Until recently most “boat people” seeking asylum in Australia have come from wartime situations or from dictatorships. But this is not the case for the increasing numbers coming from Sri Lanka. Sri Lanka…
The Houston Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers was set the task of reducing deaths of asylum seekers following the mounting loss of life on the seas between Indonesia and Australia. But it remained blind to…
Greater transparency and improved access for the media to interview asylum seekers in detention is required say human rights lawyers, after three separate incidents of self-harm at the Nauru processing…
The High Court’s decision in the M47 case is likely to be a pyrrhic victory for refugee rights. Last week the High Court ruled that the regulation that allowed the Commonwealth to deny a visa to a refugee…
Wicked problems, so we are told, are everywhere. Climate change, conflict, an ageing population, obesity… the list goes on. The debate over asylum seekers, difficult and important and politically charged…
With 5,459 attempted boat arrivals to Australia in the first half of 2012, an increase of 894 since last year, it is no wonder the prime minister is desperate to demonstrate she is combating people smuggling…
The former British Prime Minister, Harold Wilson famously said a week is a long time in politics. If this is the case, then you have to wonder how long it will feel if the current Parliament runs it full…
Despite arrivals of asylum seekers by boat being a major political issue for Australia over the last decade, the Indonesian government has not regarded the presence of asylum seekers and refugees with…
The Houston panel reported on Monday 13 August 2012. The government has committed to implementing all of its recommendations. In fact, one of its recommendations (recommendation 7) has already been implemented…
It is now well understood that the Gillard government needed to act decisively to resolve the politics of the asylum seeker crisis. Regardless of which side of the political spectrum one fell, the deaths…
The circumstances of unaccompanied minors are barely addressed by the Houston report on asylum seekers. There is one reference to “vulnerable persons”. This is in the context of transferring those with…
Angus Houston’s expert panel on asylum seekers released its final report yesterday. Charged by the prime minister with breaking the political deadlock on asylum seeker policy, the panel has handed down…
Greeting the findings of the Houston expert panel on asylum seekers, The Australian front page exclaimed “At last, people put before politics”. This is, of course, ridiculous. The Malaysian solution would…
Remarkably, in all the 162 pages of the Houston panel’s report on asylum seekers, the word “deter” does not appear a single time. But this does not necessarily indicate a welcome move away from the deterrence-based…
Politics drives policy, and not the other way around. If we ever needed a sober reminder of this democratic truism, we got it in the political responses to the expert panel’s report on asylum seeker policy…
As we waited for the release of the Houston panel’s report on asylum seekers yesterday, I saw a mixture of high hopes and low expectations from those in attendance at the Parliament House briefing room…
The Report of the Expert Panel on Asylum Seekers contains some threads of a genuine shift from the prevailing framework towards a more regulatory model for responding to asylum seekers. The panel has abandoned…
The expert panel on asylum seekers has made 22 recommendations, including the establishment of a capacity for processing asylum seekers in both Nauru and Papua New Guinea, in a report expected to define…
Every four years, the Olympics brings us plenty of drama on and off the sports field. This year has been no different with seven athletes from Cameroon absconding from the Olympic village and more anticipated…
After two weeks of assessing the evidence, discussing policy and reporting on fieldwork, The Conversation’s asylum seeker expert panel has made its findings. Using information from our research repository…