Australia’s offshore detention policies have helped to produce indifference to the suffering of refugees. Pushing refugees out of sight, and out of mind, has now placed them beyond moral concern.
Incarceration of asylum seekers in offshore camps would be in breach of UK’s responsibilities under international human rights conventions.
Andrew Chisholm via Shutterstock
Television series Stateless examines our treatment of asylum seekers through ‘people like us’. It also highlights how far conditions for people transferred to offshore detention have deteriorated.
Following conflicting accounts on whether there was a deal, Richard di Natale said Cormann had ‘walked over to senator Lambie and said, “Is it OK if I say there’s no deal?” We heard you say it’.
Lukas Coch/AAP
After securing a condition which she cannot disclose “due to national security concerns”, Jacqui Lambie has voted with the government on the repeal of the medevac laws.
Protesters holding a vigil last year for deceased asylum seeker Hamid Khazaei, who died in a Brisbane hospital due to an infection at the Manus Island detention centre in 2014.
Darren England/AAP
A Senate report details the high need for refugees on Manus Island and Nauru to be able to seek medical care in Australia. The fate of the medevac law now rests in Jacqui Lambie’s hands.
The medevac law was passed to streamline the process for emergency medical evacuation of refugees from Manus Island and Nauru. Thirty-one people have been transferred since its passage.
Refugee Action Coalition
With parliament sitting next week, the home affairs minister is pressuring Labor to support a repeal of the medevac law. But the law has worked just as it was intended.
Iranian Kurdish poet Behrouz Boochani, a long term detainee on Manus, wrote about the cruelty he witnessed in detention in his book, No Friend but the Mountain.
Amnesty International via AAP
It’s critical that the Australian government take a new direction in refugee policy and move beyond its tired rhetoric of deterrence as a justification for detaining refugees on Nauru and Manus.
In a counter attack against the Coalition, which is running hard on the ALP being soft on borders, Shorten accused the government of “telling lies about Labor” and thereby “doing the dirty work of the people smugglers.”
Lukas Coch/AAP
He said the $500 million would directly improve orderly regional processing and resettlement in the region and countries closer to where refugees originally come from.
Albanese predicts next week’s ALP national conference will be “very.
constructive”, dismissing concerns about divisions over boat
turnbacks.
Mick Tsikas/AAP
Anthony Albanese on Labor’s road ahead
CC BY67,5 MB(download)
Speaking to The Conversation, Albanese wouldn't comment on Bill Shorten's unpopularity with voters, arguing instead that it's a matter of whether the Labor team is “seen as worthy of election".
Saturday’s disaster in the Wentworth byelection, in which refugee policy was an issue, underlined the political necessity of making.
progress.
AAP Image/ Refugee Action Coalition
On Tuesday, the Australian government will close the Manus Island regional processing centre in Papua New Guinea. Arguing that they have no safe place to go, nearly all 742 remaining residents are refusing…
The leaked transcript of the phone call between Donald Trump and Malcolm Turnbull highlights the failure of Australia’s deal with the US to take refugees.
Reuters/Jonathan Ernst
In a recent report highlighting ‘shortcomings’ in security and welfare services in offshore detention, six terabytes of data was ‘missing’. Don’t expect to see it any time soon.