The immigration minister, Andrew Giles, has accused the Morrison government of having “sat” on an explosive review of immigration detention and doing “very limited work” on alternatives, despite the review’s conclusion that detention was “failing”.
But advocates have responded to the report by the former secretary of the attorney general’s department Robert Cornall by accusing Labor of not having done enough to cut the time spent in detention.
As he neared the end of his 1,000-kilometre walk to Sydney to raise awareness for thousands of families living in limbo as they seek permanent residency, asylum seeker Neil Para and his family have been granted theirs.
The question of how to address the issue of Australian-Chinese communities is an integral component of the multicultural framework review. A number of factors – a large number of recent arrivals from the PRC, a fast-changing geopolitical dynamics featuring growing tension and hostility between the US and China, and Australia’s increasing tendency in its foreign policy to imagine China as our biggest military threat – come to bear on the current review of the multicultural framework. Much work – overall reconceptualisation, governing structure, a rethinking of policy, and the design of practical strategies – remains to be done. The government will benefit enormously by actively seeking the views of scholars, multicultural agencies and community stakeholders in updating its framework.
The report by the former secretary of the attorney general’s department, Robert Cornall, was completed in March 2020, while Dutton was still minister, and sent to the home affairs secretary, Michael Pezzullo, and Australian Border Force commissioner, Michael Outram, who both still serve in those roles.
The report found that “the immigration detention system as a whole is failing” to meet two “key principles”: to resolve people’s immigration status as quickly as possible and manage them in the community unless they pose a risk to others.
Cornall said the “generally accepted view is that long term immigration detention is damaging to the detainees’ mental health”, meaning that health services provided in detention “may be treating the symptom and not the cause”.
Stateless
A funding arrangement means that Netflix ends up taking the ABC’s scripted shows to the world, while providing a valuable second chance locally. It means you can rediscover this coruscating 2020 drama about Australia’s refugee detention regime, with co-creator Cate Blanchett in a supporting role. The multiple storylines deliver startling detail and unadorned empathy.
STATELESS: The 20 best shows to stream on Netflix right now. Craig Mathieson, The Age
Ned Kelly Emeralds, an Iranian man who has been detained for over a decade while seeking asylum, has won his appeal in the High Court of Australia, leaving open the possibility that courts could end indefinite detention by making ‘home detention’ orders. Despite this victory however, Ned’s detention continues – now in its eleventh year.
Despite High Court win for Ned Kelly Emeralds, he remains detained - Human Rights Law Centre
Refugees have certain rights under international law, but whether they can enjoy them depends on the asylum system they encounter. Too often, national systems are failing. They are inefficient for governments, which waste resources without resolving asylum claims, and they are ineffective for refugees, who are left without rights or protection.
That’s where a vital, emerging area of policy and practice comes into play: asylum capacity development. It’s about strengthening the legal, institutional and social arrangements that are put in place to meet the needs of refugees.
A new Kaldor Centre Policy Brief sheds light on what asylum capacity development is, how it should be understood and put into practice, and spells out the best-practice standards for measuring success.
PEOPLE IN ONSHORE AND OFFSHORE DETENTION
REFUGEES & PEOPLE SEEKING ASYLUM IN THE AUSTRALIAN COMMUNITY
BOAT TURNBACKS BY AUSTRALIA
GLOBAL STATISTICS
Migrants on work sponsorships cannot apply for permanent residence without their employer, which experts say leaves room for exploitation.
More than 180 human rights and legal experts, social justice organisations and First Nations community groups have signed the open letter below condemning the Queensland Government for overriding the state’s Human Rights Act to lock children in the state’s police watch houses indefinitely.
Mr Singh left Sydney on August 1 on a 25,000-kilometre road trip around Australia to promote the Indigenous Voice to Parliament to religious, multicultural and regional communities.
Why have former Australian government officials pushed so hard to promote their asylum policies abroad? Perhaps it is an attempt to rewrite history, casting offshore processing as something other than the failure it was, and seeking to validate Australia’s own unlawful approach.
How Australia shaped Britain’s refugee policy. By Madeline Gleeson, The Saturday Paper,
The younger a child is slapped with a probation order or locked up for committing a crime, the more likely they are to return behind bars.
So when Queensland brought in laws allowing kids as young as 10 to be held in police watch houses, human rights groups were appalled.
Indigenous advocates were also alarmed given the over-representation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children in the youth justice system.
Does putting children in detention prevent or produce crime? AAP, SBS News
Some Pacific nations — including Vanuatu, Tonga and Samoa – have become increasingly anxious that their own workforces are being depleted by the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme, and are reviewing their rules allowing workers to travel to Australia.
Reports about China’s ‘influence’ made public more suspicious of Chinese-Australian communities, according to 70% of respondents to UTS survey.
The survey also sought to test feelings of inclusion by asking participants: “As a first-generation migrant, do you think the mainstream Australian community considers you to be an equal member of that community?”
Despite broader concerns about media coverage, the results showed 17% of respondents answered that they were “always” viewed as equal members of the community, 36% believed that was the case “often”, and 31% replied “sometimes”. On the other hand, 12% responded “rarely” and 5% “very rarely”.
A review of migration policy is underway and will include "critical policy shifts", a spokesperson told the ABC. The federal government plans to release its new Migration Strategy later this year. Meanwhile….
Over the next 40 years, the number of Australians aged 65 and over will more than double.
That's the forecast from the government's Intergenerational Report. It means a significant proportion of Australians will age out of the workforce in the coming years.
Economists and groups like the Business Council of Australia are among those urging the government to look to migration to fill the vacancies those retirements will create.
Experts say migration key to Australia's growth as population ages. SBS News
Tiff is packing donated clothing at a not-for-profit in Melbourne that supports refugees and asylum seekers.
The service is based in the city’s west, and has helped Tiff and thousands like him through extreme hardship during the pandemic and the current cost of living crisis.
“Without services like West Welcome Wagon, I would not be here. I would not have put food on my table, or have clothing, a bed to sleep on. Maybe I would be sleeping on the street.”
Médecins Sans Frontières Australia's Jennifer Tierney shares her experience of visiting a Rohingya refugee camp.
VIDEO: UN sounds alarm on declining food assistance for Rohingya refugees. ABC News
Ziersch also noted that racial bias could stem from how refugees are talked about by media and politicians.
"Some of the negative discourse around asylum seekers and refugees plays into it (the selection process) where landlords think people are going to be problematic because of their refugee background," she said.
Refugees are finding it hard to rent a home in Australia for this 'pervasive' reason. SBS News
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