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Keywords: Woomera

  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2023: How Australia's asylum seeker policy has evolved over thirty years

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 04 January 2024

    Throughout recent decades of Australian history, the stance every government has taken on asylum seekers has reflected the shifting political landscapes and challenging humanitarian issues that have continually shaped Australia's response to those seeking refuge. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Three steps back and one step forward: Three decades of asylum seekers in Australia

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 28 July 2023

    How has Australia's asylum seeker policy changed over the past thirty years? The approach of every government has reflected the shifting political landscapes and challenging humanitarian issues that have continually shaped Australia's response to those seeking refuge. 

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  • ENVIRONMENT

    Farmers and Traditional Owners decry SA nuclear vote

    • Michele Madigan
    • 20 November 2019
    15 Comments

    The Minister was delighted to announce that in Kimba the long awaited vote to host a permanent facility for national low level radiactive waste and storage for intermediate level radioactive waste had concluded. The result: 61.17 per cent voted in favour. Unsurprisingly, he failed to mention that voting rights in the poll were severely restricted.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    A terrifying new arms race

    • Todor Shindarov
    • 07 August 2017
    4 Comments

    Today’s highly technological era amazes us with possibilities for human growth and innovation, but in our amazement we often forget to tackle various pitfalls. Arguably, the biggest risk is the emerging military technology, about which there are many unanswered questions. We are faced with many uncertainties: security risks due to loss of competitiveness, potential control over advanced weapons by terrorists and, most importantly, reduced comprehension by the wider society—let alone any participation in the decision making process, as the frenzied pace of technological development increases.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Morrison's law of intended consequences

    • Tony Kevin
    • 21 February 2014
    36 Comments

    Manus is not subject to Australian law and public accountability safeguards, or only very imperfectly. Cover-up of atrocity is a lot easier in Manus than it would be in an Australian detention centre. And this of course is what was intended. Manus is part of the asylum-seeker deterrent system. The fear of death at sea, and the fear of death by security force brutalisation at Manus, are intended to deter asylum-seeker voyages. To stop the boats.

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  • EDUCATION

    Equipping students for moral argument

    • Frank Brennan
    • 30 September 2013

    Full text from Frank Brennan's lecture 'Law teachers as gatekeepers of law, public morality and human rights: Equipping our students for moral argument in a pluralistic legal environment' at the Australian Law Teachers Association Annual Conference 2013.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Election day reflections on religion in the public square

    • Frank Brennan
    • 07 September 2013
    12 Comments

    How clever of you to choose the day of the federal election for me to offer these reflections.  I come amongst you, not as a publisher or journalist but as an advocate in the public square animated by my own religious tradition as a Jesuit and Catholic priest engaged on human rights issues in a robustly pluralistic democratic society.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Crying chairs' cold comfort for refugees

    • Lyn Bender
    • 24 July 2013
    5 Comments

    I watched the 'crying chairs' from my psychology clinic disappear into the truck. Many people over the years had nestled in one of those voluminous chairs and wept, whispered, or shouted their rage, sorrow and despair. Now it was time to leave my counselling office so I surrendered my sturdy armchairs for a greater good.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Groundhog Day for refugees

    • 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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  • AUSTRALIA

    Breaking the 'boat people' deadlock

    • Lyn Bender
    • 30 January 2012
    37 Comments

    In his book They Thought They Were Free, Milton Mayor writes of 'the slow lobster boil of erosion of freedom' in Nazi Germany. As a daughter of Jewish refugees I know what this entails. The same process confronts asylum seekers today if we do not begin from a presumption of rights and humanity. 

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Best of 2011: Revelations of a detention centre spy

    • Lyn Bender
    • 10 January 2012
    9 Comments

    Employed at the centre as a psychologist, I witnessed riots, hunger strikes, attempted suicides and severe depression. I realised I had a profound ethical dilemma: in being compliant to the administration, I was unable to ensure my duty of care towards these people. So I became a mole. Published 27 September 2011

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Revelations of a detention centre spy

    • Lyn Bender
    • 28 September 2011
    12 Comments

    Employed at the centre as a psychologist, I witnessed riots, hunger strikes, attempted suicides and severe depression. I realised I had a profound ethical dilemma: in being compliant to the administration, I was unable to ensure my duty of care towards these people. So I became a mole.

    READ MORE