Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has announced that asylum seekers residing in Indonesia while awaiting protection will no longer obtain resettlement in Australia. This move puts into serious question…
In matters of national security, who is deviant and poses a threat to our safety depends on the claims made by those in positions of power and the sociopolitical climate. The news media are crucial in…
The Australian government is being examined on Monday evening by the United Nations Committee against Torture. Before the independent committee of experts, an Australian government delegation has to answer…
The government wanted to ensure Papua New Guinea understood “absolutely” its responsibilities to resettle refugees from Manus Island, Foreign Minister Julie Bishop said today, but avoided predicting when…
The report on the 2014 Scanlon Foundation Mapping Social Cohesion surveys, released on Wednesday, finds both continuity and change. On attitudes to asylum seekers, for example, there is a large measure…
Bill Shorten is in a awkward place on the issue of boat turn backs. Richard Marles’ suggestion that under certain conditions a Labor government might embrace the policy recognised reality. But the immigration…
Independent federal MP Andrew Wilkie has written to the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC), requesting the body investigate and prosecute the prime minister, Tony Abbott…
It has been a bad time lately for Afghan Hazaras with Australian connections. In late September, the shocking news came through that the Taliban had tortured and murdered an Australian of Afghan background…
How do Australian institutions and political leaders draw on history to tell us who we are? How do they make sense of Australia’s past as a country of immigration and a nation that has accommodated hundreds…
More than 80% of Australian paediatricians believe mandatory detention of asylum seeker children constitutes child abuse, according to survey results published today in the Medical Journal of Australia…
Accompanying the reintroduction of Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs) in Australia last week was a new type of immigration visa, the Safe Haven Enterprise Visa (SHEV). What is significant about the SHEV…
The Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between Australia and Cambodia raises important questions about Australia’s international legal obligations, the nature of regional refugee protection and resettlement…
Whenever an immigration minister states that new laws will “restore integrity” to the immigration program it is clear what they mean is we have new ways of refusing cases and punishing the bad refugees…
The news that Hamid Kehazaei, a 24-year-old Iranian asylum seeker detained on Manus Island, has been diagnosed as brain dead following his transfer to the Mater Hospital in Brisbane is a tragedy. That…
Calais might be in France, but it is the front line of Britain’s battle to control immigration. Yet the governments of both countries continue to pass the buck between each other and very little progress…
In opposition, Tony Abbott and his alternative government set itself a three-word performance indicator for success in its refugee policy if and when it took office: stop the boats. With one recent exception…
Scott Morrison’s release of more children from detention is selective, and the timing of his announcement has a distinctly political flavour to it. The decision applies to about 150 children under ten…
As the government secretly flew 157 asylum seekers seized at sea to Nauru overnight on Friday, 50 men recognised as refugees and given “temporary protection” to settle on Nauru have issued a statement…
Lawyers for the 157 Tamil asylum seekers now transferred to Nauru say that while being held at sea the people were told they would be put into orange lifeboats bound for India. The Human Rights Law Centre…
Immigration department secretary Martin Bowles has said his department was seeking advice about new data on the mental health problems of children in detention, not trying to cover it up. Bowles was responding…