Media Release
Wednesday June 3, 2009 8:30am WST
For Immediate Release
No Embargoes

"The widely reported intent of the Federal Opposition to attempt to block and vote against the proposed abolishment of the "Debt for Detention" Bill is a disgrace in the context of one of the main recommendation to abolish the practice in the Joint Standing Committee on Migration's Immigration Detention Inquiry's First Report - recommendations that were not opposed by the Liberal Party members of the Inquiry," WA Human Rights group Project SafeCom said this morning.

A Fairfax report on this issue by Yuko Narushima, is here:
http://www.smh.com.au/national/coalition-wont-forgive-detainees-their-trespasses-20090602-bueq.html

"Sharman Stone and Malcolm Turnbull need to inform themselves of this report - and they need to realise that there is just one precedent of sending victims of forced incarceration an invoice for their detention: only during the Nazi regime in World War II, the German government had the audacity to send an invoice for the cost of holding Jews in concentration camps to their relatives, and this invoice included the cost of the gas pellets for the gas chambers."

"This fact was widely reported by human rights barrister Julian Burnside QC in his speeches delivered around the country in the years 2003-05," spokesman Jack H Smit said.

"Somehow, the opposition cannot do anything but act like a bunch of five-year olds, who in infantile ways waste their time and the time of Australia as a nation in Parliament by opposing for the sake of opposing. They need to get over their trauma of their absent guru John Howard, they need to grow up, and they need to start acting responsibly. The fact that they are ignoring all advice as spelled out by the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Migration, the fact that they are not even willing to look at the immeasurable suffering their former policies have created, the fact that they rather act like stubborn five-year olds, does not give them any credit and it is a blight on our nation's dignity."

Jack H Smit
Project SafeCom Inc.
[phone number posted]