The region is showing signs it is determined to ensure similar mass displacement crises such as that which took place in the Andaman Sea in 2015 are avoided.
Anticipation is core business for political strategists. Last year Bill Shorten and those around him correctly judged Labor was electorally exposed on border protection.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s incendiary remarks about refugees may resonate electorally. But, as Michelle Grattan explains, they will also come at a cost.
If Malcolm Turnbull is returned he should tip Peter Dutton out of the immigration portfolio when he chooses his new ministry. Dutton’s Tuesday comments, when targeting the Greens proposal for a big increase…
Both major parties support offshore processing and boat turnbacks. But public opinion on asylum seekers is not so clear-cut. And nor are the policy alternatives.
Zimbabwean migrants’ journey to South Africa is fraught with danger. But the emptiness of life in their country makes it imperative to risk life and limb to seek a better life across the river.
If a new High Court claim against Australia’s offshore detention regime succeeds, it will entirely undermine Australia’s inhumane practices in relation to “those who come across the seas”.
It is hard to credit that two asylum seekers in Nauru could set themselves alight on Australia’s watch and the stories receive, compared to much else, so little attention in our hyper media cycle. One…
High rates of self-harm are endemic on Nauru. And yet, the Australian government persists in seeing suicide and self-harm as the fault of refugees and their supporters.
The Australian government must face the uncomfortable truth that it is no longer possible to process or detain asylum seekers and refugees in other countries in our region.
The Australian government says it will not allow any asylum seekers on Manus Island to come here, after PNG’s Supreme Court ruled it was illegal to detain them there.
Australians need to have a broad conversation about immigration. This must go beyond border security to discuss immigration’s broad functions, social impacts and the national interests it serves.
Professor of International Migration and Forced Displacement and Director of the Institute for Research into International Migration and Superdiversity, University of Birmingham