October 26, 2009 – 12:50 am
The future direction of a major aspect of Australia’s asylum seeker policy is in the balance right now, with potentially very significant future impacts for many refugees, as well as for regional relations and the treatment of people moving through the region.
The Labor government made some significant changes on coming to office. Most important was [...]
October 21, 2009 – 9:23 pm
It’s back to the future as headlines report on the arrival boatloads of asylum seekers and politicians reach for the dog-whistle. Malcolm Turnbull recycled John Howard’s “we will decide” line on immigration, and didn’t even blush. And Kevin Rudd is not about to be outflanked.
This is an ugly political game, because the only way to [...]
October 14, 2009 – 12:50 pm
Two or three thousand boat arrivals a year is not an immigration crisis, given an intake of over 130,000. Amnesty figures show that the bulk (96%) of on shore asylum seekers arrive by plane. Australia could easily deal with the relatively small number of extra sea borne applicants, were they allowed to land in Australia [...]
October 13, 2009 – 12:51 pm
Asylum seekers in boats are all over the news again, this time for a boat that was stopped rather than one which arrived. Philip Ruddock has provided a bit of nostalgia, talking about ten thousand people heading for Australia – exactly the same figure he was using ten years ago.
This latest boat, reportedly stopped by [...]
September 8, 2009 – 9:47 am
In December last year, a report from the federal Parliament’s Joint Standing Committee on Migration unanimously recommended that “as a priority, the Australian Government introduce legislation to repeal the liability of immigration detention costs.” That is, the law which raises a debt against people in immigration detention to cover the cost of their detention. Legislation [...]
August 19, 2009 – 11:09 am
A public and political outcry in November last year, regarding a Doctor being denied Australian permanent residency because his son had Down Syndrome, led to the Immigration Minister, Chris Evans, announcing a Parliamentary inquiry into the health requirements in the Migration Act.
Nearly six months later, on May 15 this year, the terms of reference for [...]
August 1, 2009 – 10:00 pm
There is more evidence that, however unjust and dysfunctional the administration of Australia’s immigration laws was in our recent past, it is being outstripped by what has been happening in the USA.
There are more and more examples coming to light in the USA that have echoes of the Cornelia Rau and Vivienne Alvarez debacles of [...]
The shambles engulfing Australia’s international students continues to bubble along. Even worse, publicity about it continues to bubble along overseas, especially in Indian media.
There are now reports that the education sector is trying to crack down on so-called ‘rogue education agents’. It’s hard to see how that achieves anything more than window dressing. The previous [...]
No doubt President Obama will disappoint plenty of people in plenty of areas before his time as President finishes, but one area where he seems keen to make improvements is in the way the USA approaches human rights issues internationally.
Last Friday he “announced his intention to sign the U.N. Convention on the Rights of Persons [...]
I had an article published in the main Crikey e-newsletter today, outlining some of the trends, facts and government responses to the well over 40 million refugees, asylum seekers, internally displaced and stateless people around the world.
It seems likely the issue of asylum seeker boat arrivals will once again be moving closer to the political [...]
