Immigration, refugees
Well, not so if they are Palestinian children that Israelis keep killing time and time again. It is part of what Israelis calls ‘mowing the grass’. I wrote the following nine years ago. At last counting there were 1,230 Palestinians killed in Gaza as a result of 3,000 or more air and artillery strikes. 56 Continue reading »
While there is much hysteria from Peter Dutton and the Murdoch press associated with the 12 asylum seekers who recently arrived by boat (it’s a catastrophe apparently), there was less excitement about a new post-pandemic monthly record for primary asylum applications set in October at 2,322. That is now approaching the monthly record of over Continue reading »
The use of immigration detention in Australia has expanded well beyond its original intended purpose. It has become a political tool, a convenient proxy for dealing with issues that should be dealt with in other parts of government and a vehicle for delivery of immense cruelty. There was a certain inevitability that the High Court Continue reading »
It is, alas, far too early to proclaim the end of Australia’s barbarous and inhumane refugee management system. But a series of recent High Court decisions cutting back, on constitutional grounds, the arbitrary powers of immigration ministers and bureaucrats may well be later seen as the moment that the tide turned on a nightmare that Continue reading »
Primary level asylum applications fell marginally in September 2023 to 2,005 from a post-pandemic peak of 2,164 in August 2023. With the Government having announced a $160 million package to get the asylum system back under some control, can we now expect primary level asylum applications to have peaked? After the labour trafficking scam abusing Continue reading »
Mandatory immigration detention is a policy that has caused indiscriminate harm, including death, and permanent incapacity. It has been rightly described as our national shame. On Wednesday November 8, the High Court of Australia found indefinite immigration detention constitutes punishment, making the relevant legislation unconstitutional. Led by Chief Justice Gageler, with freshly invested Justice Beech Continue reading »
After around eight years of policy paralysis and the biggest labour trafficking scam abusing the asylum system in our history, a scam that was largely neglected by Home Affairs Minister Dutton and his Secretary Mike Pezzullo, the Albanese Government has announced a $160 million package to “restore integrity to Australia’s refugee protection system”. Nine’s Chief Continue reading »
Sounds great, right? Except that the job advertisement says the positions are unpaid. How can the government get things halfway right by recognising that lived experience matters enough to shape what they do, but not value it enough to pay it? The Australian Government posted a job advertisement online a few days ago looking for Continue reading »
What a fabulous trove The Pezzullo Papers are. The hundreds of recently disclosed text messages sent by the Home Affairs Secretary Mr Michael Pezzullo to a person described as a “Liberal Party powerbroker” are morbidly fascinating. Poor Pezzullo – in a few days he attracted as much public commentary, most of it unflattering, as platoons Continue reading »