The Australia-PNG regional resettlement arrangement and the “no advantage” policy are based on the incorrect assumption that asylum seekers come to Australia because it’s an “easy” entry point into the…
“The truth about the Pacific Solution is that 70%, thereabouts, of those people sent by Mr Howard to Nauru and elsewhere as part of the Pacific Solution, used it as a [way] station and within a couple…
Over recent months, Iran has become the largest source of asylum seekers arriving in Australia, with more than 5,000 having arrived this year, amounting to about one-third of the total. While the debate…
Linda Briskman, Swinburne University of Technology and Scott Poynting, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau
It was a foolish moment when prime minister Bob Hawke promised that by 1990 no child in Australia would be living in poverty. After all, what are the solutions to child poverty, to crime, to educational…
Welcome to the **The Conversation Election 2013 State of the Nation* essays. These articles by leading experts in their field provide an in-depth look at the key policy challenges affecting Australia as…
The people of Armidale, a NSW country town which benefits from the cosmopolitanism associated with the presence of the University of New England, are tolerant and open-hearted. They might well appear as…
Lie (v.) (1) To make a politically unpopular statement; (2) [retrospectively applied] To make a statement which appears inconsistent with a more recent statement, indicating that its maker has changed…
Have you ever wondered why asylum seekers would choose to spend $5000 for passage on an overcrowded, dangerous, and potentially fruitless boat journey from Indonesia rather than spend it on a first class…
The major political parties in Australia are engaged in a competition to outdo each other in their promises to mistreat boat people. The theory is that this will deter others from seeking protection here…
Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd’s so-called “PNG solution” to the asylum seeker issue has attracted much comment from within both Australia and Papua New Guinea. It has also stirred the pot in Indonesia…
Anyone who wants to design a solution to the asylum seeker dilemma needs to start by understanding it’s not the product of a single phenomenon: there are five issues, all connected. To create a workable…
“You cannot send children aged under seven to Manus Island because of the issues of inoculation - you can’t do it.” - Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison, press conference, 21 July. Scott Morrison…
We are never completely contemporaneous with our present. History advances in disguise; it appears on stage wearing the mask of the preceding scene, and we tend to lose the meaning of the play. Each time…
Just when you thought being “tough on borders” couldn’t get any more serious, along comes the Coalition’s Operation Sovereign Borders. It’s got all the right elements of a plan: it’s an operation (with…
The people smugglers business model is phrase that has entered the Australian political lexicon if only through sheer repetition. It has barely left the lips of prime minister Kevin Rudd or immigration…
There’s a Latin word: misericordia. It’s usually translated “mercy” or “pity”. Thomas Aquinas took misericordia to be a kind of grief at the suffering of others as if that suffering were our own. Alasdair…
Now Kevin Rudd has ticked off emissions trading and unveiled his PNG solution on boat arrivals, he’s turning his full attention to trying to neutralise the “debt and deficit” issue. In other words, he’s…
At first glance, the deal between prime ministers Kevin Rudd and Peter O’Neill transferring all Australian-bound asylum seekers to Papua New Guinea appears to deliver many benefits to that small poor country…
It is currently unclear how Australia and Papua New Guinea will ensure a protective and supportive resettlement environment for refugees under the recently announced Regional Resettlement Arrangement (RRA…
“The difficulty for asylum seekers now [to legally challenge the Papua New Guinea asylum seeker deal] is that the Migration Act… provides much broader discretion for the minister.” - Dr Michelle Foster…