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Keywords: Tampa

  • 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

    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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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    Empathy and irony in post-Howard Australia

    • Barry Gittins
    • 11 December 2012
    1 Comment

    Becalmed, bereft, besieged by race memory and hip pocket absorption, a nation of travellers and seafarers swallow leaders' sleight-of-hand, as they conjure pirates from refugees, demons from daughters, sons and lovers.

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  • ARTS AND CULTURE

    SBS goes celebrities over substance on asylum seekers

    • Tim Kroenert
    • 30 August 2012
    18 Comments

    They stop short of calling it Go Back to Where You Came From: Celebrity Edition, but it's hard to escape the view that SBS is going out of its way to top the ratings success of the original series. There's not much insight to be gained from watching Catherine Deveny and Peter Reith snipe at each other, fun as it may be.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    More asylum seeker blood on Australia's hands

    • Susan Metcalfe
    • 13 March 2012
    16 Comments

    Reports into the death of a 28-year-old Afghan asylum seeker inside an Indonesian detention centre reveal he was bound, burned with cigarettes and beaten to death with a blunt object. The Australian Government and the Coalition must accept some responsibility for the death.

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  • RELIGION

    Julia Gillard and Labor's moral decline

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 September 2011
    28 Comments

    Julia Gillard asked her advisers to design a system not for offshore processing but for offshore dumping. If John Howard had tried this in 2001, Labor would have gone ballistic. The advice of Gillard's intermittently trusted advisers is no longer worth the paper it is written on.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    In a spin over Malaysia solution reboot

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 13 September 2011
    19 Comments

    Yesterday the Government announced it will change the Migration Act to enable the Malaysia solution to go ahead. This latest action reinforces rhetoric about queues and people smugglers that obscures the real effects and motivations of current asylum seeker policy.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    The twin terrors of 2001

    • Michael Mullins
    • 05 September 2011
    8 Comments

    Before Tampa, refugees were regarded as a positive for Australia's economy and lifestyle. After Tampa they were a threat to our sovereignty that was somehow grafted on to the sense of public malaise prompted by the 9/11 attacks on the sovereignty of the United States.

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  • RELIGION

    High Court grounds Malaysia Solution

    • Frank Brennan
    • 01 September 2011
    39 Comments

    From now on, the High Court will apply a very fine tooth comb to any legislation allowing ministers to ship asylum seekers offshore.  Unless there were to be a bipartisan agreement in the Parliament or a government deal with the Greens, asylum seekers arriving by boat now need to be processed fairly, promptly, on our terms and on our turf.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Improving the refugee debate

    • Kerry Murphy
    • 24 August 2011
    4 Comments

    This week as we mark the 10th anniversary of Tampa, the High Court is hearing a legal challenge to the Malaysian solution and an inquiry into suicide and self-harm in detention is underway. Meanwhile a new report hopes to change the direction of the debate on refugees.

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  • RELIGION

    Malaysia solution pros and cons

    • Frank Brennan
    • 27 July 2011
    30 Comments

    The Malaysian solution is unprincipled, but it might just work — stopping the boats. If other countries try to replicate it, we will have to tear up the Refugee Convention and start again. And the plight of unaccompanied minors transported from our shores to Malaysia will be on our conscience. 

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