buddies

SOMETIMES, just sometimes, from the smoking wreckage of truly appalling and cynical politics, there emerges the glimmer of good policy.
Such is the case with Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers.
Tony Abbott’s venal strategy of opposition for opposition’s sake - which effectively saw the Liberals vote against their own policy of offshore processing - has ironically [...]

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Caroline Hutchinson

IS it just me or does everyone hope the worm is slowly turning?

I am writing this column as Federal Parliament debates the chaotic and disturbingly named Malaysian Solution, truly a low point in Australian politics.
Under the Fraser Liberal government for three years following the Vietnam War we accepted 20,000 humanitarian refugees a year [...]

Rae Wilson
Sunshine Coast Daily
17 October, 2011
 THE story of Cornelia Rau’s wrongful detention put a face to refugee issues that had long been swept behind the electric fences of Australia’s detention centres.
 Pamela Curr, who was instrumental in the ill woman’s much-publicised release in 2005, was among those who tried to dispel myths about refugees through [...]

 
1. Boat people are illegal.
 
Asylum seekers who enter Australia by sea (or plane) without a valid visa are not illegal. The right to enter without prior authorisation is protected by Article 31 of the 1951 Refugee Convention, which recognises that there is good cause for their unauthorised entry.
 
Like a speeding ambulance, asylum seekers [...]

We congratulate David Manne and the RILC team for bringing this case for two Afghan plaintiffs, one adult and one 16 year old, before the High Court.
Several reasons clarifying the illegality of the proposed Malaysian Swap Deal were handed down. Amongst them:
i) The Agreement is not legally binding on either party
ii) Malaysia fails the test [...]

Overview

We cannot tell you how many children remain in detention as DIAC is not maintaining its statisticspage..
We do know that last week there were 160 children in detention in Darwin. The same facility where three men accepted as refugees 21 months ago were subject to alleged attacks by SERCO staff after they conducted a peaceful [...]

Mike Steketee, The Australian, 13 August, 2011
SO we think we have a better political system than the US, where a distorted debate and congressional gridlock can hold an essential debt-reduction policy to ransom?
Yet we’re not bad at our own brand of dysfunctional politics. Take refugee policy. The WikiLeaks cables reveal that US diplomats here [...]

 Julian Burnside ABC The Drum, 8 August, 2011
 It is one of the most resonant phrases in our national mythology: “Lest we forget”. We say it, or think it, on 11th November each year and on Anzac day.
 But forgetting lies at the heart of this country. We have constructed a myth about ourselves which cannot survive [...]

 
Caroline Fleay, ABC Unleashed, 14 June, 2011
 There is much to criticise in the Australian Government’s proposal to swap 800 asylum seekers with 4,000 refugees in Malaysia.
 Media reports continue to outline the disturbing treatment of refugees in Malaysia. Immigration Minister Chris Bowen has announced that he will have the final say over which children will be [...]

 
Malcolm Fraser, The Age, 13 June, 2011
 Instead of offering protection, we force people into destitution.
 AT 12 Batman Street, West Melbourne, about 10 minutes from my office in the heart of the central business district, the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre rents rooms from St James Old Cathedral and assists more than 1000 destitute asylum seekers. It [...]