Bringing the right stuff Gavin Ackerly: "It's not just the skills that they bring; it is also the attitude that they bring." The arrival by boat of asylum seekers is one of Australia's most contentious and complex policy issues, one that will be fiercely contested ahead of the federal election. The announcement a few weeks ago by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd of what is called the Papua New Guinea solution - whereby no asylum seeker who arrives by boat will ever be allowed to settle in Australia - has intensified the battle, with Opposition Leader Tony Abbott seeking to trump with his own hardline policies. While the human rights, humanitarian, legal and international treaty issues involved are clear, the practicalities, including the death at sea of more than 1000 people in recent times, are far more complicated. How and where should these people, many of them among the most desperate and marginalised people in the world, be processed? How can Australia best seek to create a shared, regional solution to the global issue of more than 40 million people displaced by war, persecution, famine and other woes? What overall level of immigration should Australia have, and what proportion of that should be humanitarian, rather than based on skills or family reunion? Debate is raging between those who urge unfettered compassion - which does not mean simply throwing open our borders - and those who, like former prime minister John Howard, believe Australia should determine who comes here and under what circumstances. Today's guest in The Zone is seeking to bring another perspective, one based on the mutual benefit of Australia and asylum seekers, to the discussion. Gavin Ackerly is a director of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, a Melbourne-based organisation that is currently supporting about 1300 arrivals each year. The full transcript of our discussion, and a short video statement by Ackerly, is at theage.com.au/opinion/the-zone. Ackerly will be online for an hour today from midday to respond to questions and comments. The ASRC, of which I am an ambassador, raises about $3 million a year through donations and the asylum seeker-staffed social enterprises it runs. Through the efforts of 900 volunteers, it leverages those funds, delivering $20 million of services, including health, legal, food, training, language and counselling programs. Until now, it has been run on a welfare model - responding to need and distress and crisis. With the recent influx of asylum seekers, the ASRC no longer has the capacity to exclusively operate this way. And anyway, its leaders have been pondering for some time how to switch from welfare to empowerment - from, if you like, giving a handout to giving a hand up. Ackerly, a former electrician who has spent years in manufacturing and industrial services, is, above all, a practical and pragmatic person. After working with thousands of asylum seekers, he is convinced Australia is missing an opportunity to benefit. My experience of asylum seekers has been seeing hundreds of talented people going into employment and doing an exceptional job. I'm always getting feedback from managers in workplaces who really appreciate that they are able to be part of helping asylum seekers and are really happy to be getting such great workers. The amazing thing about asylum seekers that people often miss is that these people come from a diverse range of backgrounds - everything from doctors to engineers, healthcare workers to tradespeople, business and community leaders. They bring resourcefulness. They are hard-working and obviously they are very loyal to Australia. So it's not just the skills that they bring; it is also the attitude that they bring. Ackerly, who has been with the ASRC for seven years and has run its employment program, and the ASRC's chief executive, Kon Karapanagiotidis, have come up with a model that fundamentally changes how asylum seekers will be helped. They have just launched the Asylum Seeker Innovation Hub. Instead of delivering welfare, the hub will empower asylum seekers to solve their own problems. Each year, about 1000 newly arrived asylum seekers will be greeted at the hub by asylum seekers and others working there. They will be given a suite of employment, education and leadership opportunities and asked to identify the ways they can participate and contribute. Each person's skills and experience will be assessed, and then buttressed where necessary by training and courses from participants including Melbourne Business School and corporate advisory firm Deloitte. The biggest issue for asylum seekers is work experience in Australia. This will give them that, and much more. The centre will be a dynamic space where business professionals and entrepreneurs can connect and collaborate with asylum seekers - in skills development programs and real time businesses activity. Our ultimate goal would be for asylum seekers to leave the innovation hub not only with employment but with their own connections and their own networks. The hub is about empowerment, everything that is about making your own way: employment, education, social and community development and social enterprise. Ackerly takes it as a given, legally and morally, that Australia should help asylum seekers. Australia is a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention, which obliges us to accept asylum seekers and process their claims, no matter how they arrive and whether or not they have official identity documents. He has no desire to enter the political debate. His argument is based on an analysis of costs and benefits, on a rational evaluation of mutual interest. He believes Australia is needlessly spending billions of dollars each year on mandatory detention and offshore processing when we could be getting people into the economy and community quickly and at low cost. It costs about $140,000 a year to detain an asylum seeker. The ASRC can get people up and running, contributing to the economy and society for about $10,000, it says. The Asylum Seeker Innovation Hub is backed financially by foundations and individuals such as Planet Wheeler Foundation and philanthropists Mim and Mike Bartlett and is seeking more donors, as well as organisations to add to the pro bono support being provided by Melbourne Business School and Deloitte. Ackerly finds that business people quickly understand the value of asylum seekers, and see employing them as enlightened self-interest. For all the business people I speak to, I have not met one yet who does not agree with having asylum seekers processed in the community and contributing to society and helping us build our economy. At its best, business does not see people in terms of the colour of their skin or country of origin or religious beliefs, they value people for their skills and abilities and work ethic. There is no business person I have met yet who actually comes out of a reasonable discussion about this thinking locking people away is a smart idea. It makes no sense economically, it makes no sense at a human rights level; it is just a political tool, that's all it is. Ackerly did not start on the side of asylum seekers. I come from the outer suburbs and I left school early. I was a racist young man. After years as a tradesman, he changed his life - a process he says is the hardest thing he has ever done. It meant rejecting the ingrained notion that he was incapable of anything other than the work he was doing. It meant having the courage to believe life could offer more than he had come to believe was his lot. He trained in community welfare and was sent on a placement to the ASRC. It was a turning point. It wasn't until I actually sat down with asylum seekers that I was hit with this almighty bolt of lightning. It was that this person is me. It is my father. It is someone that I know. He came to know many of them. His experience early on with one, Ali, a fitter and turner, was formative, as he describes in detail in our interview. Ali had very little English and no income support. He was desperate for work, as he and his wife and their children were struggling to procure sufficient food. Ali had lots of photos of the machinery he had worked with, and Ackerly put together a CV for him. But Ali's lack of English was a turnoff for the many potential employers Ackerly contacted. Ali grew despondent and unwell and stopped coming to weekly meetings with Ackerly. A few months later, Ali rang Ackerly to tell him he had a job at an engineering firm. He had been employed after standing outside the firm every day from 6.30am, politely and patiently requesting work. Ali's new boss told Ackerly: "If anyone has got that kind of dedication, I don't care what the language barriers are, I'm going to give him a go." It taught Ackerly much, and helped lead to the innovation hub. This has helped my idea of breaking from the welfare model. I had been feeling responsible for Ali. I was buying into the crisis. I had forgotten that Ali is a very resourceful man, far more resourceful than I will ever be. The experience really taught me I am not the solution; I am a person to support these people finding their own solution. And again, most of them are more educated and skilled than I will ever be. That is what keeps me in the job now - people like Ali, and the understanding that anything is possible with people who have that kind of dedication and resilience. asrc.org.au