The region is showing signs it is determined to ensure similar mass displacement crises such as that which took place in the Andaman Sea in 2015 are avoided.
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Asylum seekers – Analysis and Comment
Senior politicians slurring the reputation of immigrants does more to erode support for multiculturalism than do uncontrolled borders.
The Labor Party has been driving a campaign bus from Cairns to Canberra. On Sunday night Sam Dastyari told supporters they had raised enough money to extend its journey through to Melbourne.
Anticipation is core business for political strategists. Last year Bill Shorten and those around him correctly judged Labor was electorally exposed on border protection.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s incendiary remarks about refugees may resonate electorally. But, as Michelle Grattan explains, they will also come at a cost.
Successful responses to the global refugee crisis will be those that recognise and build upon displaced people’s skills, capacities and aspirations.
What a Nobel prize-winning physicist can teach us about about trying to deal with the current global crisis over asylum seekers and refugees.
Both major parties support offshore processing and boat turnbacks. But public opinion on asylum seekers is not so clear-cut. And nor are the policy alternatives.
What are the key policy issues on which the 2016 federal election will be fought?
If a new High Court claim against Australia’s offshore detention regime succeeds, it will entirely undermine Australia’s inhumane practices in relation to “those who come across the seas”.
High rates of self-harm are endemic on Nauru. And yet, the Australian government persists in seeing suicide and self-harm as the fault of refugees and their supporters.
The move by PNG’s Supreme Court to strike down the continued detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island carries danger for both the government and Labor.
It is a shocking truth that, for the most part, the politicians are leaving their humanity at home as they debate the future of the men on Manus Island.
The Australian government must face the uncomfortable truth that it is no longer possible to process or detain asylum seekers and refugees in other countries in our region.
A PNG Supreme Court judgment is likely to have profound implications for Australia’s offshore processing regime in that country.
Health professionals have long warned that conditions in offshore detention centres are inhumane, degrading and pose life-threatening risks to asylum seekers and refugees.
Britain is not taking its fair share of child asylum seekers.
MPs are considering a change to a policy that bans asylum seekers from working for 12 months.
The stakes around Australia’s defence appear higher and the urgency greater than at any time since the height of the Cold War.
Australians need to have a broad conversation about immigration. This must go beyond border security to discuss immigration’s broad functions, social impacts and the national interests it serves.
Here’s why you shouldn’t blame local authorities for the failure of government contractors.
Reforms to where in Europe people in need of protection can claim asylum do not go far enough.
Australia’s policy to stop the flow of asylum seeker boats to its shores has increased the number of refugees stranded in Indonesia.
It is impossible to know for sure what a Trump presidency would be like. But there are sensible reasons to suspect it could be disastrous – not only for the US but also for Australia.
There is every sign the underlying causes of forced migration – war, repression, ethnic conflict, climate change displacement and rampant human trafficking – will continue.