Keywords: Immigration Detention
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
-
AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 09 December 2014
27 Comments
What a dreadful year it has been for parliamentary democracy. Speaker Bronwyn Bishop has taken pride in the number of members she has ejected. Senator David Leyonhjelm has introduced his same sex marriage bill in an orderly fashion, but the decision will rest with the Abbott Government, which won't want to to hand the bouquet for breaking the logjam to Leyonhjelm. To get arrangements for the bearing and nurturing of children right, we need our parliament to be a more considered and dignified place than a battlefield.
READ MORE 
-
AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 08 December 2014
22 Comments
It is possible to understand why Senators Xenophon and Muir supported the bad law that reintroduces temporary protection visas. They saw it as a small improvement now for people in desperate circumstances, and that is true. The real culprit is the irrational and punitive policy pursued by the Government.
READ MORE
-
INTERNATIONAL
- Nikolas Feith Tan
- 03 December 2014
9 Comments
Israel is one of the world's developed countries that is attempting to deter asylum seekers from accessing the protection that international refugee law entitles them to. Yet Israel is a state with refugeehood in its roots. Israeli refugee advocates have encouraged a change of policy on the basis of Jewish exile in Egypt as recorded in the Torah.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 24 November 2014
20 Comments
I recently received a letter for Ali in which he was referred to only by his boat number and the term 'illegal maritime arrival (IMA)'. He was worn down by the long process of winning his case and being accepted as a refugee. His self-esteem was destroyed by a long period in immigration detention. His identity is now also gone.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 29 October 2014
7 Comments
Former Immigration Minister Senator Chris Evans once expressed concern about how much personal power was vested in his position when making decisions about particular cases. The current Minister, on the other hand, is trying to increase the number of such powers, and is much more likely to use the ministerial trump card to avoid judicial scrutiny. In a parliamentary system that relies on the checks and balances between the Parliament, Executive and Judiciary, one arm of government should not be able to overrule another.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Bruce Pennay
- 25 September 2014
4 Comments
Harry Paech's Great War shows why Australians have been reluctant to give government the authority to arrest on suspicion, even in times of peril. In the midst of talk in 1914 of atrocities committed by the fiendish Huns against Belgian nuns and babies, the president of Hume Shire in southern NSW was determined to show that the district's German settlers were as patriotic as any Australians.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 22 September 2014
5 Comments
Considering my indebtedness to the two Aborigines who met [my family's ship arriving in Hervey Bay from Ireland] 151 years ago, I owe it to all my fellow Australians to agitate these issues of law, morality and politics here in Ireland so that back in Australia, the homeland which, in my religious tradition, was known as the Great South Land of the Holy Spirit.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Kerry Murphy
- 12 September 2014
12 Comments
There may not be simple solutions to complex issues such as how to reduce the risk of travel by boat without punishing the refugees. However, the High Court's latest decision reminds us there are people involved and they are not ‘outlaws’.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 08 September 2014
28 Comments
From the perspective of Australian policy, both Hamid Kehazaei's death and the loss of the Red Cross contract to support asylum seekers give value for money. When we are dealing with people, however, values other than economic efficiency may come to mind.
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Michael Mullins
- 25 August 2014
8 Comments
Child abuse is occurring within the Federal Government's immigration detention regime at the same time as the government sponsored Child Abuse Royal Commission is seeking to achieve justice for victims of past abuses in churches and institutions. After visiting Christmas Island, paediatrician Elizabeth Elliott said that 'when it comes to children in need, most Australians feel compassion' but compassion had 'gone missing'. What is behind our selective compassion?
READ MORE
-
AUSTRALIA
- Frank Brennan
- 15 August 2014
30 Comments
We Australians confront none of the complexities of sharing a land border with a poor neighbour. Most Americans, I find, consider our policy morally repulsive and just stupid. They cannot believe that we routinely lock up children, that we recently held 157 people on a ship in the Indian Ocean for almost a month, and that we are now going to send up to 1000 asylum seekers to Cambodia.
READ MORE
-
MARGARET DOOLEY AWARD
- James O'Brien
- 13 August 2014
18 Comments
Religious leaders used methods of non-violent protest to respond to the Federal Government's 'No Way' campaign that aimed to discourage Afghan asylum seekers. Calling their movement 'Love Makes a Way', their strategy started to take shape: sit-ins in the electorate offices of federal parliamentarians, asking that justice may 'roll down like waters'. Nonviolent direct action changes hearts.
READ MORE