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Keywords: Manus Island

There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.

  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2013: Invisible Icarus and asylum seekers

    • Maureen O'Brien
    • 06 January 2014
    4 Comments

    With his back to the sea, the ploughman negotiates the wooden plough drawn by his horse. If he heard Icarus falling from the heavens it didn't interrupt his routine. The crew of a ship close enough to rescue the drowning boy instead takes advantage of a favourable breeze and sails away. The shepherd daydreams, the angler continues fishing. To all intents and purposes Icarus is invisible to those in his immediate vicinity.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Mishandling Indonesia

    • Tony Kevin
    • 13 November 2013
    6 Comments

    Labor has made a political meal of last week's mishandled asylum seeker rescue. But neither Bill Shorten nor Richard Marles has shown any sympathy for the asylum seekers themselves. Meanwhile the Coalition's stubbornness has set back relations with Indonesia, has it pressed ahead with its turn-back policy to the point where Indonesia had to say very publicly 'We will not tolerate this any longer.'

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Invisible Icarus and asylum seekers

    • Maureen O'Brien
    • 07 October 2013
    13 Comments

    With his back to the sea, the ploughman negotiates the wooden plough drawn by his horse. If he heard Icarus falling from the heavens it didn't interrupt his routine. The crew of a ship close enough to rescue the drowning boy instead takes advantage of a favourable breeze and sails away. The shepherd daydreams, the angler continues fishing. To all intents and purposes Icarus is invisible to those in his immediate vicinity.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Asylum seeker karaoke

    • Barry Gittins
    • 20 August 2013
    5 Comments

    Manus Island's hot, there's no protection for the weak. Though you think you're kind, it's true asylum that I seek. What's the point of difference between the church and state? Why do Salvos validate a policy of hate? History repeats, you Aussies did the same to Jews. Running from the Nazis, with their pleas for help refused.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The public, the Church, and asylum seekers

    • Frank Brennan
    • 13 August 2013
    1 Comment

    'Like many Australians, I had hoped that the dastardly plan announced on 19 July would stop the boats in the short term, as a stop-gap measure. It is dismaying to learn that appropriate consultations had not occurred with Indonesia with the result that the very people who were to receive the shock and awe message are yet to receive it. There’s only one thing worse than shock and awe; that’s shock and awe that doesn’t work because you haven’t done your homework.' 43rd Barry Marshall Memorial Lecture, Trinity College Theological School, 14 August 2013.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Vulnerable are victims of the federal game of thrones

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 05 August 2013
    14 Comments

    If the last three years have been like the first three years of the First World War, now is the time for a final blitzkrieg. The treatment of people who seek protection in Australia is not simply one of many election issues. It is a measure of how far each political party will go, how much damage each will be prepared to do to Australia's honour, reputation, economic interests and relationships in order to gain and hold power.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Australia complicit in PNG's Bougainville blight

    • Ellena Savage
    • 02 August 2013
    1 Comment

    Even more disturbing than PNG's poverty and gender-based violence is its military and police human rights record. Evidence of abuses in the form of a military blockade, massacres, rape and torture during the Bougainville Crisis of the 1990s are well-documented. The history of this crisis reveals PNG as incapable of caring for its most vulnerable citizens due to systemic corruption.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Corruption and other stumbling blocks to PNG solution

    • Walter Hamilton
    • 26 July 2013
    11 Comments

    A constitutional challenge in PNG to the resettlement agreement could quickly destroy any disincentive value as far as people smugglers are concerned. Under the country's constitution, foreigners may not be detained unless they have broken the law in entering the country. Since the asylum seekers are being sent there against their will they cannot be held to have entered illegally.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    PNG policy places politics over principle

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 20 July 2013
    15 Comments

    PNG is not a resettlement country, has few if any resettlement services for a refugee population and is struggling with its own serious law and order and basic services issues. Australia has subcontracted its international obligations to a former colony. Once again the poorer countries of the world are used to warehouse refugees while the richer countries cherry-pick those they deem suitable for resettlement.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    PNG move proves Australia is not special

    • Frank Brennan
    • 20 July 2013
    35 Comments

    This bold move might stop the boats in the short term. If it does, we need after the election to recommit ourselves to providing better regional upstream processing and protection for asylum seekers stranded in Indonesia and Malaysia. Let's hope that whoever is in government after the election can call a truce on the race to the bottom and commit to the hard diplomatic work that is needed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Pragmatic answers to the asylum seeker question

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 June 2013
    10 Comments

    'I want to outline the contours for a better approach — better than forcibly turning around boats, better than transporting people to Nauru and Manus Island or to Malaysia to join an asylum queue of 100,000 or permitting people to reside in the Australian community but without work rights and with inadequate welfare provision.' Frank Brennan speaks at the Australian Catholic University National Asylum Summit 2013.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Visiting detention is a political act

    • Nik Tan
    • 12 June 2013
    12 Comments

    The toddlers are from Syria. The boys are Sri Lankan Tamils, nervous as they will soon be flown to a Tasmanian facility for unaccompanied minors — one asks me if it will be cold. Visiting a detention centre is a small act to say that the Australian Government's policy of detaining asylum seeker men, women and children is not in our name.

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