A musician living in Wal Wal, population 27, in the Wimmera, Victoria is offering hope to a displaced family of six from Afghanistan.
Base costs. Editorial in The Saturday Paper
The numbers are these: Australia will spend $485 million this year running its prison camp on Nauru. It will do this to maroon 22 refugees, about half as many people as there are seats on a school bus. Divided, it costs $22 million per person, per year to continue this gruesome charade.
It is not hard to imagine how many people could be helped with this same money, how many thousands of refugees could be shown compassion. Instead Australia has chosen the ugly expensiveness of torture.
Nauru offshore processing to cost Australian taxpayers $485m despite only 22 asylum seekers remaining. By Paul Karp and Tory Shepherd, The Guardian
Department of Home Affairs officials revealed the new figures at a Senate estimates hearing on Monday evening, but disputed suggestions from the Greens this amounted to a cost of $22m a person.
Officials expect that in the next year no refugees and asylum seekers will remain on Nauru, but maintaining facilities for offshore processing will continue to cost at least $350m a year as a “contingency” to send people in the event of future boat arrivals.
Behrouz Boochani, the refugee writer who exposed the cruelty of Australia’s island jail. By Caitlin Cassidy and Marni Cordell, The Guardian
One inmate became the voice of the men locked up on Manus. Behrouz Boochani and Ben Doherty look back at the risks he took to get this story to the world.
Grandmothers for Refugees NSW website archived from today
Click on link below to access Grandmothers for Refugees NSW archived website.
How a leaked USB stick became the Nauru files – a tale of brutality and despair told in 160,000 words. By Caitlin Cassidy and Marni Cordell, The Guardian
It was March 2016 and Paul Farrell, then a reporter at Guardian Australia, had agreed to meet an anonymous source.
He had been reporting on immigration for several years but still, when he was slipped a USB stick across the table and told, “I think it might be of interest to you,” he had no idea what to expect.
“I booted it up and what flashed on to the screen was most comprehensive archive I’d ever seen of what was happening at the Nauru [immigration detention] facility at the time,” he says.
'Grave fears': Albanese government faces legal action over Australians detained in Syria. By Jessica Bahr, SBS News
International aid organisation Save the Children is acting as a litigation guardian for Australians detained in Syria, describing the camps as the "worst place in the world to be a child".
Legal action has been launched against the federal government in a "last resort" effort to repatriate Australian women and children trapped in Syrian detention camps.
Mat Tinkler, CEO of international aid organisation Save the Children, said the legal proceedings would seek to repatriate around 40 children and their mothers from Syrian camps to Australia.
Immigration detention and human rights, Australian Human Rights Commission
As of 31 January 2023, there were 1061 people in immigration detention facilities. A further 516 people, 146 of whom are children, were living in the community after being approved for residence determination. 10, 728 Unauthorised Maritime Arrivals, 1334 of whom are children, were living in the community after being granted a Bridging Visa E.
Immigration detention and human rights, Australian Human Rights Commission
Clare O'Neil MP Addresses the National Press Club of Australia (27/4/2023) - video
Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil outlines the way forward for a once-in-a-generation reform of the migration system.
Clare O'Neil MP Addresses the National Press Club of Australia (27/4/2023) - video
Journey to Freedom : Jaivet Ealom (Video 7:38 mins)
Fourth-year University of Toronto student Jaivet Ealom fled persecution as a Rohingya in Myanmar, only to be held in Australian immigration detention centre for more than three years. Here, he recounts his daring escape.
UN refugee chief condemns Australia’s offshore detention regime and slogans like ‘stop the boats’, The Guardian by Ben Doherty
Speaking at the University of Melbourne’s Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness, Grandi said: “Far too often, rich countries have a myopic approach to global forced displacement and population movements, focusing overwhelmingly on border controls.”
Grandi said governments rarely responded strategically to the arrival of significant numbers of people forced to move.
“They are seen as either someone else’s problem, or something unmanageable to deal with when it reaches domestic borders or shores. The reality is that simple slogans like ‘stop the boats’ are no more effective a solution to this challenge than those that say ‘let them all in’.”
How to go about achieving better immigration policy and decision-making By Peter Hughes, Pearls & Irritations
The construction of the Department of Immigration and Border protection (2014-2017) and Department of Home Affairs (2017-) and Australian Border Force (2015) was based on the explicit message that immigration was no longer a nation-building operation, but a junior part of a threat mitigation organisation. The cult of the border and Operation Sovereign Borders ruled supreme. There was more talk about the importance of guns for Australian Border Force members than client service.
Thousands of Australian visa decisions may be affected by high court ruling, experts warn. By Paul Karp, The Guardian
A majority of judges of the high court found that home affairs department decisions in line with the 2016 instruction not to send cases to the minister unless they met subjective criteria were not consistent with the Migration Act, which gives the power to intervene to the minister “personally”.
Political prisoners': Palm Sunday protesters demand visas for refugees stuck in limbo, SBS Source: AAP
Protesters in Sydney, Canberra and Melbourne held placards reading, "Permanent visas for all" and "10 years too long", and accusing the government of "using refugees as political prisoners".
Rallies were also planned for other capitals and major regional centres.
We provided health care for children in immigration detention. This is what we found, The Conversation
While the last children were released from locked detention at the end of 2018, Australian law and policy still mandate detention for children arriving without visas. While the government refers to “held” or “locked” “detention”, to be plain, these children were imprisoned for seeking asylum.
We have just published a study describing the health of asylum-seeker children who experienced detention attending our Refugee Health Clinic over the past ten years.
Our team has been seeing refugee children for more than 20 years. We have extensive experience in refugee health, forensic medicine and child development, but nothing prepared us for the complexity of looking after these children.
Female judges in Afghanistan seek resettlement, Patricia Karvelas & Dr Elizabeth Biok, ABC RN Breakfast
After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021, hundreds of men were released from prison
Many had been sentenced by women judges, who worried about their safety applied for resettlement overseas. A number of women and their families have made it to Australia but many are still waiting to hear if they will be allowed to come here.
Guest:Dr Elizabeth Biok, Secretary General, International Commission of Jurists - Australia
Almost 90% of children brought from Nauru suffered physical health problem – study, by Ben Doherty, The Guardian
Nearly nine in 10 children brought from offshore processing on Nauru to Australia were suffering physical health conditions, including malnutrition and dental disease, while almost 80% reported one or more mental health symptoms, new research has revealed.
Nearly half – 45% – had reported suicidal ideation, a suicide attempt, or self-harm.
It’s time Labor ended cruel refugee visa ‘limbo’, By Prof John Minns, City News Canberra
“I didn’t think anything could be worse than the five long years on Nauru, but honestly, the life in Australia where we have no hope of a future is killing us, slowly,” a refugee mother tells John Minns.
This time last year, Sahar Ghasemi was a happy young woman. Like thousands of others around Australia she was starting university.
She had won a scholarship to pay her fees for an arts/law degree. Seven weeks into her first semester, she turned 18. Then she was disenrolled – her visa doesn’t allow her to study in Australia after that age.
It’s time Labor ended cruel refugee visa ‘limbo’, By Prof John Minns, City News Canberra
‘Stop the boats’: Sunak’s anti-asylum slogan echoes Australia’s harsh policy. By Ben Doherty, The Guardian
“Stop the boats.” The white-on-red slogan on Rishi Sunak’s podium on Tuesday was – word for word – the slogan used by Tony Abbott to win the Australian prime ministership a decade ago.
To Australian audiences, so much of the rhetoric emerging from the UK over its small boats policy is reminiscent of two decades of a toxic domestic debate.
Going home to Biloela - The Saturday Paper. By Rebekah Holt
“Girls understand watching the TV,” Priya says. “Girls understand the green and blue and red. Kopika understand red colour is a win, I go back to Biloela.”