Yesterday around 20 Christian activists staged sit-ins in Sydney at the office of the Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, and in Melbourne at that of Federal Opposition Leader, Bill Shorten. The protesters included…
Many Australians feel the government should maintain a tough policy on asylum seekers who arrive by boat.
Hadi Zader/Flickr
According to a poll taken last December, 60% of those surveyed think the Australian government should “increase the severity of the treatment of asylum seekers”. What’s behind this negative sentiment (otherwise…
The transfer of asylum seekers to detention centres in Papua New Guinea is a clear violation of Australia’s international law obligations.
AAP/Eoin Blackwell
This week’s Four Corners investigation on the circumstances surrounding the death of Iranian asylum seeker Reza Barati at the Manus Island detention centre in February was uncomfortable viewing. The ABC…
Yashika Bagheerathi: one among many.
Jonathan Brady/PA Wire
In just a few days last week the #FightForYashika campaign managed to raise more than 178,000 signatures on a petition asking to the UK Home Office to reconsider the forced removal of 19-year-old Yashika…
Largely lost in the politics of Tony Abbott’s campaign to ‘stop the boats’ is the fate of refugees.
AAP/Ava Benny-Morrison
The Abbott government has celebrated the 100th day without any asylum seeker boats reaching Australian territory. This is the result of policies that favour the protection of borders rather than of people…
How will Australia respond to so-called ‘climate refugees’?
AAP Image/Scott Fisher
The most recent IPCC report included a chapter on security – the first time this has happened. The report pointed to a range of security threats associated with climate change, including ill-health, food…
The question of how we treat innocent people who seek our protection from persecution is ultimately a moral one.
AAP/CNN
I was recently invited to give a talk at a private club in a Melbourne suburb. A colleague has been a member for some years and arranged an invitation for me to speak at one of its regular dinners. Asked…
Interpol says one billion passengers travel without proper identity checks.
EPA/Barbara Walton
It has emerged that two of the passengers on the missing flight MH370 were travelling on stolen passports. Initially this was thought to suggest that terrorism might be involved in the disappearance, but…
The Biennale’s severing of ties with Transfield won’t change anything for those suffering on Manus Island right now. But gestures matter.
Department of Immigration and Citizenship/AAP
In July 1846, the American writer Henry David Thoreau went to prison for refusing to pay his poll tax. He couldn’t abide the thought that his money would be used, however indirectly, to perpetuate the…
It is infantile to pick on one holding company while ignoring the central role of the Australian government.
Eoin Blackwell/AAP Image
The Biennale of Sydney, which begins on March 21, has announced it will sever ties with its founding partner Transfield, following weeks of pressure from artists angered by the company’s links to Australia’s…
There’s a worldwide push to outsource activities previously left to the state.
DIBP Images/Flickr
The awarding of a A$1.22 billion contract to Transfield Services to run the Manus Island and Nauru detention centres is yet another example of a government handing over responsibility to other parties…
When asylum seekers are handed over to PNG’s Manus Island, Australia cannot ‘contract out’ its international legal responsibilities with them.
AAP/Department of Immigration
The Australian government cannot duck and weave and imply that events on Manus Island involving asylum seekers were lawless acts over which it had no control. A policy aimed at “stopping the boats” does…
Foreign minister Julie Bishop has reportedly asked the Cambodian government if it would resettle some of the asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat.
EPA/Mak Remissa
Amid the ongoing bad news about Manus Island has come the revelation that the Australian government has approached Cambodia with a view to resettling some asylum seekers in the impoverished nation. So…
The Immigration Department, which erects shadecloth around its detention centres to give asylum seekers ‘privacy’, has potentially put 10,000 people at risk by mistakenly releasing detailed identifying information about them.
AAP/Mick Tsikas
Another day, another data breach. The response to that breach tells us something about privacy law, the media and bureaucracies. On Wednesday, The Guardian revealed that the Department of Immigration and…
The decision to investigate the Australian navy’s actions in towing back asylum boats could have been an opportunity for greater transparency.
AAP/Scott Fisher
The release on Wednesday of the review into the circumstances of how and why the Australian navy repeatedly entered Indonesian waters might have been expected finally to reveal information about Australia’s…
Refugee protection should go beyond a legal obligation to asylum seekers and refugees.
AAP/DIAC
Defining “success” in refugee protection can be a tricky proposition. It could be a reduction in the number of people displaced worldwide, places made available for refugee resettlement or the number of…
We rightly celebrate living in a society where law and order prevail. Being able to follow established rules allows for the smooth operation of the many necessary transactions of everyday life. Yet it…
The Australian Government has sought to use comics to deter would-be asylum seekers from boarding boats to Australia.
DIBP
This week, two very different Australian comics about asylum seekers have received widespread attention. The first is At work inside our detention centres: A guard’s story by Melbourne comics artist Sam…
The government is using a graphic novel depicting an asylum seeker’s failed journey to Australia as its latest method of deterrence against boat arrivals.
DIBP
The immigration department has added new contemporary imagery to the growing list of iconic works that surround the vexed issue of asylum seekers. Most Australians can already vividly recall media of the…
Australians have become very aware of the negative cultural tendencies of the ADF.
AAP/Scott Fisher
Prime minister Tony Abbott’s three-word slogan “stop the boats” may be meeting its promise. Last Friday, Abbott was “very pleased” to point out that it was the “50th day without an illegal boat arriving…