Eva Orner’s 2016 documentary Chasing Asylum reveals the traumatic and inhumane treatment asylum seekers face consequent to the Howard government’s 2008 migration reform. Abbott’s widely and over projected answer that in order to save Australia’s (maybe legally dismissed but still psychologically present ‘White Australia Policy’), we must ‘stop the boats’.  As a teenager of generation Y who still doesn’t really know enough about these issues to speak openly about ideas and opinions, Orner’s documentary opens a zip lock seal of Australian secrets, exposing the meaning and truths behind our Governments slogan-istic statements. Taking us undercover into Manus Island and Nauru through hidden cameras and phones, we see the little financial and emotion support the Australian Government gives to Asylum seekers whom are now imprisoned – despite their attempt to obtain freedom – by high metal fences and guards. The documentary discusses the economic strategy of the Pacific Solution, where the Australian Government exploits the financial instability of small South East Asian islands and countries (now Cambodia), paying them to ‘take our seekers’ for financial deposits. The narrative follows a non-linear structure using cross cut interviews with volunteers from Nauru to project the fragmentation felt among current seekers who currently hold no identify and  future. Stripped of given names and instead associated with numbers (sound familiar) their camp is lined with white plastic sheets as walls, with no privacy or personality. Mental illness and suicide is explained as recurring themes on the islands (seeing up to four incidents of self harm daily), with personal interviews taken with seekers discussing they don’t want ‘to live out their youth in a place like this’ – Unidentified man, 28 years old.

Orner, also enforces Australia’s legal obligation and responsibility to protect human rights, exposing how recent approaches violate international treaties and conventions. In the 1950’s the United Nation declared treaties and conventions, catalyst to WWII’s lack of protection, which Australia signed in agreement to welcoming refugees (thus never again can genocide and human rights violations arise like it did in 1930s). Discussed in the film was Malcolm Fraser’s cooperation of these laws, demonstrated throughout the Vietnam War were refugees were flown in (organised by the Australian government) and be settled in Australia. However, in recent years the rhetoric of fear surrounding national security and the politics of Australia’s anti-terror laws have become overwhelmingly present, communicating to the Australian public a perceived threat of potential harm. Since 2001 and the Tampa incident – where children were being thrown off boats as a Afghanistan refugee’s were declined from Australian waters, coinciding with the ‘war on terror’s 9/11, initiating Howards 2008 election speech ‘the future of the Australia we know… protect our boarder… we decide who will come into this country and the circumstance in which they come”, we have seen a series of new laws which the Australian public interprets as a reflection of our countries threat. United by indirect and instructional fear projected by our governments concerning foreign affairs and  foreign members of the world, the government has been able to hide from our sights the atrocities of asylum seekers through fear mongering tactics. However, Orner lifts up this vail and challenges Australia’s perception of Asylum seekers portrayed through the illegality and unimaginable circumstances they have endured to get here, portrayed by the media. Orner enforces that for too long Australians havent felt the right to ask questions because of the illegitimate and dismissal answer that only communicate our need for national security (stop the boats). Thus, Chasing Asylum “engages Australians to think more opening about the individual experiences of displace people seeking a safer life” – Orner, with the ambitious and confronting documentary bringing light the human impact of this global issue.