Refugee Action Coalition says refugees abandoned by Australia in Papua New Guinea are experiencing another round of distress.
Ian Rintoul says the 62 refugees left in Port Moresby have not been paid their food allowance on top of being threatened with eviction and no access to health services.
Mr Rintoul told RNZ Pacific's Lydia Lewis there is a real risk vulnerable refugees will be booted onto the street with no support.
On Manus Island asylum seekers were held for years in “Regional Processing Centres” but there was no processing, no information, just indefinite detention.
In 2019 all were moved from Manus Island to Port Moresby.
Ten years on, 80 refugees and people seeking asylum are still trapped in PNG.
The Albanese government came to power aspiring to a fair and humane refugee policy.
Grandmothers for Refugees are calling on the government to vigorously pursue its reform agenda, giving priority to bringing the remaining 80 refugees and asylum seekers from PNG to Australia while resettlement options are found.
TEN YEARS OF INHUMANITY, TEN YEARS TOO LONG. By Pauline Pannell, Fremantle Herald Interactive
Peter Dutton and Sussan Ley have doubled down on calls to cancel the visas of antisemitic protesters, despite the head of Australia’s spy agency warning that “inflamed language” may fuel community tensions.
The opposition leader and his deputy again called on the government to use character provisions in migration law to deport those responsible for antisemitic chants. Senior ministers urged the public to stay calm and let police do their work, and noted there was no evidence that the protesters making antisemitic comments were temporary residents.
Shah Nawaz Hussain was just 19 when he fled his home in Pakistan to Indonesia, to board a boat destined for Christmas Island.
He could have had no idea that what would follow would be a decade of living in Papua New Guinea, including years of detention on Manus Island under Australia's "PNG Solution".
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 Political Correspondent David Crowe writes on the toxic nature of the debate with Peter Dutton already trying to deflect blame by claiming that Labor in Government has “allowed 105,000 asylum seekers into our country over the last 15 months”.
Albanese government addresses coalition-era asylum seekers surge. By Abul Rizvi, P&I
A lone mother living in hiding with her five children under the Taliban regime in Afghanistan has been counting the days for nearly two years, waiting to reunite with her husband in Brisbane as logistical barriers and red tape keep many families torn apart.
Shakila Sahak told the ABC from Kabul she was not aware of this week's announcement that the Australian government would spend at least $160 million to overhaul the asylum application processing mechanism.
The living conditions of these refugees highlights the need for a parliamentary inquiry and the St Vincent de Paul Society eagerly awaits notice of when the proceedings will commence. The sooner the better, we believe, and preferably before the end of this year.
Labor has appointed Dennis Richardson, a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Defence, to investigate. We suggest Mr Richardson's inquiry should be extended to include current contracts in PNG as well as shining a light on the previous government's murky deal to "resettle" refugees.
Australia's inhumane treatment of refugees needs urgent attention. By Mark Gaetani, Canberra Times
These reforms represent a significant departure from Australia’s previous attempts to increase the efficiency of Australia’s asylum processes. Over the past three decades, successive governments have instead limited the rights of people seeking asylum – including by cutting funding for legal support.
Pakistan’s government has announced that all undocumented migrants and refugees must leave Pakistan by the beginning of next month, either voluntarily or by force. Hundreds of thousands of them are Afghans.
Why is Pakistan planning to deport undocumented Afghans? By Abid Hussain, Aljazeera
Refugees exiled to Papua New Guinea a decade ago will be sent back to Australia if the Australian government fails to continue funding PNG’s humanitarian program, Port Moresby’s most senior migration official has warned.
PNG’s chief migration officer, Stanis Hulahau, said the refugees had been abandoned by Australia and the PNG businesses that had been housing and caring for the men were owed tens of millions of dollars.
“If Australia wants the refugees to continue to remain in Papua New Guinea then they have to fund the program, or we will shut the program and send the refugees back to Australia,” Hulahau said.
Sounds progressive, right? It is, except there’s a pretty big catch. Being on this panel is an unpaid position. An unpaid position offered to some of Australia’s most vulnerable and marginalised. This is consistent with advisory panel models in other countries.
Asking for their time and expertise without so much as a drop of reimbursement in return.
Labor will need to show it has the migration system under control – more on that below – but the debate has to start with facts, not falsehoods. The truth is that the strain on the system grew worse when Dutton was immigration and border protection minister from December 2014 to August 2018 and minister for home affairs from December 2017 to March 2021.
The asylum seeker failure Peter Dutton cannot deny. By David Crowe, SMH
The commonwealth this week agreed to settle a class action brought by the Indonesians, some who were as young as 12 when they were locked up in adult prisons and prosecuted in adult courts as people smugglers between 2010 and 2012 during the highly charged political climate around border protection.
In January Guardian Australia reported that the Refugee Council was concerned that a massive backlog for processing and review of asylum claims was creating an incentive for unmeritorious applications.
The government claims it can process new claims in as fast as seven weeks for genuine refugees, and that “real-time” processing starting with the latest applications will be fairer without harming those already in the queue.
A group of asylum seekers who attempted to arrive in Australia by boat has been sent to Nauru just months after the last people were removed from immigration detention on the Pacific nation.
Guardian Australia understands that a group of asylum seekers was intercepted in September and taken to Nauru. Staff of International Health and Medical Services have been asked to work on Nauru to provide health services to the cohort, believed to number 11.
In June Guardian Australia revealed that the last of the detainees on Nauru were being moved off, although that detention centre will be kept open at a cost of $350m a year.
According to the most recent statistics for July, released in September, there were still 37 detainees on Christmas Island’s north-west point immigration detention centre.
But an Australian Border Force spokesperson said it “can confirm that the final transfer of immigration detainees from Christmas Island to the Australian mainland has occurred”.
For the last seven years, Hussaini has been a volunteer with the local SES station.
"This is a second family," he tells SBS News.
"With this limbo life I’ve been through for 11 years, waiting to get a piece of paper, a permanent visa, if I didn’t have the SES around me, I might not be here right now and standing here talking to you."
When floods devastated the regionlast year, Hussaini was on hand for months, working through Christmas and New Year's Eve to not only provide flood assistance but also information to the local ref ugee community.
It was hard for Priya to stay positive after multiple deportation attempts. In detention, her children, Kopika and Tharnicaa, faced a litany of health concerns, including rotting teeth, language delays and behavioural issues.
Priya has written her full story with the journalist Rebekah Holt in a new book, Home to Biloela: The Story of the Tamil Family that Captured our Hearts.
“When I was writing this book, the main challenge was going through the painful memories. Despite this, I wanted to tell the struggles refugees go through, and that’s what motivated me to keep going,” Priya says.
“The party is over: the rorts and loopholes that have plagued this system will be shut down,” Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil said.
“This is the first of many announcements this week to restore integrity to international education and to our migration system.”
‘Party’s over for rorters’: Government cracks down on visa scams. By Matthew Knott, SMH
The Australian Department of Immigration has kept at least 10,000 people in uncertainty since 2013. Sovereign Borders policy was incubated even earlier. Refugees say that they found the culture of the Department “unhelpful”. Given the values displayed in actions and texts of suspended long-term General-Secretary of Home Affairs, Michael Pezzullo, this will come as little surprise. He was right-hand enabler of right-wing Immigration Ministers from 2014 and in Border Control before that.
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