Asylum Seekers in Australian News

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Asylum Seekers in
Australian News Media
Mediated (In)humanity
Ashleigh Haw
Asylum Seekers in Australian News Media
 Ashleigh Haw

Asylum Seekers in
Australian News
Media
Mediated (In)humanity
Ashleigh Haw
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Deakin University
Melbourne, VIC, Australia

ISBN 978-3-031-18567-0    ISBN 978-3-031-18568-7 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18568-7

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2022
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 This book was written in Naarm (now known as Melbourne, Australia),
primarily on the stolen lands of the Boon Wurrung people of the Kulin
nation. Parts of it were also written on the stolen lands of the Wurundjeri
people, and the research project at the centre of the book was completed on
the stolen lands of the Whadjuk Nyoongar people in Boorloo (now referred
to as Perth, Australia).
I acknowledge that I am an uninvited settler on these lands and I pay my
respects to their Elders, past and present. Indigenous sovereignty has never
been ceded and this always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land.

v
 Acknowledgements

The ideas presented in this book are a product of many fruitful discus-
sions with peers, mentors, students, research participants, friends,
and family.
First and foremost, I want to thank the 24 research participants who
donated their valuable time, ideas, reflections, and recommendations to
this project. Your candour and generosity is greatly appreciated and this
book would not exist without you. I would also like to acknowledge the
contribution of Candice Bydder, who assisted with the transcription of
my participant interviews and did an incredible job.
This work would also not have been possible without the opportuni-
ties offered by the University of Western Australia’s School of Social
Sciences, where I completed this research (funded by an Australian
Government Research Training scholarship). Special thanks to the
School’s Graduate Research Coordinator, Steven Maras, for your invalu-
able advice and support.
This brings us to my primary PhD supervisor, Farida Fozdar, whose
thoughtful and incisive observations and critiques—coupled with her
wisdom, patience, and, at times, brutal honesty—played a significant role
in helping me nurture the research, writing, and critical thinking skills
necessary to complete this project. The same goes for my co-supervisor,
Rob Cover, whose insights enabled me to broaden my understanding of
various critical media theories and pivotal work in this field.
vii
viii Acknowledgements

I am immensely grateful for the brilliant feedback offered by the exam-

iners of the research thesis this book is based on, David Nolan, Jennifer
Cheng, and Simon Goodman. In particular, I want to thank David for
his additional mentorship in the years since, and Jennifer for her excellent
pointers about publishing doctoral research as a book. On a similar note,
I want to thank the anonymous reviewers of the initial proposal I submit-
ted to Palgrave for their sharp and judicious advice and suggestions,
which enabled me to strengthen the final manuscript substantially.
A special thank you must also be extended to the wonderful people at
Palgrave Macmillan and in particular, Alice Green and Emma Sheffield
who offered incredible support throughout this process. I also want to
acknowledge the efforts of the team at Springer, notably Geetha
Selvapandiyan, Petra Treiber and Steven Fassioms. Thank you all for your
enthusiasm about this project and for being such a dream to work with.
It really does take a village! And a special thank you to Rebecca Hazleden,
Senior Academic Editor at ‘Edit My Thesis’, for your thorough and care-
ful editing work on an earlier draft of this book.
I am fortunate to work at an academic institution filled to the brim
with creative, talented, and encouraging social scientists. Thank you to all
at Deakin University, notably Anna Halafoff and Andrea Witcomb, for
providing me with the space and intellectual environment I needed to get
through the final push of this book. I am also indebted to the University
of Melbourne—notably the people in the School of Social and Political
Sciences and Melbourne Social Equity Institute—for the research, teach-
ing, and collaborative opportunities they facilitated upon completion of
my PhD, teaching me skills I’ll carry with me forever. And for the seem-
ingly endless prospects for idea sharing and professional development, I
want to extend an enormous thank you to my colleagues within the
Australian and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA)
and The Australian Sociological Association (TASA), especially TASA’s
Executive Officer, Sally Daly, who has been a tremendous source of sup-
port for many years.
A highlight of my academic career to date has been working with
Karen Farquharson, a whip-smart, benevolent, and, above all, kind
scholar whose approach to researching race issues in the media has
strongly enriched my understanding of this field. Karen, you have been
 Acknowledgements ix

an infallibly wise mentor and soundboard, and I am a better person for

knowing you. It has also been an immense privilege to work with Val
Colic-Peisker and Karien Dekker, both of whom have taught me a great
deal about collaboration and collegiality.
On a similar note, I owe a debt of gratitude to a number of wonderful
friends, colleagues, and peers whose insights have been integral—not just
in terms of my capacity to write this book—but for my continued devel-
opment as a scholar. These people are Sylvia Ang, Emma Barnard, Phillipa
Bellemore, Earvin Cabalquinto, Sal Clark, Andrew Dalziell, Tanja
Dreher, Claire Fitzpatrick, Renae Fomiatti, Heidi Hetz, Charmaine Lim,
Catherine Martin, Maree Matinussen, Alanna Myers, Varunika
Ruwanpura, Kurt Sengul, Aimee Smith, Catriona Stevens, Jay Daniel
Thompson, Verity Trott, Enqi Weng, Blair Williams, Sybil Woolfson,
and Charlie Young. I’d also like to acknowledge my aunty, Narelle Jay,
who generously let me stay in her beautiful home for some much-needed
quiet time during the early stages of writing this book.
To my amazing parents, Rex and Fiona Haw aside from your unwaver-
ing support (both morally and fiscally) during my decade of study, the
most significant thing that stands out for me is that I have never felt
discouraged from pursuing my goals (no matter how strange), and on my
own terms no less. You have both consistently emphasised the impor-
tance of me forging my own path and pushing against the status quo. For
this, I am eternally grateful, even if I don’t say it enough.
And last, but certainly not least, thank you to my amazing partner
Dean Tunbridge. I don’t know how to articulate how grateful I am for
your love, support, pep talks, and endless laughs—throughout both my
PhD and the completion of this book. These past few years of uncertainty
have been tough for both of us, but you have consistently reminded me
to celebrate the ‘ups’ while making the ‘downs’ more bearable. You are my
favourite person to think and grow with, and I am in awe of your tenac-
ity, humour, and fortitude every day.
 Contents

1 I ntroduction  1

2 Asylum
 Seekers in the Australian News Media: What Do
We Know So Far? 11

3 Concepts, Methods, and Ethical Considerations 43

4 ‘Open
 the Floodgates’: Metaphor as a Tool for Legitimising
Australia’s ‘Invasion’ Panic 85

5 ‘Nation
 Prepares for War’: The Discursive Securitisation of
Asylum Seekers119

6 ‘Fight
 Against Illegals’: Constructing Asylum Seekers
Through Frames of Criminality and Illegitimacy151

7 ‘Taxpayers
 Foot the Bill’: Scapegoating Asylum Seekers
Through ‘Economic Migrants’ and ‘Burden’ Narratives181

xi
xii Contents

8 C
 onclusion211

I ndex217
 List of Tables

Table 3.1 Participants’ demographic details and stance on people

seeking asylum in Australia 50
Table 3.2 Key discourse categories arising in participant interviews 72

xiii
 1
Introduction

Thinking critically about how polarising topics are presented to us in the

media is a difficult task, especially when we have become so accustomed
to learning about what is happening in the world by engaging with the
news. And the more polarising the topic, the harder it can be to make
sense of it as an audience member. One issue that we repeatedly see
debated in news and political discourse is that of race and cultural differ-
ence, especially in the context of migration and asylum seeking in wealthy,
western nations where white supremacy has permeated the language sur-
rounding diversity and nationalism for centuries.
I first started researching the broader issues surrounding the media’s
treatment of migrants and asylum seekers in 2012. I had been working in
the family violence sector in Western Australia for five years, and I was
struck by how news discourse constructs women who have experienced
any form of abuse, especially those from migrant or refugee backgrounds.
My observation was that these women are routinely framed as either pas-
sive victims with no agency, or as deserving of their plight—typically on
the basis that they ‘chose’ to come to Australia with an abusive partner,
whose actions were often explained away by a cultural incompatibility

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 1

A. Haw, Asylum Seekers in Australian News Media,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18568-7_1
2 A. Haw

with Australian society (despite the fact that white, Australian-born men
perpetrate the vast majority of the country’s reported incidents of vio-
lence against women).
I wanted to delve into these issues further and find out what impact
they may have on the national conversation about migrant and refugee
women experiencing family violence. But when I started digging into the
available scholarly literature, I kept coming up short. Few Australian stud-
ies had examined how members of the public engage with media represen-
tations of people from asylum seeking backgrounds, and among those
that had, the focus was predominantly on ‘letters to the editor’ (see, for
example, McKay et al., 2011; Mummery & Rodan, 2007; Nolan et al.,
2016). Qualitative explorations into how people talk about their engage-
ment with media discourse surrounding people seeking asylum were vir-
tually non-existent. When I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity
to pursue my PhD in 2014, my chosen topic was a no-brainer.
While I was interested in investigating audience responses to news dis-
course about asylum seekers and refugees, specifically in the family vio-
lence context, a distinct lack of scholarship about how the Australian
public responds to news constructions of asylum seekers led me to focus
on this. Tony Abbott had recently been elected as Australia’s Prime
Minister—a win largely attributed to his staunch position on restricting
refugee arrivals and his ‘stop the boats’ campaign slogan (Marr, 2013)—
which piqued considerable media interest and political debate surround-
ing Australia’s asylum policies (and position on immigration more
broadly). Discussion and debate concerning the impact of resettling refu-
gees proliferated throughout the nation (and arguably the western world)
during this time. Here, terms like ‘economic migrants’, ‘queue jumpers’,
‘boat people’, and ‘illegals’ were routinely applied to asylum seekers
(Laughland-Booÿ et al., 2017; Muller, 2016; Pedersen et al., 2006;
Pickering, 2001). These discourses are reminiscent of John Howard’s
constructions of asylum seekers during his Australian Prime Ministership
from 1996 to 2007 (Brett, 1997; Peterie, 2016) and former One Nation
Senator Pauline Hanson’s now infamous maiden speech upon her elec-
tion to the House of Representatives in 1996, during which she railed
against immigration and warned that Australia was at risk of being
‘swamped’ by Asians (Sengul, 2020).
 1 Introduction 3

It is not uncommon for the arrival of asylum seekers to be regarded as

an undue threat to national security and sovereignty (Higgins, 2017).
And ensuing discussions surrounding the policies and practices of
refugee-­receiving nations are largely centred upon two competing priori-
ties: an obligation to protect people escaping persecution, versus a desire
to control national borders. It is within these discussions that we continu-
ously see ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ refugees pitted against one another
(Peterie, 2017) in a manner that is long argued to legitimise harmful and
exclusionary policies, including mandatory detention, offshore process-
ing, and restrictive visa conditions (Every & Augoustinos, 2008a, b;
Louis et al., 2007). Numerous measures of social cohesion, including
social interactions, English language proficiency, educational attainment,
and economic success, are said to be profoundly affected by how refugees
are supported during the early stages of their resettlement, including
when they first seek asylum in Australia (Colic-Peisker & Walker, 2003).
Understanding societal attitudes that underscore exclusionary treatment
of people seeking asylum—and how these ideas are communicated (and
engaged with) en masse—is therefore an urgent area of sociological
inquiry.
Given widespread global interest in discursive constructions of refu-
gees and asylum seekers, one might expect that media coverage of the
issue (and its role in shaping public opinion) would be the focus of much
academic attention. Some international studies have examined how
media discourse influences societal attitudes about people from refugee
backgrounds (e.g., De Poli et al., 2017; Kaye, 1998), and highlighted
potential democratic consequences (see, for example, Philo et al., 2013).
However, qualitative explorations into how democracies engage with and
reflect upon news representations of the issue remain rare, especially in
the Australian context. To address this, I chose to undertake research into
how members of the Australian public engage with, and evaluate, medi-
ated constructions of people seeking asylum. Of particular interest, and
at the centre of this book, are the specific aspects of news media construc-
tions of asylum seekers that audiences trust and distrust, especially in
terms of the media’s capacity to inform them about the issue.
Previous explorations of audience responses to news depictions of sim-
ilarly divisive topics have tended to implicate news media discourse as a
4 A. Haw

key driver of public attitudes (De Vreese & Boomgaarden, 2006; Gunther,
1998). My research, by contrast, reveals a slightly more complex and
nuanced picture. While news coverage was noted as the main source of
information about asylum seekers for most of my sample, all participants
critiqued news portrayals of the issue, with many noting specific media
discourses they either question or reject. These observations led me to
shift my focus away from merely ascertaining media effects on public
opinion and instead, move toward an analysis of what the public is saying
about media coverage as well as how they construct these perspectives.
The focus of this book is threefold. First, I am concerned with contex-
tualising my findings regarding audience conceptualisations of news
depictions of asylum seekers within the broader national context, taking
into account previous scholarly contributions and debates. Second, my
discussion focuses on how publics construct their responses to mediated
constructions of asylum seekers and refugees. Here, by focusing my anal-
ysis on the various mechanisms by which audiences use language to eval-
uate news media messages, I highlight how publics both adopt and resist
dominant constructions of people seeking asylum. Lastly, I conclude by
considering the far-reaching implications of our current state of empirical
and theoretical knowledge, from both a research and policy/practice per-
spective. Do publics feel informed by media coverage on the topic of
people seeking asylum? Why/why not? What facets of news depictions do
they identify as informative? What aspects do they see as problematic,
and why? Where do audiences feel that news representations can be
improved to more adequately help publics understand the plight of peo-
ple seeking asylum and the true impact of their resettlement?
I completed this research within the University of Western Australia’s
School of Social Sciences, collecting my data between May 2015 and
April 2016 via semi-structured interviews with 24 residents of Western
Australia. All participants volunteered their time and were generous with
their offerings. They spoke insightfully, frankly, and at times, self-­critically.
While I cannot claim my sample is representative of the wider Australian
society, they do represent a diverse range of backgrounds, experiences,
and viewpoints concerning people seeking asylum. This book presents
the findings arising from these interviews, situating my analyses within
relevant national and global scholarship and highlighting some
 1 Introduction 5

important implications for public opinion, democracy, political commu-

nication, scholarship, and above all, the well-being of Australia’s asylum
seekers and refugee populations.
In Chap. 2, I present an overview of the current socio-political context
surrounding asylum seekers in Australia, including poignant observations
and arguments within the existing literature. I then move on to discuss-
ing approaches to researching media audiences in the context of their
engagement with politicised topics involving marginalised communities
in Chap. 3. Here, I outline the key concepts employed in my argument
and provide an overview of the research methods used in my study, pay-
ing particular attention to ethical and practical considerations.
In Chap. 4, I begin to present my research findings, starting with the
issue of sensationalism in Australian news media depictions of asylum
seekers. Here, I conceptualise key scholarly debates and trends surround-
ing news media discourses that exaggerate the threat and impact of peo-
ple seeking asylum. I also discuss the prevalence of metaphorical
constructions within these representations, whereby asylum arrivals are
likened to water disasters that ‘flood’ and/or ‘invade’ Australia. I then
explain how my participants both reproduced and resisted such narra-
tives and, in some cases, cited sensationalism as a feature of Australian
news media discourse that adversely affects their trust in the veracity of
these messages. In addition to situating these findings within the litera-
ture surrounding moral panics (Cohen, 1972), I discuss how metaphori-
cal exaggerations of the scale and impact of people seeking asylum—using
terms such as ‘floods’, ‘waves’, ‘influx’, and ‘hordes’—reflect longstanding
settler colonialist rhetoric that situates the non-white ‘other’ as a danger-
ous and unpredictable threat (Elder, 2003; Hage, 2000; Moreton-­
Robinson, 2004, 2015; Perera, 2009; Wolfe, 1999).
In Chap. 5, I draw attention to how publics engage with securitisation
discourses in media depictions of asylum seekers, which has been a defin-
ing feature of the Australian national conversation on migration and asy-
lum seeking for many years. I also discuss how some of my research
participants accepted and reproduced notions of asylum seekers as a
threat to national security and sovereignty while others opposed such
coverage and, in some cases, discursively oriented their own perspectives
to challenge these framings. I connect this analysis to existing scholarship
6 A. Haw

focused on the discursive securitisation of people seeking asylum in

Australia, highlighting how this plays into Australia’s politics of ‘border-
phobia’ (McDonald, 2011) and longstanding anxieties surrounding the
non-white ‘other’ (Hage, 2003a, b).
Chapter 6 focuses on Australian news media framings of asylum seek-
ers as ‘illegal’ and/or ‘illegitimate’, and how such terms deny their human-
ity through criminalising language. I discuss key arguments in the
literature, where the illegality trope is said to reorient societal understand-
ings of the asylum issue from a humanitarian problem to an issue of
criminality and deviance. I also discuss how, for many years, such repre-
sentations have been deployed to lend credence to calls for more stringent
border policies. And in presenting my own research findings pertaining
to the illegality/illegitimacy trope, I point out some interesting linguistic
features of how some of my interviewees opposed and problematised
mediated discourses that pit asylum seekers against one another based on
perceptions of what constitutes a ‘genuine’ versus ‘bogus’ refugee.
In Chap. 7, I explore how people make sense of news depictions of
asylum seekers as scapegoats for a range of social and economic problems
facing society. In my research, I observed both acceptance and opposition
to such scapegoating in media and political discourse. Drawing on the
literature surrounding resource scarcity and the role of economic precar-
ity in the formation of racialised scapegoats, I highlight several interest-
ing features of language deployed in publicised accounts of national
‘crises’, where we regularly see exclusionary asylum policies framed as a
necessary means of alleviating society’s most pressing problems, such as
housing shortages, unemployment, and general economic downturn.
In the concluding chapter, I pull together the key arguments presented
in the book, highlighting their implications for research, journalistic
practice, democracy, and social progress. I argue that my own research
challenges the idea of media coverage as a sole driver of attitudes about
asylum seekers, instead suggesting that personal connections to the issue
(or a lack thereof ) may have a stronger role in opinion formation.
Nonetheless, when considered alongside the vast body of literature on
political news engagement (and its influence on public opinion), my
findings illuminate the important democratic function of mediated rep-
resentations of people seeking asylum, which I unpack in the concluding
 1 Introduction 7

chapter. I also highlight some remaining questions from a research per-

spective, suggesting future avenues of inquiry with respect to understand-
ing how audiences engage with news media constructions of asylum
seekers, as well as issues of race and multiculturalism more generally.
Overall, I find that by analysing how publics critically discuss medi-
ated constructions of asylum seekers, we can more adequately account for
personal experience and individual context as shapers of attitudes, both
toward media discourse about seeking asylum and toward seeking asylum
itself. Rather than assuming a direct, causal relationship between media
discourse and societal perspectives, the discursive approach documented
in this book enabled the identification of specific elements of news media
coverage that affect how informed audiences feel about this important
and polarising topic. Moreover, this approach allowed me to access the
complexities of the audience response to Australian news coverage of
people seeking asylum, illuminating how mediated constructions of this
issue are evaluated in vastly different ways, with some people accepting
dominant hegemonic narratives while others either challenge or
reject them.

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 2
Asylum Seekers in the Australian News
Media: What Do We Know So Far?

Introduction
At the time of writing, there are an estimated 89.3 million displaced
people worldwide—the highest figure in recorded history—most of
whom are fleeing civil wars in Syria, Afghanistan, South Sudan, Myanmar,
and Ukraine (UNHCR, 2022). As a signatory to the 1951 United
Nations High Commissioner for Refugees’ (UNHCR) Convention
Relating to the Status of Refugees (and its 1967 protocol), Australia allo-
cates approximately 13,750 places to refugees each year under the
Government’s Humanitarian Program (Refugee Council of Australia,
2021). The UNHCR grants most of these places to those who have
sought asylum offshore; however, some people, known as asylum seekers,
arrive in Australia by plane or boat and then lodge their claims onshore
(Phillips, 2015). But despite the country’s long history of providing pro-
tection to people seeking asylum, the Australian government routinely
constructs their arrival as an unwelcome challenge to national security
and sovereignty (Higgins, 2017). Similar rhetoric has been observed
among the broader Australian population, with studies indicating that

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 11

A. Haw, Asylum Seekers in Australian News Media,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-18568-7_2
12 A. Haw

many Australians hold hostile attitudes toward asylum seekers that largely
reflect ideas presented in media and political discourse (Augoustinos &
Quinn, 2003; McKay et al., 2012; Pedersen et al., 2006).
It is not surprising, then, that media and political discourses play an
integral role in how the Australian public makes sense of asylum seeking,
especially given that most people lack direct contact with people from
asylum seeking backgrounds (Muller, 2016). Inquiry into media dis-
course about the issue tells us much about the kinds of ideas presented in
the public sphere where we see strong parallels with the kinds of attitudes
observed among the general population, suggesting some influence of
media discourses on broader societal opinion. The extent of this influ-
ence, however, is unclear and hotly debated. In this chapter, I contextual-
ise our current state of knowledge surrounding people seeking asylum in
media, political and societal discourse by offering an overview of the
available literature before highlighting some of the remaining questions
this book seeks to address. I begin by outlining the political context in
Australia, illuminating how the country’s policies and public representa-
tions of people seeking asylum have long shaped the national conversa-
tion on this issue.

 eeking Asylum in Australia:

S
The Political Landscape
Although cultural diversity is continually lauded as a defining feature of
Australian national identity, the legacy of colonialism and the White
Australia Policy (1901–1966) remains deeply embedded within political,
media, and societal discourse surrounding the country’s immigration
policies. Hostile and exclusionary ideas about migrants, refugees, and
asylum seekers are therefore inextricably connected to the country’s set-
tler colonial history. The White Australia Policy both symbolised and
embodied prevailing wisdom surrounding belonging (and non-­belonging)
during and following Federation in 1901. The first legislative tool of the
policy was the Immigration Restriction Act 1901, which purported to
“protect the nation from the external Other” through the prohibition of
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 13

non-European immigration (Kamp, 2010, p. 412). This legislation—

premised on conceptions of an Australian national identity characterised
by the exclusion of the non-white ‘other’—informed the country’s
approach to immigration and Indigenous affairs for over six decades
(Elder, 2005; Fitzgerald, 2007). After the policy was dismantled in 1966,
the Australian government started to offer a more accepting stance regard-
ing multiculturalism, with the country beginning to receive migrants
from all over the world during the 1970s. Today, Australia is one of the
most culturally diverse countries on the planet, yet both overt and covert
forms of racism remain entrenched within the country’s migration and
refugee policies, as well as in broader societal discourse surrounding new-
comers (Dunn et al., 2004).
The politicisation of asylum seekers in Australia as we know it today
can be traced back to the 1970s, when the country saw increasing num-
bers of refugees arriving via boat from Vietnam and surrounding coun-
tries in response to the fall of Saigon. Between 1975 and the mid-1980s,
Australia resettled approximately 10,000–12,000 Vietnamese refugees
each year (Barnes, 2001), and much of the public discussion focused on
Australia’s sovereignty and capacity to sustain ongoing arrivals. The asy-
lum issue became intensely political during this time, especially as the
Vietnamese arrivals coincided with a federal election in December 1977.
In the lead-up to the election, opinion polls indicated that most of the
general public supported the halting of further boat arrivals (Betts, 2001),
but the approach of the Coalition government, led by Malcolm Fraser,
focused on regulating arrivals rather than completely stopping them.
Furthermore, analyses of political discourse during this time revealed a
considerably more compassionate stance on people seeking asylum than
that of subsequent governments (Peterie, 2016).
From 1989, in what became known as Australia’s ‘second wave’,
Australia experienced an uptick in people seeking asylum by boat, largely
from China and Cambodia. The total number of these arrivals, however,
was much smaller than the Vietnamese ‘wave’, averaging roughly 300 per
year (Betts, 2001). It was in response to these arrivals that One Nation
senator Pauline Hanson gained national and international notoriety for
her anti-Asian sentiments and infamous maiden speech in Australian
Parliament where she claimed Australia was being ‘swamped’ by Asians
14 A. Haw

(Sengul, 2021), intensifying public debate and division surrounding the

impacts of multiculturalism in Australia. This division was exacerbated
further with the arrival of the so-called third wave in the late 1990s, con-
sisting predominantly of asylum seekers from Afghanistan and Iraq. Here
we witnessed a significant change in political, media, and societal rheto-
ric, with the focus shifting from how to respond to the needs of new
arrivals to how to control Australia’s borders. Public anxieties concerning
asylum seekers during this period were further compounded by wide-
spread media coverage of a series of sexual assaults perpetrated by so-­
called Lebanese gangs in New South Wales (Poynting, 2002). These
incidents led to a sharp increase in verbal and physical attacks against
Muslims, and exclusionary attitudes toward migrants and asylum seekers
intensified.
Many argue that it was the events of late 2001 that solidified Australia’s
politics of exclusion of the asylum seeker ‘other’. On 26 August 2001, the
Norwegian cargo ship Tampa rescued 438 asylum seekers en route to
Christmas Island from Indonesia. Because the ship’s captain, Arne
Rinnan, was prohibited from entering Australian waters, Special Air
Service troops boarded the Tampa and held it in place while the Australian
government introduced legislation to prevent the vessel from reaching
Christmas Island. The asylum seekers on board were later transferred to
the Nauru Regional Processing Centre, where they were detained until
their asylum claims could be processed, which for many, took several
years (Fleay & Hoffman, 2014).
On 6 October 2001 (six weeks after the Tampa incident), the HMAS
Adelaide intercepted a ‘Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel’ (SIEV 4), which
was heading to Australia with 223 passengers and crew on board, most of
whom were asylum seekers. On 8 October, the SIEV 4 began to sink,
during which several passengers were evacuated into the ocean.
Photographs emerged of some of these asylum seekers in the water and
were subsequently publicised in the Australian media in what became
known as the ‘Children Overboard’ affair.1 Offering an explanation for
the photos, the Howard government and then Defence Minister Peter

1
For a more comprehensive analysis of the ‘Children Overboard’ incident, see Macken-Horarik
(2003), Mares (2002), and Slattery (2003).
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 15

Reith claimed that asylum seekers on board the SIEV 4 had deliberately
thrown their children into the ocean to manipulate authorities into gain-
ing entry to Australia—claims that were later revealed to be incorrect.
The falsity of the story, however, did little to quell the government’s hard-­
line stance on people seeking asylum. Shortly thereafter, Australia entered
into bilateral agreements with Nauru and Papua New Guinea officials to
set up Regional Processing Centres on Nauru and Manus Island (Mares,
2002)—a policy known as the ‘Pacific Solution’.
John Howard’s subsequent victory in the 2001 federal election, which
he had been predicted to lose mere months prior, has been widely attrib-
uted to the Coalition government’s management of the Tampa and
‘Children Overboard’ events (and the stringent anti-asylum legislation
enacted as a result) (Mares, 2002; Marr & Wilkinson, 2003). An impor-
tant point to raise about both incidents is that they occurred during the
same year as the 9/11 terror attacks in the United States. Some argue that
9/11 further legitimised the demonisation of asylum seekers and migrants,
particularly Muslims and people of so-called Middle-Eastern appearance
who faced considerable scrutiny while the ‘war on terror’ discourse per-
meated Australia’s asylum policies (Osuri & Banerjee, 2004; Tufail &
Poynting, 2013). The government exploited public anxieties in the wake
of 9/11 by conflating asylum seekers with terrorists to justify restrictive
immigration policies in the name of ‘border protection’ (Hugo, 2002;
Pugh, 2004). During this period, we saw asylum seekers’ racial and cul-
tural differences ubiquitously connected to a moral incompatibility with
so-called mainstream Australia (Randell-Moon, 2006), and anyone who
challenged or resisted the Howard government’s values was deemed ‘un-­
Australian’ in what Halafoff (2006, p. 5) aptly referred to as a “new patri-
otism”. This discursive strategy of positioning asylum seekers as an
undesirable ‘other’ was designed to appeal to widely held Anglo-centric
attitudes that punctuated Australia’s settler colonial history (Marr &
Wilkinson, 2003). It was overwhelmingly successful, resulting in a land-
slide victory for Howard and the Liberal party.
Upon being re-elected, the Howard government amended existing leg-
islation to excise several islands from the country’s migration zone,
including Christmas Island, severely limiting asylum seekers’ rights to
obtain refugee status (Every & Augoustinos, 2008). They also
16 A. Haw

commenced a military campaign entitled ‘Operation Relex’, which

sought to turn back boats carrying asylum seekers before they could reach
Australian waters (Marr & Wilkinson, 2003). But in 2007, Australia wit-
nessed some shifts to its asylum policies (and the ensuing focus of rheto-
ric surrounding asylum seekers) following the election of Kevin Rudd
and the Labor government. While the Rudd government upheld the exci-
sion of islands from Australia’s migration zone, the ‘Pacific Solution’ was
repealed and offshore processing facilities were closed (Phillips & Spinks,
2013). By 2012, however, asylum seekers again became a key focus of
political discourse due to a notable increase in boat arrivals. However,
rather than being framed as a matter of ‘border protection’, the Rudd
government adopted a seemingly more humanitarian position, with the
focus primarily on preventing deaths at sea and impeding the people
smuggling trade (Peterie, 2017). This led the Opposition to accuse the
Labor government of being ‘too soft’ with their border security measures
(McKay et al., 2017).
With the 2013 election looming, both Liberal and Labor placed their
strategies for managing boat arrivals at the centre of their campaigning
efforts, working hard to convince the Australian electorate of the strengths
of their respective asylum policies in what former Liberal minister Bruce
Baird referred to as a ‘race to the bottom’ (Hawley, 2013). Here, it was
rightly predicted that the government with the ‘toughest’ asylum policies
would triumph, and after the Coalition government was elected in 2013
under the leadership of Tony Abbott, they enacted ‘Operation Sovereign
Borders’ (OSB), reinforcing the Howard government’s hard-line approach
by asserting that anyone who attempted to seek asylum in Australia by
boat would not be resettled in Australia. It therefore comes as no surprise
that this hard-line stance, articulated widely via the catchcry ‘Stop the
boats’, was a key driver of the Coalition government’s successful cam-
paign. OSB served as reassurance that the government was acting in the
best interests of the country’s predominantly white populace to keep
migration under control, despite the significant human rights conse-
quences for the people detained in regional processing centres as a result
of the policy. At the time of writing, the Labor government, led by
Anthony Albanese, is in power, having won the most recent federal elec-
tion on 21 May 2022. Despite this, OSB remains in place.
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 17

The Geneva-based Global Detention Project (2020) recently labelled

Australia’s immigration control regime as the most restrictive in the
world. For the past two decades, however, data concerning Australian
public opinion has consistently revealed that many believe the country’s
migration policies are not strict enough and that mandatory detention is
a necessary means of managing new arrivals (Betts, 2001; Markus, 2010;
Markus & Arunachalam, 2013, 2018). This highlights the influential
communicative function of the country’s asylum policies. For instance,
the act of detaining asylum seekers lends credence to the idea that they
pose a threat to Australian society, reinforcing their criminalisation and
effectively rendering them pawns who are harnessed by political elites to
win votes (Isaacs, 2015). Publicised discussions about people seeking asy-
lum have indeed formed a significant component of Australian political
campaigning for several years, with some victories—notably Howard’s in
2001 and Abbott’s in 2013—largely attributed to promises of highly
restrictive migration policies (Marr, 2013a). What the Australian public
understands about the issue is therefore closely tied to both political and
media rhetoric. The following discussion, in turn, synthesises the existing
literature surrounding media and societal constructions of people seeking
asylum in Australia.

News Media and Societal Discourses

It is well documented that societal perceptions concerning people seeking
asylum largely reflect the ideas presented in media and political discourse
(Elias et al., 2021; Hartley & Pedersen, 2007; McKay et al., 2011a). One
of the most insidious of these discourses relates to the perceived illegality
of seeking asylum, particularly for those who arrive in Australia by boat.
Numerous investigations into societal perceptions about forced migra-
tion have revealed a tendency for people to conflate asylum seekers with
illegal immigrants (Laughland-Booÿ et al., 2014; McKay et al., 2012;
Sulaiman-Hill et al., 2011; Pedersen et al., 2006)—an idea that has heav-
ily featured in Australian news and political discourse, particularly fol-
lowing 9/11 and the Tampa affair (Markus & Arunachalam, 2013, 2018;
Pickering, 2001; Saxton, 2003). McLaren and Patil’s (2016) critical
18 A. Haw

discourse analysis of 100 Australian newspaper articles revealed a domi-

nant theme of deviancy and illegality in descriptions of asylum seekers,
and Australia’s policy of mandatory detention was presented as a reason-
able policy response for managing asylum arrivals. Furthermore, we have
long witnessed political and media discourse where the ‘illegal’ trope is
called upon to justify exclusionary policies, such as mandatory detention,
boat turn-backs (i.e., Operation Sovereign Borders), and restrictive visa
conditions for asylum seekers living in the community (Every &
Augoustinos, 2008; O’Doherty & Lecouteur, 2007). For example, in
their analysis of Australian broadsheet, television, radio, and online news
content, O’Doherty and Lecouteur (2007) observed that the term ‘ille-
gal’ was voiced predominantly within arguments in support of “sending
them [asylum seekers] home” (p. 6).
The pervasiveness of themes of illegality and deviance in constructions
of people seeking asylum is closely connected to the discursive pitting of
‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ refugees against one other (Peterie, 2017).
Here, we see the differentiation between so-called genuine and bogus
refugees used as a communicative strategy to position hostile attitudes
toward asylum seekers as reasonable (van Dijk, 1997). According to van
Dijk (1997), this notion of ‘bogus’ versus ‘genuine’ refugees first emerged
in the mid-1980s following large numbers of Tamils fleeing Sri Lanka’s
civil war to seek asylum in Europe. Here, the ‘bogus’ idea was regularly
deployed to justify policy responses that heavily restricted resettlement
for these arrivals. Fast forward 25 years, and we continue to see the ‘bogus’
versus ‘genuine’ dichotomy applied in hegemonic, ‘common sense’ depic-
tions of asylum seeking on a global scale. Respondents to the Scanlon
Foundation’s Social Cohesion Surveys, for instance, have been found to
voice welcoming views only toward asylum seekers regarded as ‘genuine
refugees’ (see Markus & Arunachalam, 2013, 2018). Likewise, an analy-
sis of letters to the editor published in eight United Kingdom tabloids
and broadsheets revealed a common belief that ‘genuine’ refugees deserve
to be offered protection, whilst ‘bogus’ refugees should be expatriated
(Lynn & Lea, 2003).
Embedded within the ‘genuine’ versus ‘bogus’ trope—particularly in
the Australian political landscape—are debates surrounding asylum seek-
ers’ methods of arrival. A vast body of Australian research, for example,
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 19

has highlighted the prevalence of societal belief in a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’

way to seek asylum (Markus & Arunachalam, 2013, 2018; McKay et al.,
2011a, 2012). For example, in their survey research with members of
Australian public, McKay et al. (2012) found that many respondents
posited that asylum seekers should be treated with fairness provided they
have followed the ‘proper processes’ to enter Australia. This notion of
‘proper processes’ as a condition for the acceptance of people seeking
asylum is a product of longstanding fear and anxiety around people
smuggling and boat arrivals in Australia—fears that are exacerbated and
reinforced by political rhetoric such as the slogan, “If you come here by
boat without a valid visa, you won’t be resettled in Australia”, issued by
the Australian Government under Kevin Rudd’s leadership in July 2013,
which ran concurrently with the Coalition government’s ‘Stop the boats’
campaign leading up to the 2013 federal election.
The ‘right processes’ and ‘genuine refugees’ discourses are often
deployed during arguments that frame asylum seekers as ‘queue jumpers’
(Martin, 2020; McKay et al., 2012). The notion of a ‘queue’ has been a
pervasive feature of political and news discourse surrounding people
seeking asylum in Australia, with the ‘queue jumper’ moniker widely
used to justify asylum seekers’ exclusion from society on the grounds that
they have used the ‘back door’ to enter Australia and thus, acted unfairly
(Clyne, 2005; Gelber, 2003). The ‘back door’ is a metaphor for the act of
seeking asylum after arriving onshore rather than lodging an application
offshore via the UNHCR’s resettlement program. Mediated representa-
tions of asylum seekers have persistently aligned the ‘queue jumper’ and
‘back door’ metaphors with the concept of ‘Australian values’ (Clyne,
2005; Martin, 2020), reminiscent of how so-called queue-jumpers have
been presented in parliamentary discourse as a threat to Australian ideals
of fairness (Every & Augoustinos, 2008; Haw, 2021). This fuels Australia’s
already pervasive ‘us versus them’ mentality where asylum seekers are
viewed as an undesirable and threatening ‘other’ that the civilised broader
society must be protected from. Epithets such as ‘invaders’ conjure up
ideas of asylum seekers as threats to the values, safety, and security of the
wider society (Jacobs et al., 2018; van der Linden & Jacobs, 2016), typi-
cally as a means of justifying exclusionary humanitarian policies (Welch
& Schuster, 2005). Indeed, the idea of the threatening asylum seeker
20 A. Haw

‘other’ regularly features in discourses that endorse policies such as man-

datory detention (Hartley & Pedersen, 2007; Louis et al., 2007) and a
need to control the nation’s borders (Every, 2008; O’Doherty &
Augoustinos, 2008).
Returning to the Tampa incident as an example, we can see how asy-
lum seekers were positioned as an urgent threat that legitimised the gov-
ernment’s implementation of more stringent border control policies (see
Gale, 2004). As O’Doherty and Augoustinos (2008) explain, Australian
news coverage of the Tampa affair reproduced the notion of Australia’s
right to detain and/or deport asylum seekers who arrive by boat in the
interests of upholding “national sovereignty” (p. 577). As Devetak (2004,
p. 107) asserts:

By asking Australians to believe that asylum seekers pose an existential

threat to the nation, the government exploited a persistent fear, perhaps
paranoia, in Australia’s national psyche—one that extends from the
Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 to the Border Protection Act of 2001.

Discourses of control and security in the name of Australian sovereignty

play into common fears and anxieties about those who cross the nation’s
borders (Hage, 2003a, b), and these nationalist narratives are inherently
racialised as they situate Australia as homogeneously Anglo-Celtic by
framing the national ‘self ’ as under threat from the non-white ‘other’.
Much of the racism and white supremacy that underpins exclusionary
rhetoric about Australia’s asylum policies are, however, disguised. Here, as
Peterie and Neil (2020) point out, we see conspicuous references to race
“replaced by ‘dog-whistle’ condemnations of ‘cultural’ (as distinct from
biological) difference” (p. 26). These cultural conceptions of nationhood
are grounded in ideas about familiarity and community whereby domi-
nant, Anglo-Celtic members of society are seen to belong, while (per-
ceived) culturally incompatible ‘others’ see their belonging denied (Hage,
2000). The resulting policy implications confine non-white asylum seek-
ers to their status as ‘non-citizens’.
Much research has shown that political, media, and public discourse
surrounding people seeking asylum (and migrants more generally) regu-
larly include calls for newcomers to ‘fit in’ with Australia’s customs and
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 21

beliefs (Fozdar & Low, 2015; Moran, 2011; Nolan et al., 2016). In 2017’s
Challenging Racism Project, the notion that minority groups should
behave more like ‘mainstream Australians’ was shared by 49% of survey
respondents (Blair et al., 2017). This mirrors findings reported by
Laughland-Booÿ et al. (2014), who found that many Australians express
concerns about asylum seekers’ cultural practices and beliefs jeopardising
the ‘Australian way of life’. Additionally, Saxton’s (2003) analysis of
Australian newspaper discourses and public sentiments (expressed via
‘letters to the editor’) following the 2001 Tampa incident revealed a prev-
alent belief that Australia has the right to protect its territory by dictating
how many migrants and asylum seekers the country will accept (and the
circumstances by which they are accepted), closely reflecting the senti-
ments in former Prime Minister John Howard’s infamous 2001 declara-
tion, “We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances
in which they come” (McKay et al., 2017).
The idea of preserving and protecting Australian national identity
through increasingly stringent measures to ‘control’ asylum arrivals
became a central component of election campaigning during the Howard
era. In her book How Australia Decides: Election Reporting and the Media,
Sally Young (2011) documents the ways in which asylum seekers were
presented in Australian election coverage between 2001 and 2008, much
of which was peppered with false or misleading claims. A prominent
example is the Australian media’s treatment of the ‘Children Overboard’
affair. As a constructed media event, ‘Children Overboard’ was called
upon to reaffirm a highly insulated idea of Australian identity (character-
ised by family morals and responsibility), which is distinct from that of
the threatening asylum seeker ‘other’, which, according to Slattery (2003)
is “signified by extremist Islamic principles attached to the people who
were apparently prepared to risk their children’s safety” (p. 94). This vigi-
lant alertness—dubbed a ‘culture of worrying’ by Ghassan Hage (2003a,
b)—enabled Howard and his conservative Government to “pursue an
aggressive attitude to asylum seekers, even those from countries on which
we wage war” (Macken-Horarik, 2003, p. 284).
Such attitudes are further reinforced through sensationalist media
depictions that paint an exaggerated picture of how the Australian popu-
lation is impacted by resettling asylum seekers (McKay et al., 2011b;
22 A. Haw

MacDonald, 2017). Many argue that these representations contain the

hallmarks of a ‘moral panic’ (see, for example, Haw, 2020; Marr, 2013b;
Martin, 2015; Morgan & Poynting, 2016). Initially conceptualised by
sociologist Stanley Cohen in response to UK press depictions of crime in
the 1970s (see Cohen, 1972), a moral panic is said to occur when an
event, phenomenon, or person becomes the focus of sensationalised mass
media attention. Moral panics trigger and exploit societal anxiety con-
cerning a real or imagined social problem by framing the issue as ‘out of
control’, often using melodramatic language and/or imagery. Additionally,
and perhaps most importantly, a particular group or individual is
maligned as responsible for the problem at hand, resulting in ‘moral
entrepreneurs’ and professional experts offering solutions and endorsing
punitive policy changes to appease the panicked public (Cohen, 1972).
Cohen later posited that any issue relating to migration, multicultural-
ism, and/or people seeking asylum would be a frequent subject of moral
panics because such issues are “more political, more edgy and more ame-
nable to violence” (2011, p. 242). This is of particular relevance when we
consider the widespread use of metaphors to describe asylum seekers in
political and media discourse, such as discussions of them arriving in
‘tides’, ‘waves’, and ‘floods’—depictions that serve to dehumanise asylum
seekers while exaggerating the scale and impact of arrivals (Nguyen &
McCallum, 2016; Welch & Schuster, 2005).
Closely connected to discussions of asylum seekers ‘flooding’ into the
country is the notion that people from asylum seeking backgrounds are a
drain on Australia’s resources. In their content analysis of Australian
media releases published between 2001 and 2002, Klocker and Dunn
(2003) observed a prevalent framing of asylum seekers as an ‘uncontrol-
lable burden’. Furthermore, Klocker (2004) found that societal discourse
is often preoccupied with concerns about Australian taxpayers being bur-
dened with the costs of detaining asylum seekers. These concerns are
largely reflective of political and media discourse, which has been found
to focus heavily on the ‘burden’ of managing new arrivals (Sulaiman-Hill
et al., 2011). This ‘burden’ narrative has also been reported in the inter-
national literature, particularly in the UK where KhosraviNik (2010)
observed dominant newspaper constructions of asylum seekers as a strain
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 23

on Britain’s resources, and Philo et al. (2013) found that the UK televi-
sion news reports routinely constructed narratives of asylum seekers as a
welfare burden.
The ‘burden’ discourse is thought to be triggered by scarcity—either
real or perceived (Sanchez-Mazas & Licata, 2015). In this context, the
social and political categorisation of asylum seekers as ‘economic migrants’
takes on added significance (Burroughs, 2015; Every & Augoustinos,
2007). An economic migrant is commonly understood to be a person
whose decision to migrate is motivated by a desire to improve their socio-
economic standing through employment and financial success. According
to van Dijk (1997), the term originated during political discourse sur-
rounding Tamil asylum seekers arriving in Europe in the 1980s. Australian
and international literature has documented the ‘economic migrants’ dis-
course as a recurring theme in societal, media, and political discussions
about asylum seekers and refugees (see, for example, Gabrielatos & Baker,
2008; Goodman & Speer, 2007; Saxton, 2003). Here, we see a common
belief that asylum seekers who wish to advance their career prospects do
not have a legitimate claim for refugee status. Economic migration is
therefore invoked as yet another argument against welcoming and inclu-
sionary asylum policies.
The persistence of both the ‘burden’ and ‘economic migrants’ narra-
tives places asylum seekers and refugees in a lose–lose position. On the
one hand, they face hostility and exclusion for not being productive
enough (and thus ‘burdening’ the host society), but when they express a
desire to gain employment and become financially independent, they
earn the ‘economic migrants’ label, which, in most iterations, positions
their asylum claim as illegitimate. A common pushback to the ‘economic
migrants’ idea is the fact that an asylum seeker can simultaneously seek to
improve their socioeconomic standing while holding a valid claim for
refugee status. These arguments often emphasise the humanitarian needs
of people seeking asylum, highlighting the push factors that have led
them to flee in the first place. An unintended consequence of these argu-
ments, however, is that these can further feed the constructions of asylum
seekers as passive and hapless ‘victims’ who lack agency.
Despite its widespread use within welcoming and pro-asylum argu-
ments, the ‘victim’ trope can reduce asylum seekers to what Malkki
24 A. Haw

(1996) calls “speechless emissaries” (p. 390). For instance, Parker’s (2015)
analysis of Australian and UK news coverage revealed that constructions
of asylum seekers as ‘victims’ tended to emphasise their perceived defi-
ciency, aligning with Hoenig’s (2009) finding that Australian news repre-
sentations of asylum seekers often portray them as having no agency
while further dehumanising them through the exclusion of their perspec-
tives. This supports the findings of research by Cooper et al. (2016),
whose analysis showed that Australian news coverage contains very few
asylum seeker ‘voices’, which highlights their “lack of agency to frame
their own depictions” (p. 83). Similarly, an analysis of visual depictions of
people seeking asylum in Australian newspapers by Bleiker et al. (2013)
found that asylum seekers are predominantly depicted in large numbers
and through dramatic images of boats—visual patterns that reinforce
conceptions of asylum seekers as numerous, faceless, inhuman subjects
(Bleiker et al., 2013).
Some scholars, however, have observed calls for more compassionate
responses to asylum seekers in political, media, and public discourse
(Anderson et al., 2015; Austin & Fozdar, 2018). Here, we see more cos-
mopolitan ideas about newcomers, where ethnic, religious, and cultural
differences are presented in a more positive light and—in the case of
asylum seekers—with less focus on the impact on Australian society of
their resettlement and more emphasis on their basic human rights
(Cheng, 2017; Fozdar & Pedersen, 2013; Laughland-Booÿ et al., 2014).
For example, Laughland-Booÿ et al. (2014) found that Australian com-
munity members often construct ‘fairness’ as an obligation for the coun-
try to share its ‘good fortune’ with those in need. This echoes discourses
observed within positive news media portrayals of people seeking asylum
in Australia. For example, an analysis of newspaper coverage of Sudanese
refugees revealed some discussions about Australia’s obligation to accept
and support refugees (Nolan et al., 2011). Likewise, Gale’s (2004) critical
discourse analysis of national and regional newspaper coverage of the
2001 federal election revealed a common conceptualisation of Australia
as a charitable nation with shared humanity with asylum seekers.
Constructions of Australia as a charitable nation, however, are also com-
mon within calls to restrict refugee resettlement on the basis that charity
must ‘begin at home first’ (see Hebbani & Angus, 2016). The charity
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 25

discourse has thus been used in arguments that both support and oppose
Australia’s acceptance of asylum seekers.
The idea that the mass media occupies a unique degree of power to set
the parameters for national and international discourse is well established
(Cottle, 2004; Hall, 1995). When members of a given society lack expo-
sure to certain minority groups, many rely on dominant (and often nega-
tive) constructions of the minoritised ‘other’, which can, in critical
discourse scholar Teun van Dijk’s view, lead them to “generalise these to
general negative attitude schemata or prejudices that embody the basic
opinions about relevant minority groups” (van Dijk, 1989, p. 202).
Collectively, the prior literature presents a compelling case for the idea
that public hostilities and anxieties about people seeking asylum are
largely shaped and reinforced through media discourse. But in some
research, a more complex relationship between media messages, govern-
ment policy, and societal attitudes is apparent. Here, we see media organ-
isations, political actors, and publics engage in a ‘feedback loop’, as
articulated by Klocker (2004, p. 14):

Negative government and media representations of asylum seekers foster

negative public perceptions and fears, which in turn provide justification,
legitimation and electoral support for increasingly exclusive, harsh and
deterrence-oriented asylum policies.

In a similar vein, Pedersen and Hartley (2015) contend that “if people are
prejudiced, they are more likely to believe negative reports about asylum
seekers” (p. 8), indicating that false beliefs about asylum seekers are, at
least in part, a product of confirmation bias. While the available literature
gives us some indication of how certain media and political discourses are
reproduced within broader societal attitudes, research into how news
audiences evaluate and reflect upon mediated constructions of people
seeking asylum is scarce. Further, audience reception work surrounding
similarly politicised topics—especially those involving racial minori-
ties—paint a considerably nuanced picture of how news media consum-
ers make sense of the innumerable ways in which society’s most vulnerable
people are depicted in the public sphere. I now turn to this literature
before highlighting the remaining questions this book seeks to address.
26 A. Haw

 udience Perspectives and the Questions

A
that Remain
Scholarship surrounding news media consumption paints a clear picture
of a hybridised and polarised media ecology, where publics are engaging
with news content on a regular basis and from a wide range of sources
and mediums (Alcorn & Buchanan, 2017; Park et al., 2018). These
include television broadcasts, print publications, radio, online news, and
social media (Szostek, 2018; Young, 2011). But what are publics saying
about the plethora of news media attention surrounding people seeking
asylum in Australia? With the exception of examinations of letters to the
editor in response to newspaper articles (e.g., McKay et al., 2011a;
Mummery & Rodan, 2007), no prior research has specifically delved into
how Australian media audiences respond to news coverage of asylum
seekers. Furthermore, letters to the editor are typically regarded as exam-
ples of media texts (rather than audience reception), because they are
curated by newspaper editors and are thus subject to careful selection on
the basis of the ideas they espouse. While letters to the editor can offer
interesting data about how some news media consumers have reacted to
coverage about people seeking asylum, it is difficult to obtain a compre-
hensive picture of the overarching ideas they have been exposed to about
the issue (and how these relate to their own perceptions of asylum seek-
ers) without digging a little deeper.
A vast body of literature has, however, looked at how audiences evalu-
ate news media messages concerning other topics that are subjected to a
similar degree of polarisation and politicisation. These include climate
change (Feldman & Hart, 2018; Wonneberger et al., 2020), illicit drugs
(Lancaster et al., 2012), homelessness (Iyengar, 1990), AIDS (Kitzinger,
1990; Miller, 1998), and more recently, COVID-19 (Jurkowitz &
Mitchell, 2020; Koinig, 2021; Tam et al., 2021). Overwhelmingly, audi-
ence reception scholarship indicates that news consumers have a highly
complex, and, to borrow from Denemark (2005, p. 237), “love–hate”
relationship with the mass media. While audiences are highly selective
about the sources they engage with (Ewart, 2014; Perala, 2014;
Wonneberger et al., 2011), engagement does not necessarily equate with
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 27

trust. Indeed, some people have been found to question the veracity of
the news content they wilfully consume (Lancaster et al., 2012; Swart
et al., 2016; Vidali, 2010), while others are more inclined to switch off
from coverage they perceive as lacking in credibility (McCollough
et al., 2017).
Findings from 2017’s Digital News Project, based on survey data from
nine countries (the US, UK, Ireland, Spain, Germany, Greece, France,
Denmark, and Australia), revealed substantially low levels of trust in the
news media, primarily due to perceived bias, with a significant portion of
the sample believing that most news media organisations favour the
political and/or economic agendas of powerful elites, rather than acting
in the interests of the broader population (Newman & Fletcher, 2017).
In Australia, Park et al. (2018) found that common grievances audiences
voice when evaluating news coverage relate to factual mistakes, such as
misleading claims and sensationalistic, ‘clickbait’ headlines. Similarly,
Alcorn and Buchanan (2017) reported that 65% of their survey respon-
dents raised concerns about news accuracy and 77% believed they had
been exposed to deliberate disinformation in the Australian media.
While the ubiquitous expansion of social media as a source of news in
recent years is regularly cited as a key factor in declining levels of news
trust and audience disengagement (see, for example, Newman & Fletcher,
2017; Park et al., 2018, 2020), low levels of news trust have been observed
(both locally and internationally) since before social media’s inception.
Data from the early 2000s indicated significant mistrust in the news
media with audiences reporting that they often felt misinformed about
key events and issues affecting society (Heider et al., 2005; Pew Research
Center, 2004; Philo, 2002). And in the US, Tsfati and Cappella (2003)
found that news audiences routinely cited accuracy as the most impor-
tant factor in establishing their degree of trust in (and likelihood of fur-
ther engagement with) a given news source.
As noted, it is well documented that Australian societal discourses
about people seeking asylum closely reflect dominant ideas presented in
news media discourse. Some research, however, has taken this a step fur-
ther by highlighting some of the ways in which news media discourse has
influenced Australian public sentiment concerning people seeking asy-
lum. For instance, Lynch et al. (2015) exposed a sample of University of
28 A. Haw

Sydney students to one of two stories concerning government policies

toward asylum seekers: one deployed a war journalism framing, which
treats conflict as a news value and is often characterised by vague and
sensationalist language, while the other presented a peace journalism
stance, whereby ethnic and/or religious differences are downplayed in
favour of promoting conflict resolution and reconciliation (Galtung,
1986, 1998). Participants were then surveyed on their attitudes toward
people seeking asylum in Australia. Those who were exposed to the peace
journalism story were significantly more likely to empathise with asylum
seekers than those exposed to the war journalism frame, who voiced more
conditional views about Australia’s acceptance of asylum seekers, with
many positing that the country’s asylum policies should prioritise new-
comers’ capacity for labour market participation as a means of ascertain-
ing their ‘value’ to the Australian economy (Lynch et al., 2015).
While these findings lend further credence to the idea that news media
framings of asylum seekers can affect how members of the public perceive
the issue, Australian research has not yet addressed how audiences are
evaluating and reflecting upon news coverage itself. Some international
scholarship, however, has shed light on this. For example, Donald (2011)
interviewed audiences about their perceptions of how asylum seekers are
represented in UK television news broadcasts. These discussions largely
focused on perceptions of negativity in these broadcasts and the tendency
for the stories to frame asylum seekers as a burden to UK taxpayers
(Donald, 2011). Additionally, participants with direct experience with
people seeking asylum were more critical of news representations (and
more inclined to reject or challenge them) than those with no such expo-
sure, who were instead, more likely to voice hostile views about asylum
seekers (Donald, 2011). This suggests that audiences are, in many cases,
resisting dominant ideas presented to them in news media coverage,
while their prior experiences and knowledge play an important role in
how they evaluate representations of the asylum issue.
More recently, De Coninck et al. (2018) examined how Belgian audi-
ences evaluate news media depictions of refugees, finding that positive
attitudes were correlated with higher trust in political news content.
Conversely, engagement with tabloid news sources, coupled with a pre-­
existing fear of terrorism, typically aligned with more negative attitudes
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 29

toward refugees (De Coninck et al., 2018). This further emphasises the
mitigating role of pre-existing beliefs while also suggesting either that
people with negative views on asylum seekers are more likely to engage
with tabloid sources, or that their consumption of tabloid content may
increase their likelihood of adopting negative asylum views. This brings
us to an important point about the relationship between social attitudes
and media discourses. There is evidence to suggest that audiences’ pre-­
existing political views influence how they perceive news content, as well
as the general ideas they take away about the issues presented (e.g., Coe
et al., 2008; Morris, 2007). It appears, however, that the jury is still out
with respect to whether media and political discourse is a key driver of
public opinion or if public opinion reinforces political rhetoric and in
turn, influences media framings. I don’t believe such questions can be
properly addressed in one book, and I make no claims of doing so. I do,
however, recognise that the sheer complexity of the relationship between
media discourse and societal perspectives requires further attention, in
both scholarly work and the wider national conversation about migra-
tion, race, and difference. As such, this book critically unpacks the issue
of mediated societal understandings of the asylum issue in Australia, pre-
senting the findings of the first known study to investigate how a sample
of Australian voters perceive news media coverage of the issue.
Despite a plethora of evidence that Australian news media depictions
routinely depict people seeking asylum in a negative light, no prior
research has employed discursive and interview-based approaches to
explore how publics evaluate news discourse about people seeking asy-
lum. Rather, much of the literature that sheds light on how publics make
sense of news representations of the asylum issue has taken place interna-
tionally, while Australian research has tended to focus on either media
discourse or public attitudes toward asylum seekers. Of these, some have
utilised survey approaches to quantitatively measure the prevalence of
certain attitudes (and who is most likely to voice them) (e.g., Markus &
Arunachalam, 2018; Pedersen & Hartley, 2017) while others have
employed qualitative methods to discursively analyse how the ideas peo-
ple express about asylum seekers reflect wider social rhetoric and power
structures (e.g., Augoustinos & Every, 2007; Carson et al., 2015; McKay
et al., 2012; Saxton, 2003). The value of discursive approaches is that
30 A. Haw

they enable us to evaluate how discourses can both produce and trans-
form social realities (Talja, 1999); such research is concerned with how
everyday conversation interacts with ideological positions that either
maintain or oppose the status quo (Wooffitt, 2005). In other words, criti-
cal discourse approaches emphasise how the language we use can shape,
reinforce, and challenge inequitable power divisions in a given society.
As asylum seekers in Australia face considerable marginalisation, xeno-
phobia, and ostracism (both physically and discursively), it is critically
important to examine how publics are making sense of their plight, as
well as how dominant ideas about people seeking asylum, communicated
through media and political discourse, work to uphold ideas that ulti-
mately maintain the power imbalances that contribute to, and justify,
asylum seekers’ continued exclusion. Indeed, there is much discursive
research and theoretical work highlighting how language is weaponised
in the public sphere to exclude and vilify racial minorities (e.g., Potter &
Wetherell, 1988; van Dijk, 1993, 2015), including the discursive tools
(also known as ‘interpretative repertoires’) contained within these dis-
courses that serve to legitimise exclusionary, and in many cases, racist
attitudes (Nairn & McCreanor, 1991; Wetherell & Potter, 1992). The
research I document in this book therefore employs a critical discourse
approach, largely informed by the work of Norman Fairclough (1989,
1992), Ruth Wodak (2001, 2009), and Michael Billig (1988, 1991), to
address two central research questions:

1. What are Australian voters saying about news media coverage of peo-
ple seeking asylum in Australia?
2. What rhetorical and linguistic strategies are employed within these
discussions, and what can these tell us about how publics reproduce,
resist, and in some cases, challenge dominant discursive framings of
the asylum issue in Australia?

I tackle these questions in the ensuing chapters by presenting my find-

ings and situating them within the existing scholarly literature, drawing
on the theoretical work of Ghassan Hage (2000), Aileen Moreton-­
Robinson (2004, 2015) and Patrick Wolfe (1999) surrounding the role
of settler colonialist discourses in shaping and upholding national
 2 Asylum Seekers in the Australian News Media… 31

sentiment toward multiculturalism. I also draw on Teun van Dijk’s semi-

nal work on the discursive analysis of race and migration in mass com-
munication (1993, 1997), as well as elements of Audience Reception
Theory (Hall, 1980), informed by the vast body of scholarly work on
media effects (Chaffee, 1977, 1980; Katz et al., 1974; Lazarsfeld &
Berelson, 1960) and news values (Bednarek, 2016; Bednarek & Caple,
2012, 2014). In doing so, I unpack what my findings reveal with respect
to the communicative and democratic function of discourse surrounding
asylum seekers in Australia. In the following chapter, I describe in more
detail the methods I used to carry out this research and how my analysis
is informed by, and builds upon, the work of those who have addressed
similar questions.

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Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
than the Fifth Avenue, he proceeds to the Canadian side of
the Falls. Here he spends a few hours, and then returns,
without encountering more inconvenience than saving his
hotel expenses by buying a suit of clothes, on which he pays
no duty on his return. Thereupon he finds that by so simple a
process he has obtained Copyright in the United States, in the
dominion of Canada, in Australia, India, France, Germany,
and Great Britain! We can imagine the lively twinkle of his eye
as he crosses the Suspension-bridge, to think what cute
people the Britishers are to have secured all these privileges
for him.
We believe, therefore, that American authors are not very
anxious about the matter. By taking a little trouble, they can
secure all they wish.
English authors have not been fairly treated. They are at
great disadvantage, and must be satisfied for the present to
work for fame, or but for little more. Fortunately for them, the
American publishers, seeing that they do what they are legally
entitled to do, are quarrelling amongst themselves, and are
crying out for protection.
[Here is introduced the case of an American publishing-
house stated by themselves, which concludes thus:—
... “A review of these facts naturally suggests the reflection
that the interests of the book-trade in this country, no less
than the protection of authors in their just rights, require
further legislation at the hands of Congress. It is high time for
the passage of a well-considered International Copyright-Law,
such as will wipe away from our country the reproach of what
are known as ‘pirated editions.’”]
We quite agree with this. Some legislation is called for. But
now comes a third party, the public, which has its rights as
well as the others. We shall very likely incur some odium for
admitting that the million have any rights whatever to the
productions of men of letters, and may be told that
emanations of the brain are as much the private property of
their authors as the guineas are of the man of business. So
they are, so long as they keep them, to themselves; but when
they have communicated them to the world they are no longer
their exclusive property. It is right that they should have a
modified protection, and we think it must be admitted that
English authors are amply protected in their own country. We
think, however, that the American public will not be disposed
to give them the same amount of protection there, nor is it
well that they should have it. They are, however, entitled to
some protection, and we hope the day is not far distant when
English authors will reap some solid advantages wherever the
English language is spoken. We are disposed to think that
seven years would generally be long enough for the purpose;
although so short a time would be hard upon such men as
Grote, Motley, Merivale, Webster, and others, whose lives
have been spent upon their works. We take it for granted that
the law, when modified, will be the same on both sides, and
that Dickens and Longfellow will receive equal treatment. We
are too selfish to give up our cheap editions of Longfellow,
and American citizens are not what we take them to be, if
they would, for a whole generation, debar themselves from
popular editions of Dickens.

(From The Bookseller, June 1, 1869.)

Copyright in Canada.—Letter by the Times’

correspondent:—“Under the English Law, English Copyrights
reprinted in the United States are imported into Canada,
subject to the same duty as other imported articles; but these
Copyrights cannot be reprinted in Canada, the consequence
being that the Canadian public is almost entirely dependent
on the United States for reprints. The English author is
seriously injured, inasmuch as not one-tenth part of the
reprints which find their way to Canada are entered at the
Custom-house or pay duty.”... Mr. Rose replies:—“The
undersigned is ready to admit that the principle involved is
 theoretically at variance with the general policy of the mother-
country, in so far as the object of that policy is to secure to
authors an absolute monopoly in works of literature for a term
of years; but it must be remembered that the necessity for this
exceptional legislation arises out of a previous partial
departure from this theoretical policy, which in its practical
operation is shown to afford a premium to the industrial
interests of a foreign country, &c. If it could be shown that the
concessions asked for would result in any way to the practical
disadvantage of the author, or lessen the protection which it is
intended to secure to literary labour, there might be some
reason for withholding them. If the rate of duty, whether import
or excise, were inadequate, it would be an equally reasonable
argument against the extension of the law; and in that case
the rate could be augmented. But the undersigned fails to see
any reason why, so long as the importation from abroad is
permitted, the publication in Canada at an equal rate of duty
should be withheld.”

(Extract from the Atlantic Monthly, October,

1867.)

... This work, we repeat, cost the author 24,000 dollars to

produce. Messrs. Harpers sell it at 15 dollars a copy; the
usual allowance to the author is 10 per cent. of the retail
price, and as a rule, it ought not to be more.

(Extract from the American Booksellers’ Guide,

June 1, 1869.)

At a public meeting recently held in Montreal, respecting

the Copyright-Law, it was resolved to apply to Parliament for
an amendment permitting Canadian publishers to print British
Copyright works upon the payment of 12½ per cent. to British
 authors.... The payment by the publisher of 5 or 10 per cent.,
or of a fixed sum, for a Copyright of a book, whether by an
American or British author, does not necessarily increase the
price of the book.

(Extracts from an Article in the Athenæum, July

17, 1869.)

This great question is of especial interest at the present

time, in consequence of opinions and demands put forward
by Canada with relation to Copyright property in the United
Kingdom. It appears that for some time past a
correspondence has been carried on between the Canadian
Government and the Imperial authorities upon the subject of
“Copyright-Law in Canada.” This “Correspondence” (having
been laid before the Canadian Parliament) has been printed
and published. It commences with a resolution of the
Canadian Senate (passed 15th of May, 1868) that the
Governor-General should be prayed “to impress upon Her
Majesty’s Government the justice and expediency of
extending the privileges of the Imperial Copyright Act, 1847,
so that whenever reasonable provision and protection shall, in
Her Majesty’s opinion, be secured to the authors, Colonial
reprints of British Copyright works shall be placed on the
same footing as foreign reprints in Canada, by which means
British authors will be more effectually protected in their
rights, and a material benefit will be conferred on the printing
industry of the Dominion.”...
All the North-American colonies soon availed themselves of
this Act of 1847, and Orders in Council were founded upon
them; the rights of British authors being deemed sufficiently
protected by an ad valorem import duty of 20 per cent. upon
the value of the “foreign reprints,” that, being about one-tenth
of the price of the works as published in England!
 There appears to have been no debate in either House
upon this Act of 1847, and it seems to have escaped all public
notice on the part of British authors and publishers during its
progress in Parliament. From the time Her Majesty’s Orders in
Council enabled the colonies to avail themselves of that Act, it
has operated as a stimulus and considerable premium to the
“legalised robbery” of British Copyright property in the United
States, and has, practically, given printers and publishers
there a monopoly in “foreign reprints” of English books. The
Act of 1847 is, therefore, a partial confiscation of those
Copyrights which have been acquired in England under Earl
Stanhope’s Act of 1842, because the colonies have, for the
last twenty years, been almost exclusively supplied with
English books by United States reprints of those books....
In 1867 the “dominion of Canada” was created by the
Imperial Act of that year, which united all Her Majesty’s North
American Colonies. It was then found that printing had
become much cheaper in Canada than it was in the United
States; and amongst the earliest Acts of the first session of
the Canadian Parliament two statutes were passed—one, “An
Act respecting Copyrights;” and the other, “An Act to impose a
Duty upon Foreign Reprints of British Copyright Works.”
Under the first of these Acts, no work of “any person resident
in Great Britain or Ireland” is to be entitled to the protection of
that Act unless “the same shall be printed and published in
Canada.” And under the second of the above Acts it is sought
to keep alive the injustice of allowing “foreign reprints” to be
imported into Canada as a basis for that resolution of the
Canadian Parliament to which we have called attention.
Such are the facts which preceded the Canadian
“Correspondence.” It commences with the resolution which, in
effect, advocates “the justice and expediency” of enabling Her
Majesty’s Canadian subjects at their discretion (and without
the permission of the owners) to confiscate the property of
authors of British Copyright works upon the terms of the
publisher paying such authors a royalty of 12½ per cent. upon
the price of the Canadian reprints, that being about one-tenth
of the publication price of the work in England! It appears the
“justice and expediency” of adopting this Canadian resolution
has been pressed very strongly upon the authorities at the
Colonial-office, and likewise at the Board of Trade, by the
Hon. J. Rose, the Canadian “Minister of Finance.” He frankly
admits that the policy of the Act of 1847 (so far as respects
the protection of British authors) has long been an utter
failure; that the amount of duties received for their benefit “is a
mere trifle;” and that “it is next to impracticable to enforce the
law.” These statements are confirmed by a letter, dated June
11, 1868, from Mr. John Lovell (a Montreal publisher) to Mr.
Rose, and which appears in the Correspondence. Mr. Lovell
says: “At present only a few hundred copies pay duty, and
many thousands pass into the country without registration,
and pay nothing at all; thus having the effect of seriously
injuring the publishers of Great Britain, to the consequent
advantage of those of the United States. I may add that, on
looking over the Custom-house entries to-day, I have found
that not a single entry of an American reprint of an English
Copyright (except the Reviews and one or two magazines)
has been made since the third day of April last, though it is
notorious that an edition of 1,000 of a popular work, coming
under that description, has been received and sold within the
last few days by one bookseller in this city.”
In support of the Canadian resolution, the Hon. J. Rose
likewise urges the greater cheapness now of printing in
Canada than in the United States. Upon this point he is also
confirmed by Mr. Lovell, who says: “It is undeniable that
Canadian printers would be enabled to comply with the
requisite conditions (that is, of paying a royalty of 12½ per
cent. to the author), and produce books, thanks to the local
advantages, at a much cheaper rate than they can be
produced in the States, and so bring about a large export
business.”...
 This application on the part of the Canadians is answered
at considerable length by the Board of Trade; the substance
of that answer being “that the question raised is far too
important, and involves too many considerations of imperial
policy, to render it possible to comply with that application. My
Lords, however, fully admit that the anomalous position of
Canadian publishers with respect to their rivals in the United
States of America is a matter which calls for careful inquiry;
but they feel that such an inquiry cannot be satisfactorily
undertaken without, at the same time, taking into
consideration various other questions connected with the
imperial laws of Copyright and the policy of International
Copyright Treaties, and they are, therefore, of opinion that the
subject should be treated as a whole, and that an endeavour
should be made to place the general law of Copyright,
especially that part of it which concerns the whole continent of
North America, on a more satisfactory footing. The grievance
of which the Canadian publishers complain has arisen out of
the arrangement sanctioned by Her Majesty’s Government in
1847, under which United States reprints of English works
entitled to Copyright in the United Kingdom were admitted into
Canada on payment of an import duty, instead of being, as in
the United Kingdom, absolutely prohibited as illegal.”...

A circular by Mr. Purday contains the following:—

A fact transpired only a few days since of an order being

sent for some of the musical works published in Bond-street,
on which it was stated that they must be “American printed
copies”.... It is said that the Americans have the means of
disposing of 30,000 or 40,000 copies of any popular book or
song they choose to reproduce. This, of course, is a fine
premium for supplanting the English publisher in the sale of
his own Copyright works in his own colonies.
 FROM A MANUSCRIPT STATEMENT BY MR.
PURDAY.
The Act of 1 and 2 Vict., c. 69, was passed into a law under the
title of “An Act for securing to Authors in certain cases the benefit of
International Copyright,” the date of which was July 31, 1838. The
14th section is in these words: “And be it enacted, that the author of
any book to be, after the passing of this Act, first published out of
Her Majesty’s dominions, or his assigns, shall have no Copyright
therein within Her Majesty’s dominions, otherwise than such (if any)
as he may become entitled to under this Act.” Section 9 says that no
protection of Copyright shall be given to a foreign author, unless
such protection shall be reciprocated to an English author by the
country to which the foreign author belongs. Now, nothing can be
clearer than that the Act of 5 and 6 Vict., c. 45, never contemplated
giving protection to a foreign author; but, on the contrary, that it was
passed solely for the benefit of English authors.... At last the whole
matter was brought before the House of Lords, where it was decreed
that a foreign author was not an author within the meaning of the
Acts of Parliament, and could neither claim any Copyright himself
nor assign any to an English subject, unless he was resident in the
British dominions at the time he sold his work, and published it there
before there was any publication abroad. This, after eleven years of
litigation by various parties, among whom my brother was the most
persistent defendant, he being perfectly convinced that if the subject
came to be thoroughly investigated, no such claims as were set up
by the monopolists could be maintained either at common law or in
equity. The House of Lords, however, were not called upon to decide
what was meant by the term residence. This, therefore, gave rise to
an attempt on the part of an English bookseller to contrive a scheme
which, to the not very creditable honour of English jurisprudence, as
it appears to my humble understanding, succeeded. The scheme
was this: An American authoress of little repute wrote a novel, one
copy of the manuscript of which, it is said, was handed over, for a
consideration, to this English bookseller, to publish in England; the
work was got ready on this side of the Atlantic as well as on the
other side, and, after agreeing as to the date of entry at Stationers’
Hall, and the publication of the same in London, the lady was desired
to go over the Victoria-bridge into Canada, one of the British
dominions, and remain there a few hours or days, while the
publication took place in London; then she was to go back again for
the protection of the same work, as a Copyright, in her own country.
Meanwhile, another English publisher, hearing that such an artifice
was about to be attempted, procured an American copy of the said
work, and republished it in a cheap form. The consequence was, that
an application for an injunction was applied for by the first party,
which was granted, and appealed against to the Lords Justices, who
gave it as their opinion that the word “author” in the Act of Parliament
was to be interpreted in its widest sense, and that there was no
limitation to that word in the Act of Parliament; therefore, it was
maintained that any author could have a Copyright in England who
complied with the requisitions of the Act, and this defective scheme
was confirmed by Lord Chancellor Cairns, who remarked that none
of the former decisions had stated that it was other than necessary
to be in the British dominions during the time of the publication of the
work. This device may have facilitated the desire for an international
law upon a righteous foundation, now so loudly advocated in
America.
In the judgment given in the House of Lords, in the case of
Boosey’s assumption to the exclusive right of printing the opera of
Bellini, the subject of residence in England was debated, and Lord
St. Leonards used these remarkable words: “Now the American
Legislature have no such difficulty. They have expressly enacted that
Copyright there shall be confined to natives, or persons resident
within the United States. Those are the express words of their
statute.” And we may remark, farther, that unless an alien author has
resided at least twelve months in America, and has made a
declaration in these words, “I do declare on oath that it is bonâ fide
my intention to become a citizen of the United States,” &c., he
cannot obtain the privilege of Copyright in anything he may publish
there. This conflict of opinion must necessarily end, therefore, in a
new Act of Parliament, which has been long needed to settle this
and other much-vexed questions of Copyright.
 LETTER FROM THE SAME.
24, Great Marlborough-street, June 15, 1869.
Dear Sir,—I think your suggestion of the payment of a royalty upon
the publication of an author’s work, if made mutual in both America
and Great Britain, would go far to reconcile the two nations to
abandon the present unfair reprisals; more especially if it were left to
the option of any publisher to reproduce such works in the form most
suited to his particular trade. Some publishers choose to publish in
one form, and some in another, more or less expensive, according to
the taste or want of their customers. It is true, there might be some
difficulty in arranging the percentage per copy upon such a scheme;
but that might be regulated according to the price and style of getting
up of the work, which should always be determined upon before the
work is issued.
The question of Copyright in music is one which presents features
appertaining to itself exclusively. One feature which it shares along
with the other fine arts is this great fact: that music is a universal
language, and addresses itself equally to all nations. Its range,
therefore, is far wider than literature. It needs no translation.
The taste for music is more widely diffused than that for painting
and sculpture, from which it differs in a way that causes very
considerable embarrassment when the question of Copyright comes
to be particularly dealt with. Like paintings and statues, music may
be reproduced in a permanent form; but, unlike them, the chief value
of its Copyright privilege is reproduction in sounds, and, therefore, in
a form unsubstantial and transient. He, therefore, who would deal
satisfactorily with this branch of the wide question of Copyright has
to provide for a demand, and overcome difficulties, such as do not
belong to literary and artistic Copyright. But, still further, music—say
that of an opera—may be separated into parts without serious
diminution of its revenue-bearing value. Once more, there is the
libretto; it belongs to the range of literature. Questions, therefore,
arise, and must be provided for, with respect to the affinity of that
part with the music, its reproduction in the form of translation, and its
being, as it occasionally is, the work and property of an author other
than the composer of the music.
There is still so much uncertainty, approaching to confusion, as to
what really is the law, especially with regard to international
Copyright, in this branch, that thorough revision and immediate
international negotiations are absolutely necessary.
The laws of Copyright should be divested of all ambiguity and
superfluous legal verbiage. In fact, they should be made so plain that
“he that runs may read,” and understand them. The payment of a
royalty on foreign works is not a new thing here. Chappell pays 1s. a
copy, besides a considerable sum for the Copyright, of the last work
of Rossini—viz., the “Messe Solennelle,” for the exclusive selling of
the work, and for the right of performing it here. Any other
information I can give you I shall be happy to afford.
I am, dear Sir, yours obediently,
C. H. Purday.
To R. A. Macfie, Esq., M.P.
 EXTRACTS FROM
CORRESPONDENCE ON COPYRIGHT
LAW IN CANADA.
Laid before the Canadian Parliament by Command of His
Excellency the Governor-General.

Extract from a Report of a Committee of the

Honourable the Privy Council of Canada,
approved by His Excellency the Governor-
General in Council, on the 27th May, 1868.
“On the recommendation of the Honourable the Minister of
Customs, the Committee advise an uniform ad valorem duty
throughout this Dominion of 12½ per cent., being the rate fixed and
collected in the Province of Canada, previous to the Confederation of
the Provinces—and to establish such regulations and conditions as
may be subsistent with any Act of the Parliament of the United
Kingdom then in force as may be deemed requisite and equitable
with regard to the admission of such books, and to the distribution of
the proceeds of such duty to or among the party or parties
beneficially interested in the Copyright.”

(From Memorandum by the Minister of Finance.)

“Not one-tenth part of the reprints which find their way to Canada
are entered at the Custom-house, or pay duty.... It is proposed, in
order perfectly to secure the English author, that every Canadian
publisher who reprints English Copyrights should take out a licence,
and that effectual practical checks should be interposed, so that the
duty on the number of copies actually issued from the press should
be paid into the Canadian Government by Canadian publishers for
the benefit of the English authors. It is believed that the English
authors would benefit enormously by the proposed change. At
present the amount received by Canada for duty on English
Copyrights, and paid over by Canada to the Imperial Government for
the benefit of English authors, is a mere trifle.”

(From Mr. Lovell.)

“Montreal, June 11, 1868.
“In 1849, I believe, the Government of Canada, with the sanction
of Her Majesty the Queen, gave United States publishers the right to
bring reprints of English Copyright works into this country on
payment of Customs duty of 15 per cent., which has since been
reduced to 12½ per cent., the proceeds of the duties to be forwarded
to the English authors as a compensation for the privileges secured
to the American publishers.
“The people of the Dominion, and especially the printing and
publishing interests, feel that they ought to possess at least equal
privileges to those conceded to the foreigner. There are several
establishments in the Dominion that would esteem it a great boon to
be allowed to reprint English Copyrights on the same terms as are
now secured to United States publishers, and would gladly pay the
12½ per cent. to the English authors on the total number of copies
printed, sure to be very considerable. At present only a few hundred
copies pay duty, but many thousands pass into the country without
registration, and pay nothing at all; thus having the effect of seriously
injuring the publishers of Great Britain, to the consequent advantage
of those of the United States.”

(Extract from Letter from Sir Louis Mallet to the

Under-Secretary of State, C.O.)
 “It is obvious that, looking to the geographical position of the
United States and the North American Confederation, any
arrangement with respect to Copyright which does not apply to both
must be always imperfect and unsatisfactory, and it is therefore
extremely desirable, if possible, that the Canadian question should
be considered in connexion with any negotiations conducted with the
United States Government.
“Another serious objection to the sanction by Her Majesty’s
Government of such a proposal appears to my Lords to be, that,
while the public policy of the mother-country enforces an absolute
monopoly in works of literature for a term of years, it is very
undesirable to admit in British Colonial possessions an arrangement
which, whatever advantages it may possess (and my Lords fully
admit that much may be said in its favour), rests upon a wholly
different principle.
“It would be difficult, if such a principle were admitted in the British
Colonies, to refuse to recognise it in the case of foreign countries,
and thus it might come to pass that the British public might be called
upon to pay a high price for their books, in order to afford what is
held to be the necessary encouragement to British authors, while the
subjects of other countries and the Colonial subjects of Her Majesty
would enjoy the advantages of cheap British literature provided for
them at the expense of the inhabitants of the United Kingdom.”

(Extract from a Paper by the Minister of Finance

on the Copyright-Law in Canada.)
“The consequence of this anomalous state of the Law is that
Canada receives large supplies of American reprints of English
Copyright books, which are sold at a much higher rate than if printed
in Canada; while, at the same time, so generally is the payment of
the 12½ per cent. Customs duty evaded, and so trifling is the whole
amount realised from that source (the total received last year for the
whole Dominion of Canada being only $799.43, or 164l. 5s. 3d.
sterling, the average of the preceding four years being only 115l. 1s.
3d., sterling), that so far as regards the pecuniary or other interests
of English authors, for whose protection the duty was imposed and in
whose behalf it is collected, the effect is practically the same as if the
reprints were avowedly admitted duty free....
“It is believed that if this privilege were extended to Canadian
publishers, they would avail themselves of it to a very large extent,
and as the Excise duty of 12½ per cent. could, under proper
regulations, be very easily levied, a substantial revenue would
accrue therefrom for the benefit of English authors; and further, that
a great impetus would be given to the interests of printers,
publishers, paper manufacturers, type founders, and other important
kindred branches of material industry, and indirectly to the interests
of literature and literary men....
“An American or any other foreign author, by publishing his work
first in the United Kingdom, may obtain for himself all the benefits of
the English Copyright-Law. One of those benefits, as the law now
stands, is to prohibit its reprint in any portion of Her Majesty’s
dominions out of the United Kingdom. He can equally procure its
Copyright in the United States, and the consequence is that the price
of literature is enhanced to British subjects in all Her Majesty’s
Colonial possessions, since to them and to them only can the
prohibition to republish apply or be made effectual.
“England does not confine the protection which she thus extends
to her own authors. The foreign author is protected against all her
Colonial subjects, provided he publishes first within the confines of
Great Britain and Ireland. She will not recognise a publication in a
Colonial possession as a compliance with the Copyright Act, but
limits the place of publication to the United Kingdom.
“Such the undersigned understands to have been the solemn
interpretation of the law by the House of Lords in the recent case of
‘Routledge and Lowe’ (‘New Law Report,’ Appeal Cases, vol. ii., pp.
100-121), and he would very strongly call attention to the unfair
position in which the policy of that law places the Canadian publisher
and the Canadian public.
 “The mere circumstance of the publishing in the United Kingdom
gives the author a monopoly throughout the entire area of the British
dominions—that author, in the opinion of the then Lord Chancellor
Cairns, need not be a native-born subject of the Crown; he need not
be an alien friend sojourning in the United Kingdom; he need not be
sojourning in a British Colony, but he may be a foreigner residing
abroad. This protection is afforded, in the language of Lord Cairns, to
induce the author to publish his work in the United Kingdom.
“If the policy of England, in relation to Copyright, is to stimulate, by
means of the protection secured to literary labour, the composition of
works of learning and utility, that policy is not incompatible with such
a modification of law as will place the Colonial publisher on a footing
of equality not only with the publisher in the United States, but even
with the publisher in the United Kingdom....
“If the rate of duty, whether import or excise, were inadequate, it
would be an equally reasonable argument against the extension of
the law; and in that case the rate could be augmented.”
 TENDENCIES OF COPYRIGHT
AMENDERS.
That pretensions under Copyright are becoming so formidable as
to demand very serious attention on the part of statesmen and of all
who desire to maintain the integrity of our national inheritance of a
world-wide, heartily-united empire, and imperial freedom from
odious, inquisitorial, and impracticable restraints, especially such as
might hinder intellectual and moral development, will be evident to
any person who takes pains to study and follow out to their
necessary consequences the provisions contained in the following
transcripts from a Bill lately introduced by an ex-Lord Chancellor, “for
Consolidating and Amending the Law of Copyright in Works of Fine
Art:”

Fine Arts Copyright Consolidation and Amendment. [32 Vict.]

Design.—An original conception represented by the author
thereof in any work of fine art.
Drawing or Painting.—Every original drawing or painting,
made in any manner and material, and by any process.
Photograph shall mean and include every original
photograph.
Sculpture.—Every original work, either in the round, in
relief, or intaglio, made in any material, and by any process.
Engraving.—Every original engraving and lithograph made
upon a plate, block, or slab, of any material, by any process,
whereby impressions may be taken from such plate, block, or
slab, and the impressions taken from the same.
Work of Fine Art.—Every drawing, painting, photograph,
work of sculpture, and engraving as herein-before interpreted.
 Extending to all parts of the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, and
all the colonies and possessions of the Crown which now are,
or hereafter may be, created or acquired.
3. The author of every original work of fine art, if made, or
first sold, after the commencement of this Act, such author
being a British subject, or resident within any part of the
British dominions at the time such work shall be made or first
sold, and the assigns of such author, shall have the Copyright
of sole and exclusive right of copying, reproducing, and
multiplying such work, and the design thereof, in the British
dominions, by any means, and of any size, for the term of the
natural life of such author, and thirty years after his death, but
subject to the following conditions and restrictions; (that is to
say), &c.
9. If the author of any work of fine art in which there shall be
subsisting Copyright, after having become divested of such
Copyright, or if any other person, not being the proprietor for
the time being of the Copyright in any work of fine art, shall by
any means unlawfully repeat, copy, imitate, or otherwise
multiply for sale, hire, exhibition, or distribution, or cause or
procure to be repeated, copied, imitated, or otherwise
multiplied for sale, hire, exhibition, or distribution, any such
work, or the design thereof, or any part of such design, or,
knowing that any such repetition, copy, or other imitation has
been unlawfully made, shall import or export into or out of any
part of the British dominions, or sell, publish, let to hire,
exhibit, or distribute, or offer for sale, hire, exhibition, or
distribution, or cause or procure to be so imported, or
exported, or sold, published, let to hire, distributed, or offered
for sale, hire, exhibition, or distribution, any unlawful
repetition, copy, or imitation of any such work, or of the design
thereof, such person for every such offence shall forfeit to the
registered proprietor for the time being of the Copyright
thereof a sum not exceeding twenty pounds, and not less
than two pounds, for every first offence, and not less than five
pounds, for every subsequent offence, &c.
11. All repetitions, copies, or imitations of any work of fine
art, or the design thereof, wherein there shall be subsisting
Copyright under this Act, and which, contrary to the provisions
of this Act, shall have been made in any foreign State, are
hereby absolutely prohibited to be imported into any part of
the British dominions, except by or with the consent of the
registered proprietor of the Copyright thereof, or his agent
authorised in writing; and if the registered proprietor for the
time being of any such Copyright or his agent shall declare, or
if any officer of Her Majesty’s Customs shall suspect, that any
goods imported are prohibited repetitions, copies, or
imitations of any such work of fine art, or of the design
thereof, then such goods may be detained, unpacked, and
examined by the officers of Her Majesty’s Customs.
12. The Commissioners of Customs shall cause to be
made, and publicly exposed at the several ports of the United
Kingdom, and in Her Majesty’s possessions abroad, printed
lists of all works of fine art wherein Copyright shall be
subsisting, and as to which the registered proprietor for the
time being of such Copyright, or his agent, shall have given
notice in writing to the said Commissioners that such
Copyright exists, stating in such notice when such Copyright
expires, and shall have made and subscribed a declaration
before the collector of the Customs, or any justice of the
peace, at some port or place in the United Kingdom or in Her
Majesty’s possessions abroad, that the contents of such
notice are true. The provisions contained in the Acts now in
force, or at any time to be in force, regarding Her Majesty’s
Customs, as to the application to the courts and judges by
any person aggrieved by the entry of any book in the lists of
books to be made and publicly exposed by the said
Commissioners under the said Acts, and the expunging any
such entry, shall apply to the entry of any work of fine art in
the lists thereof to be made by virtue of this Act, in the same
manner as if such provisions were herein expressly enacted,
with all necessary variations in relation to such last-mentioned
lists, &c.
13. Every person who shall import or export, or cause to be
imported or exported, into or out of any part of the British
dominions, or shall exchange, publish, sell, let to hire, exhibit,
or distribute, or offer, or hawk, or carry about, or keep for sale,
hire, exhibition, or distribution, any unlawful copy, repetition,
or imitation of any work of fine art, in which, or in the design
whereof, there shall be subsisting registered Copyright, shall
be bound, on demand in writing, delivered to him or left for
him at his last known dwelling-house or place of business, by
or on behalf of the registered proprietor for the time being of
such Copyright, to give to the person requiring the same, or
his attorney or agent, within forty-eight hours after such
demand, full information in writing of the name and address of
the person from whom, and of the times when, he shall have
imported, purchased, or obtained such unlawful copy,
repetition, or imitation, also the number of such copies,
repetitions, or imitations which he has obtained, and also to
produce to the person requiring such information all invoices,
books, and other documents relating to the same; and it shall
be lawful for any justice of the peace, on information on oath
of such demand having been made, and of the refusal or
neglect to comply therewith, to summon before him the
person guilty of such refusal or neglect, and on being satisfied
that such demand ought to be complied with, to order such
information to be given and such production to be made
within a reasonable time to be fixed by him.
14. Upon proof by the oath of one credible person before
any justice of the peace, court, sheriff, or other person having
jurisdiction in any proceeding under this Act that there is
reasonable cause to suspect that any person has in his
possession, or in any house, shop, or other place for sale,
hire, distribution, or public exhibition, any copy, repetition, or
imitation of any work of fine art in which, or in the design