Keywords: Refugee Convention
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 19 June 2013
6 Comments
Comparison of these two cases is illuminating. One is the recruit to the Australia A cricket team, Pakistani born Fawad Ahmed. The other is, in Tony Abbott's words, the 'convicted Jihadist terrorist', Egyptian born Sayed Ahmed Abullatif. Ahmed will be the second Pakistani born cricketer in an Australian side that desperately needs a good leg-spinner. Abdullatif has possibly a more difficult road ahead.
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RELIGION
- Andrew Hamilton
- 17 June 2013
20 Comments
Sometimes events take on a significance beyond their historical context. That was the case with Gallipoli and the Eureka Stockade. It may also prove to be the case with the bodies left in the water after an asylum seeker boat sank, and the delay by the Australian authorities to take responsibility for their recovery.
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AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 11 February 2013
16 Comments
The ad hoc nature of arrangements for asylum seekers in Nauru and PNG reveal that priorities are being determined by election dates rather than respect for human dignity and international human rights laws. The latest Coalition idea to interdict boats from Sri Lanka outside our territorial waters and send them back is particularly ill-considered.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 15 November 2012
11 Comments
You can tell bad policy making by the trail of broken human lives it leaves behind it. The image of asylum seekers held in tents on Nauru, many on hunger strike and at least one now in risk of death, will surely be followed by images of people withering from depression and resentment and needing medical care.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 01 November 2012
'Even without the political static which is drowning us all out down there in Canberra, there is real doubt whether the Gillard bluff 'Don't get on a boat because you might end up in Nauru' can do what the Howard bluff could not deliver.' Full text from Fr Frank Brennan SJ's Law and Justice Oration at the Law and Justice Foundation 2012 Justice Awards Dinner, Parliament House, Sydney.
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AUSTRALIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 31 October 2012
12 Comments
In politics, hypocrisy is a natural condition. On Tuesday, it became evident that refugee policy is the last thing that should be made by the Australian government. Gillard has now achieved something Howard could only dream of, and shown Labor can play the game of hypocrisy as well as any.
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AUSTRALIA
- Patrick McCabe
- 24 October 2012
3 Comments
Proponent of an immigration 'free market' Gary Becker would accommodate poor migrants by allowing businesses to lend them the 'immigration fee' in exchange for their labour upon arrival. Poor migrants tend to be unskilled, so this scheme would remain largely unutilised. Moreover, this arrangement might amount to indentured servitude.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 12 October 2012
2 Comments
Fr Frank Brennan SJ's paper 'Reflections on the death penalty on the tenth anniversary of the Bali Bombings' presented at the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights and Australians Against Capital Punishment Dinner, Red Hill, Brisbane, 12 October 2012, Commemorating the 10th World Day Against the Death Penalty.
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AUSTRALIA
- Lyn Bender
- 26 September 2012
8 Comments
In March 2002 I spent hours with Afghanis, Iranians, Palestinians and Iraqis on hunger strikes; desperate people who felt they had no power except to use their bodies to convey their message of despair. I am not the only health professional to predict that the resurrected Pacific Solution will create the same destructive circumstances.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 14 September 2012
4 Comments
In the lead up to the election, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison are sure to continue insisting that the Gillard Government's Pacific Solution Mark II will not work. In all probability this will undermine the efficacy of the Gillard Solution in stopping the boats. Read the full text of Fr Frank Brennan's address to the Migration Institute of Australia, Menzies Hotel, Sydney, 14 September 2012
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AUSTRALIA
- Tony Kevin
- 05 September 2012
14 Comments
Australian maritime safety and border protection authorities could have saved the lives of most of the people on the boat that made two distress calls by telephone to the Australian Maritime Safety Authority early last Wednesday. Instead they passed the responsibility to Indonesia, which has none of the sophisticated resources and technologies that Australia uses - when it wants to - to locate and intercept incoming unauthorised boats.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 23 August 2012
11 Comments
Behind all the legal technicalities and political argument about boat people, there is room for deeper ethical reflection and a more principled proposal. But first, to clear away some of the debris.
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