The PALM scheme, which aims to address labour shortages in rural and regional Australia, is often described by the Australian government as a "win-win" that fills jobs in industries such as agriculture, meat processing and aged care, and provides income for Pacific Island and Timorese workers to send home.
It is regarded as one of Australia's flagship development programs for the Pacific, but the scheme has come under significant criticism for putting its participants in danger of exploitation.
A group of around 900 asylum seekers who came to Australia by boat nearly 13 years ago remain stuck in visa limbo, fighting for permanency. Despite living and working in Australia for nearly a decade, they have no pathway to permanent residency thanks to a hardline 2013 immigration policy on boat arrivals. They are pleading with the Australian government to grant them leniency, as a last hope. A warning this story contains descriptions of self-harm that some may find distressing.
In Australia today, people seeking asylum are locked out of the mainstream systems most of us rely on in times of crisis. They cannot access Centrelink, public housing, or the NDIS. This is on top of fluctuating access to Medicare and restrictions on their right to work.
For those in crisis, one program – Status Resolution Support Services (SRSS) – was meant to be their only safety net.
But that lifeline has been quietly, steadily disappearing.
This Kurdish-controlled detention camp is for people with perceived or real links to IS group members.
It’s a place where Australian kids play on barren rocky ground, don’t receive proper education and are unable to leave.
"I'm trying as hard as I can to make things normal for them," Zahra told Dateline in 2024.
"But how hard can you try in a place like this?"
Originally from suburban Melbourne, the circumstances of how Zahra’s extended family came to be in Syria are contested. Some male members of her family reportedly joined the IS group, but Zahra maintains the women had no choice but to follow.
At the camp, she and her kids and 12 other Australian mothers sleep in tents next to an oilfield.
Opposition leader Sussan Ley says the Coalition's forthcoming immigration policy will include "issues around language and values", as her Nationals colleague signalled a values test for temporary visa holders from "challenged parts of the world" will ensure they live up to Australian values.
The Coalition is expected in coming weeks to reveal the broad outlines of a policy platform centred around deep cuts to migrant numbers.
But which numbers are they talking about? Are they talking about net overseas migration? Or are they worried about the visa programs? If so, is it the permanent stream or the temporary?
Do they even know?
And is Labor really a party of “mass migration”?
In a debate that too often veers into emotive language and threatens to explode into outright racism, it’s worth getting the facts straight.
There is only so long that Burke can continue to avoid addressing the issues confronting the immigration system. Either the data, the politics or the law will force him to act on developing a long-term immigration plan.
Our politicians continue to fail us on immigration policy. By Abul Rizvi, Pearls & Irritations
Racism and economic insecurity can have a close relationship in this country. That is most apparent when Australia finds itself pulled into another so-called “debate” about migration. This is usually sparked by populism or attempts to blame complex issues like housing affordability on our annual migrant intake.
Anthony Albanese has defended the government’s new $2.5bn resettlement deal with Nauru as “entirely appropriate” after allegations against the country’s president of “money laundering and corruption” aired in parliament this week.
Transparency advocates have warned Australian taxpayers could be fuelling a “kleptocracy” on Nauru amid the allegations against some of its senior politicians, calling for a royal commission into Australia’s offshore processing regime.
Nauru may seek to return refugees from the NZYQ cohort to their home countries, the Nauruan president has said in a new translation of a February interview that has been the subject of months-long controversy.
David Adeang’s interview erroneously claimed those being sent to Nauru were not refugees and said Nauru may seek to return them to their countries of origin where possible.
Guardian Australia has confirmed members of the NZYQ group have had refugee protection claims recognised by Australia. It is understood some of the men already transferred to Nauru are among those who are refugees.
The Tampa affair and the events that followed changed Australian policy towards refugees forever. The iconic image of Australia’s most elite soldiers boarding a cargo ship to hold guns to the terrified people on board marks the inflection point in Australia’s immigration policy and indeed its soul.
We have never been the same nation since that week.
The shadow of the Tampa. By Julie Macken, Pearls & Irritations
Because the path forward is not rewriting the Refugee Convention, but rebuilding the trust, co-operation, and fairness on which it depends.
Building bridges requires more honest and effective communication – addressing the real challenges facing asylum systems and the refugee protection regime, while simultaneously countering exaggerations and misinformation.
It means focusing our collective effort on implementation rather than abandoning principles: developing fair and fast procedures, while fostering greater solidarity and responsibility sharing.
Twelve years on from its humble beginnings, The Bread & Butter Project is still transforming lives through the power of baking. Australia’s first social enterprise bakery has now trained 120 refugee bakers, opening doors to security, confidence and community.
Among them is Hellen, a mother of five who arrived in Australia seeking safety and a new start. After graduating from the program, she found work in the in-store bakery at Harris Farm in inner west Sydney, and today she’s sharing how the project helped her build her new life.
They are part of a bushwalk organised by the not-for-profit First Hike Project (FHP), which was founded in 2015 with the goal of helping welcome refugees to Australia through an experience in the bush.
FHP now operates in five capital cities and has taken hundreds of young migrants on their first bushwalks in Australia.
As thousands of international students prepare to take summer holiday jobs, Associate Professor Bassina Farbenblum, an expert on migrants' rights from the University of New South Wales, warns that more is needed to protect students from wage theft and abuse. She says Australia has a ‘pervasive problem’ with workplace exploitation of international students and those on temporary visas.
It was Fraser who was responsible for accepting many Indo-Chinese refugees after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Those refugees, supported by the generous Australian community response, were the decisive turning point in moving Australia away from White Australia…..
……The Fraser Government extended ethnic radio and established SBS television. Petro Georgiou and Brian Johns, who remained a senior officer in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet under Fraser, were the key drivers for SBS. Fraser got on well with Brian Johns. He saw him as professional and straight. Years later, Johns was to head SBS and the ABC.
Fraser encountered a lot of opposition from within the Liberal Party and the ABC and its supporters over the establishment of SBS, but he believed, correctly in my view, that the elitist ABC should have better served the non-English-speaking section of the Australian community. What was required was a specialist, more focused broadcasting service to meet the needs of those who were being neglected by mainstream media. The Broadcasting and Television Act of 1977 provided for the establishment of SBS to provide multicultural radio and TV services. SBS was an important achievement of the Fraser Government.
Working with PM Fraser - burying White Australia - Part 4. By John Menadue, P&I
A top secret translation of the Nauruan president’s public commentary on the NZYQ deal will remain suppressed for a decade after the Albanese government considered its release “inappropriate”.
The foreign minister, Penny Wong, explained this week that the translation notes had been “taken hastily” by an official who was not an accredited translator and were “for internal purposes only”.
“The translation of Nauruan to English is the source of much debate in Nauru. As the government of Nauru has not provided its own translation, nor endorsed the above-mentioned notes as a true and accurate reflection of the interview, it would not be appropriate to release them and doing so would damage our bilateral relationship.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has dismissed concerns a secret operation using fishing boats to remove people from Australia's northern waters is subsidising illegal fishers and people smugglers.
Last week an Australian Border Force (ABF) vessel docked in Broome carrying four modified fishing boats, giving locals a firsthand look at an ongoing Commonwealth program of buying fishing boats from across Australia.
Multiple sources say the boats are given to illegal fishers and asylum seekers found in Australia's waters as a safe way to return home.
Liberal MPs say skilled migration and international student numbers must be cut to reduce overseas arrivals into Australia, but have warned colleagues against demonising multicultural communities ahead of the next election.
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