Successive Australian governments have dehumanised refugees and kept Australians in the dark about what really goes on in the offshore detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island.
The heightened scrutiny of Australia’s immigration policies in recent weeks has shone a light on the long-term problems of indefinite detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.
It has taken more than three months for the Australian and PNG governments to jointly announce the Manus Island detention centre will close. But the detainees’ fate is now even more uncertain.
An angry Malcolm Turnbull has asked CEDA for a ‘please explain’ and the Australian Federal Police for a full incident report about the protest over Nauru and Manus Island.
Reports of abuse on Nauru should provide a flashpoint for the Turnbull government to reassess its asylum-seeker policies before more serious harm is inflicted on Australia’s international standing.
In the 1960s, with the phosphate boom over and Nauru’s economy in ruins, Australia offered to move the entire nation to Queensland’s Curtis Island. But with no sovereignty on offer, the deal collapsed.
The Sunday Telegraph reported at the weekend that Malcolm Turnbull had visited only seven electorates since the July 2 poll, and contrasted his “hermit-style approach” with Bill Shorten’s “never-ending…
Leaked incident reports from the Nauru detention centre affirm what has been known for a long time: detention is no place for children, and we need alternatives to offshore processing.
Refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru routinely face neglect by Australian-hired health workers and frequent unpunished assaults by local Nauruans, according to an investigation.
Images move us to act – as last week’s episode of Four Corners has shown. Our government has gone to great lengths to suppress photos that humanise asylum seekers – but when they seep out, empathy is aroused.
The key challenge for the returned Turnbull government is to formulate policies that present Australia as a good global citizen willing to take its fair share of refugees.