have the opposite effect. However the effectiveness of the intervention (which is aimed at limiting the predisposition of asylum seekers to trust smugglers by getting onto unsafe boats) requires real changes so that the information provided is credible and accurate, sufficient to overcome the sunk cost factor.

What next?

There are three real changes that could be made that would help break the psychological cycle.

First, asylum seekers must be able to apply for refugee status while still in their home country, before they get tied up with people smugglers ( an impossible ask and a provocative inclusion, to demonstrate that the chain is already in place before the Refugee convention cuts in)..

Second, a major Australian processing centre should be set up in Indonesia (also a provocative suggestion, given the issues of sovereignty and Australian government capacity and motivation). If people fail this process, they will have little chance of any better outcome risking life and limb on the sea to arrive unlawfully in Australia. A small number will be tempted, but they will be paying premium rates and face almost guaranteed rejection and return.

Third, during waiting periods, intensive English programs, health checks and other identity building investment should be made available by government (not so provocative except to the shock jocks who would see such moves as offering a candy bar attracting more “illegals”). Every effort should be made to ensure asylum seeking arrivals are in the best mental and physical shape to re-adjust to Australia, rather than ensuring they are in the worst shape we can produce.

A rational response

A debate that grapples with each element of the asylum seeking process is crucial.

The Houston panel went part of the way, but left many fragments unresolved. The government and opposition have plans that will only intensify the catastrophe under way. The Greens have also avoided key questions.

Now is the time to systematically, rationally and with a “least worst outcome” mindset, move on these issues. Calm, humane, intelligent policy trumps panicked, inhumane, dumb reactions every time.

ABC Radio National Life Matters ( 29 November 2012) asked me to discuss the implications of my The Conversation provocation piece (republished here) (27 November 2012) on asylum seekers and why the Government and Opposition cannot “win” the games they are playing (with each other or with the world of refugees and global conflicts).   The link to the ABC is here.

As politics heightens in the decreasing count down to the 2013 Federal election, the opposition is laying its cards on the table. Always on the cards since the Institute for Public Affairs, a right-wing think tank, began a fund-raising campaign for Andrew Bolt in defense of his racial vilification case, Coalition Leader Tony Abbott has delivered to his ideological heartland with a commitment to remove key elements of Section 18C of the Race Discrimination Act (RDA).

Section 18C, known as the racial vilification provision, was introduced in 1996 with opposition agreement in the dying days of the Keating government to make race hate speech unlawful (not illegal). Ever since 1966 when the Holt government signed onto the International Convention for the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) while filing a reservation on Article 4 (the outlawing of race hate speech), the position of vilifying speech on the Australian political agenda has been contentious and often murky.

The states and the Commonwealth have overlapping jurisdiction, and civil and criminal laws apply in differing ways in different states. It is a mess, and one that the Commonwealth alone cannot clean up.

The specific Commonwealth legislation requires the offended party (who has to be able to show that they are offended, vilified etc.) to seek conciliation with the offending party through the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC).

The AHRC cannot act on its own bat in the public interest against racist materials. Only if no agreement can be reached does the AHRC declare it cannot conciliate and refers the case to the Federal Court for arbitration. When Andrew Bolt and the Herald Sun told Pat Eatock and her Aboriginal colleagues who sought conciliation to get lost, they had no other recourse but seek a court judgement.

Once they started down the RDA path (with little likelihood of anything other than an apology and costs), they had to put aside any common law actions for Mr Abbott’s preferred option of defamation (with the potential for serious damages).

Under the headline “Freedom Wars”, Abbott portrayed himself as a crusader facing the Saracens in the Holy Land. (Note, for hyperbolists, a war for freedom is being fought in Syria, not Australia).

He went on to argue that “Freedom of speech empowers Christians, Muslims, Jews, …. everyone and anyone publicly to affirm whatever it is that is important to their identity.”

True; but Section 18C only restrains them from saying anything they wish about each other, if what is important to them depends on discourses of vilification.

In making his attack on government plans to “regulate” the news media, Mr Abbott argued: “The more powerful people are, the more important the presumption must be that less powerful people should be able to say exactly what they think of them”.

Given this logic, the converse should also hold – “the less powerful people are, the more important the presumption that more powerful people should not be able to say exactly what they think of them”.

Abbott’s initiative, licensing as it does people who wish to have no limit on their opportunities “to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate”, has the apparent full support of his communications spokesperson Malcolm Turnbull. Turnbull’s office told The Conversation that Turnbull was “fully behind the statement” and that he had previewed and approved it.

When John Howard managed to alienate much of the Asian and Muslim communities of Sydney with his perceived support for Pauline Hanson, it took the Liberals under Barry O’Farrell many years to draw them back towards the Coalition. It paid off as the March 2011 state election demonstrated.

Yet Mr Abbott seems to have decided to potentially alienate these same groups once more. He has offered the added bonus of the Jewish community, the backbone of Turnbull’s Wentworth electorate, who have been the main users of 18C against Holocaust deniers, anti-Semites and racist agitators.

In the Executive Council of Australian Jewry submissions to the Attorney General Roxon’s consolidation review of human rights legislation, and to Race Discrimination Commissioner Helen Szoke’s Anti-Racism strategy, the ECAJ has pointed to the rising waves of anti-Semitism in Australia, the use of the internet for the dissemination of racist propaganda, and the insufficiency of Commonwealth legislation as it stands.

The government’s consolidation process appears rather disconnected and unfocused, with major problems still evident; a significant worry was that 18C would be dissolved behind a word-wall of obfuscation.

However, in response to Abbott’s speech, Roxon has said that the consolidated human rights legislation will be raised to the “highest possible standard”.

However her government recently withdrew its planned accession to the European Cybercrime Optional Protocol on Cyberracism, despite clear evidence Australia’s current regimes were inadequate, suggesting that the standards would not be quite as high as many might have hoped.

While Abbott’s speech is clearly a pay-off to the IPA, it also appears as a double-wedge: it places Turnbull in an invidious situation with his own constituency, and it seeks to wedge the government on freedom of speech issues just as the regulation of media debate reaches the boil. It may or may not represent his own viewpoint. It is also not clear whether this is a core promise, or simply rising chatter directed towards the hard edge of the conservative support.

Removing Section 18C without any replacement will open Australia to an even more thorough critique than that offered in 2011 by the United Nations Human Rights Committee. Of course, as under the Howard government, an Abbott government may well tell the UN to butt out.

What the IPA speech does is to direct public attention to what the rhetoric and the reality of human rights would look like under a returned Coalition government, with Senator Brandis as the potential Attorney General.

This is not something we’ve really seen displayed, and it adds an important dimension to the emerging Australian future being planned by the opposition.

Andrew Jakubowicz receives funding from the ARC for a project on Cyber-racism and Community Resilience (CRACR).

This article was originally published at The Conversation.
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