“I found my way through my writing again,” says Boochani. “Writing not as a place where you escape to or rely on, but writing as a life.” He adds: “Also through writing, I met people.”
Behrouz Boochani: ‘I was not a victim. I was a fighter’. By Charlotte Graham-McLay, The Guardian
Attorney general applies to have case heard by high court to end legal uncertainty on detainees who refuse to cooperate on deportation.
Many of the remainder have been kept in detention because the government’s legal advice states the NZYQ decision does not require their release if deportation is being frustrated by a lack of cooperation, such as refusing to meet government officials from their country of origin or obtaining a travel document.
Griffith University criminologist Lorena Rivas, who authored the study, said the key factor influencing women's experience of violent victimisation is their long-term detention.
The more time they spent in custody, the more likely they were to have been victims of abuse, assault and other forms of violence.
Violence against women held in immigration detention rife, new research shows. SBS, AAP
The revelation about Dutton’s decision in February 2018, when he was home affairs minister, is contained in documents that were produced to a Senate inquiry that investigated his personal intervention in favour of two au pairs.
Dutton granted a visitor visa to the person two days after his office requested a submission, despite there being no evidence of a required change in circumstances since earlier refusals and departmental concerns about the person’s claim to be married to an Australian.
Peter Dutton intervened to allow criminal to extend stay in Australia. By Paul Karp, The Guardian
…But Monday’s revelations prompted opposition home affairs spokesman James Paterson to accuse the government of being remarkably slow to legislate the regime “given the department says it was preparing as early as September to do so”.
Ministers briefed on lock-up laws a month before High Court ruling. By Angus Thompson, SMH
Documents tabled in parliament on Monday show that when then-minister Peter Dutton was sent a briefing note about the audit, he simply indicated he had “noted” the report without having a discussion about it with his department.
For as long as the camps were running, nothing else mattered. Regimes were propped up. Corrupt businessmen were paid. The rule of law was debased. Countries were left to teeter into bankruptcy.
This was Australia’s calculation: whatever happens in Papua New Guinea or Nauru is fine, so long as they continue to keep our secrets, so long as they agree to keep storing our refugees.
Both countries became less democratic in the time they ran Australia’s detention centres. Both saw corruption flourish and mismanagement go unchecked. Australia knew this and did nothing. In some cases, the government encouraged it.
It is in this context that Papua New Guinea’s prime minister, James Marape, addressed Australia’s parliament this week. He is the first Pacific leader to do so.
“These have all been our challenges, but as I visit you today, I ask you – do not give up on Papua New Guinea,” he said.
Much of the questionable contracting happened when now Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was responsible for the Department of Home Affairs, although Richardson laid blame with senior public servants and said he found no evidence of ministerial involvement in suspect contracting.
Richardson said blame for the failures he uncovered lay with “senior people within Home Affairs” who were “responsible [for ensuring] proper communication across the department”.
In December, an impressive young Papua New Guinean named Jason Siwat, the director of the refugee program for the Catholic Bishops Conference of PNG and the Solomon Islands, travelled to Canberra bearing two important documents.
The first was a letter from the bishops to Home Affairs Minister Clare O’Neil asking the government to urgently bring to Australia a group of refugees, now 57 following some acceptances by New Zealand, who been taken to the capital of Port Moresby from the Australian-run Manus Island detention facility in late 2021……………………………………
………..The second document Mr Siwat carried was a survey of the living conditions of several hundred refugees and asylum seekers from the Indonesian province of West Papua, formerly Irian Jaya.
Pope Francis would find PNG refugee conditions an eye-opener. By Mark Gaetani, P&I
Amnesty International Australia calls on the Australian government to use Prime Minister James Marape’s visit to Canberra to offer repatriation to the 55 remaining men who sought asylum in Australia, were then detained on Manus Island as part of Australia’s offshore detention regime and now remain in Papua New Guinea.
In a report released on Wednesday, the government watchdog lambasted the government agencies for having policies and procedures that contained “little acknowledgment” of the effect each day spent detained can have on a person’s physical and mental health.
At each Global Refugee Forum (GRF), governments, civil society organisations and others are invited to make pledges on additional concrete actions they will take over the coming four years to support refugee self-reliance, ease pressure on host countries and contribute to durable solutions.
The Australian Government has made 23 pledges at the 2023 Global Refugee Forum on matters relating to resettlement, community sponsorship, refugee labour mobility, education, mental health, immigration detention, refugee participation, gender, refugee travel documents, statelessness, international cooperation, peacebuilding, the needs of Rohingya refugees and displacement in and from Afghanistan and Sudan.
AUSTRALIAN GOVERNMENT PLEDGES AT THE 2023 GLOBAL REFUGEE FORUM - Refugee Council of Australia
UNICEF's executive director Catherine Russell says she understands the concerns of donor countries including Australia who have suspended aid to the UN's refugee agency in Gaza, following allegations of staff involvement in the October 7 terrorist attacks in Israel.
People released from immigration detention in the wake of a High Court ruling were made to wear ankle monitoring devices, but some have been removed after legal challenges.
In July last year, the federal government appointed Dennis Richardson, a former secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Department of Defence, to undertake a review of procurement for offshore processing in the Department of Home Affairs. That followed revelations the former government continued to pay millions of taxpayer dollars to a businessman convicted of corruption to provide offshore processing services on Nauru, even after he had pleaded guilty to bribing Nauruan government officials.
Despite its $160 million package to better manage asylum seekers, time is running out for the Albanese Government to get on top of the asylum seeker issue. The risk of this being used by Peter Dutton in the lead up to the 2025 Election as a political wedge, despite Dutton’s role in originally allowing the problem to boom, remains high.
Time running out for Albanese Government to fix asylum system. By Abul Rizvi, P &I
Home Affairs assistant secretary Derek Elias’ claims that taxpayer funds may have been spent on services that were never delivered and on questionable tasks – such as training the Nauruan president’s guard dog and $6 million for golf umbrellas – have emerged with the Albanese government yet to release what is expected to be a damning report on offshore processing by former spy chief Dennis Richardson.
The estimate of 27 million is based on the nation's population on 30 June 2023, which was 26,638,544 people, and projected growth that includes a birth every one minute and 42 seconds.
It also assumes that a person dies every two minutes and 52 seconds and a migrant arrives to live in Australia every 45 seconds. These factors contributed to an overall total population increase of one person every 50 seconds.
Australia's population has hit 27 million. How did we get here? AAP, SBS
The 3.5-metre high puppet highlights the plight of millions of refugees, especially displaced children fleeing war zones.
"Simone" arrived on a remote island to help asylum seekers.
But she witnessed something there that convinced her to leak over 2000 documents.
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