120年前的“Robtelmes诉Brenan”案中，澳大利亚新成立的高等法院批准了一项种族清洗政策：大约4000至6000名澳大利亚南海岛民被强行驱逐出境，尽管他们中的大多数在法律上都属于“英国臣民”。
In Robtelmes v Brenan 120 years ago, Australia’s newly established high court approved an act of ethnic cleansing. Between 4,000 and 6,000 Australian South Sea Islanders were to be forcibly expelled as “aliens”, despite the majority having full legal belonging as “British subjects”.
直到今天，高等法院仍以“Robtelmes案”作为依据，为以“任何理由”驱逐或拘留非公民的行为提供合法性。更令人担忧的是，澳大利亚政府甚至声称该国一半的永久居民都属于“外国人”，因此这些居民同样可能受到这种政策的迫害。
To this day, the high court still cites Robtelmes for the right to expel or detain non-citizens “for any reason”. Ominously, the commonwealth also argues that potentially half the permanent population of Australia are “aliens” and subject to this power.
从澳大利亚南海岛民的角度来看，这不仅仅是一个历史上的错误——而是一道至今仍未愈合的法律伤痕。许多南海岛民的祖先被强行带到澳大利亚，他们在那里建立了家庭和社区，其中许多人原本就是英国的合法臣民。然而，高等法院的这一裁决却为“白澳政策”下对整个社区的强制驱逐行为提供了合法性。
From an Australian South Sea Islander perspective, this case is not simply a historical wrong: it is a legal wound that remains open. Many South Sea Islanders know their ancestors were “blackbirded” to Australia, built families and communities here and many were legally British subjects. Yet the decision legitimised the forced removal of an entire community under the White Australia policy.
在《Blackbirding: A Reckoning with the Australian Slave Trade》一书中，瑞安·布塔（Ryan Butta）指出：高等法院的首任首席大法官塞缪尔·格里菲斯（Sir Samuel Griffith）在担任昆士兰殖民地总理期间曾是反对绑架南海岛民行为的积极倡导者。但布塔指出，像格里菲斯这样的反对奴隶贸易的人其实并不反对奴隶制度的存在，他们反对的是“黑人”被引入昆士兰。
In Blackbirding: A Reckoning with the Australian Slave Trade, Ryan Butta describes how Sir Samuel Griffith, the first chief justice of the high court, had been a leading opponent of the kidnapping of South Sea Islanders when premier of colonial Queensland. But, as Butta says, slave trade opponents like Griffith “did not object to the introduction of slaves … they objected to the introduction of black people into Queensland”.
虽然许多南海岛民后来回到了自己的祖国，但也有相当一部分人留在了澳大利亚，并在那里建立了永久性的定居点。联邦成立后，新成立的联邦议会通过了《1901年太平洋岛民劳工法》，将整个南海岛民社区驱逐出境——这一行为被称作“澳大利亚历史上最残忍的罪行之一”。
While many Islanders returned to their homelands, a large proportion remained, forming a permanently settled community in Australia. After federation the new commonwealth parliament passed the Pacific Island Labourers Act 1901 to expel the entire Islander community in what has been described as “one of the cruellest acts in Australian history”.
罗布特尔梅斯于 1897 年从新赫布里底群岛（现瓦努阿图）的瓦努阿拉瓦地区被招募到澳大利亚工作。尽管他的合同最初只为期三年，但他之后仍继续为多家雇主工作，最后在布里斯班南部的芒特科顿公司任职。1906 年，罗布特尔梅斯和他的雇主试图续签已经到期的劳动合同，但结果他被带到警察法庭前，法庭裁定将他驱逐出境。不过，这一驱逐令被暂时搁置，以便高等法院进一步审理此案。
Robtelmes had been recruited in 1897 from Vanua Lava in the New Hebrides (now Vanuatu). He stayed on after his initial three-year agreement, working for various employers – lastly at Mount Cotton, south of Brisbane. In 1906 Robtelmes and his employer tried to renew his expired labour agreement. Instead, he was taken before a police magistrate who ordered him to be deported. The expulsion order was suspended to allow the high court to consider the matter.
格里菲斯法官在判决中首先提出了一个核心问题：根据宪法中关于“外国人”的立法权力，相关的驱逐法规是否具有法律效力。他问道：“太平洋岛民的地位究竟如何？他们到底属于什么身份？”尽管没有引用任何法律先例，他仍断言：“他们属于外国人，这一点无可争议。”这种基于种族刻板印象的判决（即将整个太平洋岛民群体与罗布特尔梅斯一同驱逐出境）其实早已是一个严重的法律错误。
Griffith delivered the main judgment, saying the first question was whether the deportation legislation was valid under the lawmaking power over “aliens” in the constitution, asking: “What is the status of Pacific Islanders? What are they?”Citing no legal precedent, he answered: “They are aliens: that is indisputable.”The racial stereotyping that condemned the entire Islander community to expulsion along with Robtelmes should have been recognised long ago as a profound legal error.
根据普通法原则，一个人的国籍或外国人身份与他们的肤色毫无关系。高等法院完全没有考虑罗布特尔梅斯的个人情况，也没有充分考虑太平洋岛民群体的多样性和不同背景。
Under common law principles, nationality and alien status had nothing to do with the colour of a person’s skin. The high court failed to consider Robtelmes’ individual circumstances or the different origins of South Sea Islanders more generally.
事实上，太平洋岛民远非“无可争议的外国人”；相反，1911 年的联邦人口普查显示，留在澳大利亚的太平洋岛民中超过 60% 都是英国的臣民。由于英国臣民的身份并不使他们享有《太平洋岛民劳工法》规定的任何豁免权，因此可以合理推断：格里菲斯法院错误地依据澳大利亚法律中关于“外国人”的规定，授权了对这些岛民的强制驱逐。
Far from being “indisputably alien”, the opposite was true. The first federal census in 1911 showed that more than 60% of the South Sea Islanders remaining in Australia were British subjects. Since British subject status did not entitle Islanders to an exemption under the Pacific Island Labourers Act, it is reasonable to conclude that the Griffith court wrongly authorised the forcible expulsion under the “aliens power” of Australia’s Islander community.
来自“白澳政策”时代的法律判例在涉及该政策核心内容时应当被谨慎对待。令人惊讶的是，直到2020年，法院在“Robtelmes”案中对“alien”（外国人）一词的种族歧视性含义才终于予以承认。在具有里程碑意义的“Aboriginal Belonging”案中，法官詹姆斯·埃德尔曼表示：“有充分的论据表明，1906年的那项判决实际上是基于种族偏见来制定相关规定的。”几年后，他进一步指出：“将‘外国人’这一概念应用于那些当时仍是英国臣民的太平洋岛民，是对本法院司法体系的玷污。”
Legal precedents from the White Australia era that adjudicated on key elements of that policy should be treated with caution. Extraordinarily, it took until 2020 for the court’s racialisation of the term “alien” in Robtelmes to be acknowledged. In the landmark “Aboriginal belonging” case Love and Thoms, Justice James Edelman said it had been “persuasively argued” that the 1906 case “implicitly applied criteria based upon racial perceptions”. A few years later he went further, declaring that “the application of the [aliens] power to Pacific Islanders who were British subjects is a stain on the jurisprudence of this Court”.
尽管如此，包括埃德尔曼本人在内的最高法院法官们仍继续将“Robtelmes”案视为联邦政府行使严苛权力（尤其是针对“外国人”）的法律依据。1982年，首席大法官哈里·吉布斯宣称：“自‘Robtelmes’案以来，人们普遍认为议会拥有权力根据自身判断，以任何理由驱逐或拘留外国人。”最高法院应当正视自己的历史，摒弃这一令人不安的判例；而随着民粹主义的兴起，这一判例的危险性更是与日俱增。
Despite this, high court judges – including Edelman himself – continue to cite Robtelmes as the foundational authority for draconian federal power over “aliens”. In 1982 Chief Justice Harry Gibbs said that ever since Robtelmes, “It has been regarded as settled law that the Parliament has power to make laws providing for the deportation [or detention] of aliens for whatever reasons it thinks fit.”The high court should confront its own history and disavow a disturbing precedent made even more dangerous by the rise of populism in this country.
澳大利亚不仅必须正视过去发生的种种事件，还要反思那些导致此类法律得以延续存在的法律逻辑。那些曾试图将他们驱逐出境的南太平洋岛民最终幸存了下来；如今，真相的揭露要求澳大利亚必须正视那些曾经为这些不公正法律提供依据的法律体系本身。
Australia must confront not only what happened but why the legal reasoning that enabled it continues to be relied on. South Sea Islanders survived the policy that sought to remove them; truth-telling now requires Australia to confront the law that enabled it.