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…
If a visit to Christmas Island sounds like fun, think again. A remote tropical island in the Indian Ocean – billed as a birdwatcher’s paradise and a haven for snorkelling – has a dark side. It is “home…
Two characteristics of this government are that it regularly overreaches and that where possible it shies away from transparency and accountability. Very different issues in the news this week highlight…
Immigration minister Scott Morrison should cease to be the legal guardian of unaccompanied asylum seeker and refugee children, a church-sponsored report has urged. Instead, an independent guardian should…
Immigration Minister Scott Morrison has been forced to capitulate and agree to bring to Australia the 157 Sri Lankan Tamil asylum seekers who have been held in a Customs vessel on the high seas for weeks…
My interview with Mr Syed did not get off to a great start. We’d arranged to meet at the Dandenong library – part of the city council building, a huge, bright orange edifice in the redeveloped heart of…
The full bench of the High Court will hear the case of 157 Sri Lankan asylum seekers currently on an Australian customs vessel over two days, starting on August 5. But when the High Court issued an injunction…
Following the shocking news of the destruction of flight MH17, foreign minister Julie Bishop wasted no time in boarding a plane for the United Nations in New York. Australian diplomats engaged in intense…
From the perspective of the global north, Australia has always been an oddity. Its policies often seem as strange and inexplicable as its fauna. “They are strange those Australians, strangers to the world…