Footy tip for asylum seekers: get on the back page

Posted on 11 Mar 2026

By Denis Moriarty, founder and group managing director, Our Community

Screenshot 2026 03 10 at 4 02 00 pm — Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke with five Iranian footballers who have been granted humanitarian visas. Pic: X/Tony Burke

Australia has offered asylum to members of the Iranian football team. That’s fine, but it does draw attention to the different standards that apply to people in the headlines and your run-of-the-mill everyday asylum seekers, writes Our Community's founder and leader, Denis Moriarty.

As a general rule, governments should adhere to general rules. As far as possible, we should follow Kantian ethics and act only upon principles which we could rationally generalise so that they apply equally to everyone. Well, if I had to pull out a principle that doesn’t brook denial, it would be that if as a government we regard a nation as ruled by evil autocrats who oppress their subjects so vilely that we feel driven to go to war against them, we shouldn’t then deport people, any people, to that country under any circumstances.

In Australia’s case, we’ve unleashed the vials of our wrath on Iran (“A regime that relies on the repression and murder of its own people to retain power is without legitimacy”: Foreign Minister Penny Wong), Afghanistan (“Australia does not recognise the Taliban regime as the legitimate government of Afghanistan”: the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade), and North Korea (“We are deeply troubled by the …. enforced disappearances, torture, and other cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of forcibly repatriated individuals”: DFAT again).

That being so, you’d think that refugees from Afghanistan who’ve ended up in Iran would be a lay-down misere for Australian refugee visas. Not so: the government doesn’t see them as a priority. You’d think that we wouldn’t be pressing to hand back citizens of oppressive governments to governments that we expect to oppress them – a bastardry that’s technically known as refoulment. Instead, we’ve in fact put a provision in the Migration Act (section 197C) to clarify that it’s the Minister for Home Affairs’ “duty to remove as soon as reasonably practicable an unlawful non-citizen…irrespective of whether there has been an assessment, according to law, of Australia's non-refoulement obligations in respect of the non-citizen.” In other words, the Minister can feed anybody he wants to into the mincing machine, depending solely on their likelihood of front-page coverage pro or con. Not very Kantian.

Yes, football teams, and refugees in general, are at the cutting edge or the hanging point of these ethical issues, but these issues come up every time a government makes a decision on an individual case and leaves it at that. We would be better governed if there was a general rule that where the Minister intervenes they should be forced to explain why the principles relied upon in this case didn’t justify a change of policy in every similar case.

“I don’t know that even Kant would want us to legislate the principle that whatever Trump tweets about should override any Australian legislation.”

Denis Moriarty

In case law, precedents matter. That’s why governments prefer to rely on legislation that gives ministers and departments a wide range of discretion, allowing them to play St Peter at the pearly gates as the whim takes them.

And you can see why. I was as pleased as anyone when the then recently elected Albanese government gave visas to the Murugappan family, late of Biloela, and I can’t say I would have wanted that case to wait on the formulation of a general policy change. If I had, of course, both I and they would still be waiting; if Albanese is thinking of families these days, he’s thinking of Murdochs.

Or, of course, Trump, who’s also chipped in on the Iranian footy team. I don’t know that even Kant would want us to legislate the principle that whatever Trump tweets about should override any Australian legislation, even though that does now seem to be the one unvarying lodestone of Australian policy. We could, I suppose, generalise the case to “Try your best not to make eye contact with wild-eyed knife-wielding shouters on the night train”, but even that seems unduly personalised.

Kant himself never attained ministerial office, and was thus free to say things that could foreseeably end up with someone doing something that wasn’t actively Islamophobic (and, by the way, does anybody doubt that in a fortnight the headlines are going to be “Iranian footballer has antisemitic social media posts”? Google “milkshake duck’”). Still, is it really preferable to legislate and promote inhuman cruelty in general and rely on the swift reversal of individual instances as a media pressure valve?

Australia has extreme reservations about the human rights records of a number of governments around the world. A select few are ruled to have gone above and beyond, demanding different treatment – all disapproval short (please, please) of war. If that’s what we believe, we should act on it when that’s in our power. We shouldn’t need Kant to tell us that.

Denis Moriarty is group managing director of OurCommunity.com.au, a social enterprise that helps the country's 600,000 not-for-profits.