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What's new and what's News?showing off all new pages we've added Hello, and welcome to a page which details new pages on our website, new projects, and new developments for Project SafeCom. For more frequent updates, you can subscribe to our highly acclaimed News and Updates here. All new pages are listed or linked below, also a selection of pages are brought together in The Project SafeCom Reading Room - listing everything that's longer, gutsier, more eloquent and - according to us - has higher content rating. They're divvied up into three main sections: Speeches and Articles relating to Australia's refugee detention debacle, and we've added a third section on 'Democracy and peace' within the context of what's now known as 'Howard's Australia'.
Archives3 March 2008: The Bill of Rights resources archive - Project SafeCom's archive of Bill of Rights resources: speeches, papers, presentations and books have seen the light of day right around Australia since the 2001 Tampa standoff and the anti-terrorism legislation introduced during the Howard years. This page brings together our resources on a Bill of Rights for Australia. 13 February 2008: Archive of Indigenous Issues pages - the number of pages dealing with some aspects of Australia's First Peoples has been growing steadily since we started our work in 2001, so it's appropriate we bring them all together on one page. Here's our archive of Indigenous issues. 18 October 2006: The Project SafeCom Blog Archives - This is the page that brings together all entries from our Blog. They are manually entered, so please accept apologies if sudden and new entries are not posted to this page immediately. All archived pages: 2001-2009Click on the blue button below to open all archives, and click it again to close and hide them New and recent pages20109 August 2010: MV Sun Sea: Tamils wandering the oceans - There's a boat wandering across the world's oceans, with reports that at the start of the Federal election campaign, Australian authorities boarded the ship and told the captain to move on and 'bugger off' - in the underlying spirit of "sorry folks, we have an election on". This page tells the story. 5 July 2010: Karzai Solution a dangerous Afghanistan Theatre - PM Julia Gillard may be announcing the Karzai Solution, where in a "pact" with Afghanistan she expects guarantees for safety for Hazaras from the Karzai government. If reports about this are accurate, then the Prime Minister is either dreaming or lying about the prognosis of safety for Hazaras to the Australian electorate. 20 June 2010: Rudd and Readings for World Refugee Day 2010 - It may all have started with the Australian version of Yes We Can with Kevin07, but not much seems to have survived the onslaught of the nasty monster of Parliamentary politics. Are Kevin Rudd's human rights troubles irretrievable? Around 2010 World Refugee Day and Refugee Week, several writers link with the issues.
8 May 2010: Laws for smugglers are jailing the ferrymen - Australia's nasty laws jail innocent Indonesian fishermen instead of smugglers: By marginalising the fishing communities that used to fish around Ashmore Reef for centuries, we contribute to their availability to smuggling networks as sailors. Australia supplied and 'trained the bus drivers for the bus company' - the sailors we jail as people smugglers. 7 May 2010: A Time to Burn: The End of Kevin Rudd's Bonhoeffer Confessions - The Burning of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's article "Faith in Politics" (as part of the RRAN All Night Perth Airport Detention Centre Vigil), May 7, 2010, 7:30pm-7:45pm at the Perth Airport Immigration Detention Centre, Cnr Baker & McComb Road, Redcliffe WA 6104). 21 April 2010: Rudd re-opens Derby's Curtin detention hell - Temps climbing to 44° C. Guards that treat refugees with violence and disdain, telling them they're illegals who will never make it into 'Australia proper'. Immigration officers who screw up formal requests for medical or other assistance and throw them in the rubish bin. That's how many remember the Curtin detention centre... 19 April 2010: The 2010 Anti-Smuggling Legislation - Punishing smugglers, or finding a covert way to lock Australia's borders? "In view of commitments given by Australia under the UN Refugee Convention, also to refugees arriving by boat, this legislation gives the appearance of being highly manipulative in nature."
18 April 2010: World Outrage about Kevin Rudd's Big Asylum Freeze - From psychiatrist Jon Juredini to Malcolm Fraser, from human rights lawyer Greg Barns to Andrew Bartlett, outrage swelled fast around Kevin Rudd's processing freeze of Sri Lankan and Afghan asylum seekers. The anger did not stop just there, it went international within a week. 17 April 2010: Labor compassion and decency freezes over in Election Hell - Some had expected it sooner, but finally Labor has buckled under the weight of the attack dogs. In a joint and televised joint press conference by Stephen Smith (Foreign Affairs), Chris Evans (Immigration) and Brendan O'Connor (Home Affairs) - a sad affair where they resembled The Three Stooges - they announced Canberra's Big Freeze. 1 April 2010: Is Mr Hadi Ahmadi a people smuggler or escape organiser? - Mr Hadi Ahmadi assisted in bringing four boats to Australia. His passengers were not 'illegal immigrants' but asylum seekers: of the 900 passengers, no less than 866 were declared genuine refugees once their claims were processed. That's a success rate of 97%. Does that make him a people smuggler or a UN Convention enabler - or an "escape organiser"?
11 March 2010: SBY in Canberra: smugglers will be crims - but the passengers? - Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's remarks were reported after the morning press conference by AAP, but no media outlets picked them up or read between the lines. What the Indonesian President gave away after closed-door talks in Canberra was more than we heard from Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. 4 March 2010: Uninvited and unheard: Australia's case of post-Tampa boat arrivals - Author's copy of a peer reviewed paper by Project SafeCom's Jack H Smit in TAMARA, Journal for Critical Organization Inquiry, 8(2), pp. 207-224 - Special Issue: Refugee and Migrant Integration in Developed Nations: The Discovery of Discourse, September 2009. 2 March 2010: To Catch a People Smuggler, to Wade through Brine of Spin - Anyone who tries "to catch a people smuggler" needs to first peel off the many layers of spin and labelling. This page, primarily about 'Captain Bram', one of the Australian government's "notorious" people-smugglers, wonders why he has not been extradited to Australia. 200928 December 2009: Some are lucky, but we killed Andrew Moore - "Accepting the legitimacy of section 501 elevates the formalities of citizenship above all other factors used to justify punishment by the state, it undermines the principles of rehabilitation and reintegration, and enforces permanent separation from social and family networks beyond any measure contemplated by the sentencing court." 6 December 2009: Show Your Copenhagen Vote at Project SafeCom! - Enter your vote for Copenhagen on our website! Your entry will be presented to world leaders at the COP15 UN climate summit in Copenhagen, telling them to seal a fair and effective climate deal. Google Australia's 'innovationist', Justin Baird, developed the Show Your Vote platform after meeting Al Gore earlier this year and helping develop the web presence of the Earth Hour campaign. 8 November 2009: Kevin Rudd, stuck and becalmed in Merak - Australia's Prime Minister dreams of an Indonesian Solution that fails within a week. Rudd may have made 'that phone call' to President Bambang Yudhoyono, promising even more funding 'to stop the boats' before they would arrive in Australian waters, but he had not counted on local resistance and to fury from Australia and the rest of the world.. 6 November 2009: John Pilger: Breaking the Australian Silence - In Pilger's 2009 Sydney Peace Prize acceptance speech he describes the "unique features" of a political silence in Australia, and how these affect the national life of his homeland and the way Australians are manipulated by great power against our own first people and those seeking refuge... 21 September 2009: Seeking asylum: Non-protection horrors in Indonesia - An expose of media debate and coverage of the rapidly detoriorating warehousing situation in Indonesia, sponsored by the Rudd government - where the International Organisation for Migration, UNHCR Jakarta and the Australian and Indonesian government all 'assist' to wreck the lives of thousands who seek protection and a better life in Australia. 2 September 2009: In 2009, it's getting crowded on Christmas Island - Slowly Christmas Island is filling up with refugees - but in August 2009 it seemed that senior and high-profile advocates all flocked to the place. Human Rights Consultation Chief Frank Brennan, Psychiatrist Louise Newman, and Sydney Morning Herald Journalist David Marr all looked in on the bizarre scenery. 24 August 2009: Reaching Australia: Iraqi asylum seekers in transit in SE Asia - This paper considers the relationship between asylum seekers and people smugglers, based primarily on interviews with Iraqis settled in Australia and Iraqis stranded in Indonesia since 2001. The study is responsive to recognition within forced migration research of the importance of giving voice to the main agents - refugees and asylum seekers - as part of the research process. 23 August 2009: Growing Christmas Island Troubles - It started all so subtle, and immediately after the November 2007 Federal election. But while the Inquiry into Detention condemned the caged walkways, perspex barriers and electrified fencing, how disappointing was the reply to the report by the Immigration Minister, who almost wholeheartedly dismissed the bipartisan recommendations. 17 August 2009: Iranians on a journey fraught with dangers - A page with a message via friends from someone in Iran, who was worried about two Iranian families who had to run away from Iranian authorities after becoming associated with the Bahai'i faith. A friend's cousin and family are on the run, and he asked us to help publish the summary of their story and some photos. 14 July 2009: Chris Evans tables Immigration Reform Laws - "This Bill makes provision for suitably risk-assessed persons in immigration detention to be given some effective control and personal responsibility for their own circumstances ... for persons in immigration detention to attend an educational facility to undertake a course, to visit a doctor unescorted, or attend a wedding or funeral of a close friend or relative..." 26 June 2009: The 2009 Detention Debt Bill Atonement speeches - Four Liberal backbenchers dissent with their Opposition party and speak out about the Government's Migration Amendment Bill 2009. Liberal Petro Georgiou was close to tears as he argued for the "dehumanising" charges to be dropped, and Russell Broadbent stated in his speech: 'God forgive me that I was part of the parliament that did that, which caused so much distress to so many families over such a long period of time.' 18 June 2009: Christine Milne: The climate nightmare is upon us - Greens Environment spokesperson Christine Milne's June 2009 address at the Press Club: "It is not a lack of climate science that holds back action. It is how we respond to the challenge that the science poses, and that is deeply cultural. It is the values that we bring to bear, what we think is good for us, our religious underpinnings, our view of power and opportunity, of what is possible in the world and Australia's place in it. All these value judgements stop us from embracing change." 16 June 2009: Elder Mr Ward: Coroner delivers damning findings - West Australian Coroner Alastair Hope delivers his damning report on the death of Indigenous Elder Mr Ward. This page brings together some resources, links, documentation and media items around the release by the WA Coroner of his Inquiry Report into Mr Ward's death on 12 June 2009. 2 June 2009: Mohammed and Juliet: A Modern Tragedy - Finally, here's the full 2003 text transcript of SBS reporter Sophie McNeill's Award-winning documentary, as screened on SBS Insight Television on 8 May, 2003. The transcript was posted to this website because its original version has been deleted from the SBS website. 18 May 2009: Kevin Rudd's vile band of people smugglers - Kevin Rudd, with his media remarks, had escalated the issue of people smuggling, and remarkably, a crack appeared in their vileness. For the first time in Australian history, media opinion started to turn against his line, and reporters and opinion writers started to open the issue and, almost unaware of it, started to 'humanise' people smugglers. Thank you, Prime Minister! 10 April 2009: Privatising human rights abuses with Serco Australia? - Given its history where its 'jailed clients' abused or died in custody, UK jail contractor Serco is not an organisation that should have been chosen to jail Australia's refugees. But that's what seems to happen: the Immigration Minister announced in April 2009 that this company's Australian subsidiary Serco Australia is his preferred tenderer to run Australia's Immigration centres... 5 April 2009: Addicted to Growth: the Economy's Road to Perdition - "The wheels have fallen off the wagon, but the world's politicians are fiercely divided between those who feed the monster billions of dollars at a scoopful in hope that it recovers, and those who think that it's just the wheel bearings that have run hot. Both of the groups are prisoners of the paradigm or their own making that has kept them elected: promising growth, better welfare, more jobs and better services." 28 March 2009: Earth Hour: Shhhh, we're in the dark in Australia ... - Can a website participate in Earth Hour? Well, at Project SafeCom we say 'Yes We Can'. If you see this page when you visit safecom.org.au, Earth Hour has arrived, and none of the more than 1,000 pages can be accessed: all of them point to this page. 21 March 2009: Cleansing out the Internet you would never see - "[Communications Minister Stephen] Conroy's filter proposal represents the greatest assault on free speech and an open society in the country's history. By its very nature, it is categorical and self-concealing, far beyond the sleazy and capricious 'sedition' laws of the Howard government." 20 March 2009: The Inquest into Mr Ward's death - The damning indictments against Global Solutions Ltd, the company Australia uses to lock up refugees and detainees in immigration detention, the same company that has a contract for prisoner transportation in Western Australia, grew rapidly as the Inquest into Mr Ward's death progressed. This page brings together the media reportage about the inquest. 17 March 2009: Thanks for everything, Jean Oates and Nancy Cooper! - A page that remembers two fiercely devoted advocates who left us: As dedicated as Jean was, was Nancy Cooper, who acted as the secretary of the Whyalla RAR group, and who together with Jean and many others, carried a deep commitment to visiting all "their friends" in the Woomera and Baxter detention centres, and who wrote and wrote and wrote to their politicians in an effort to change the policies and politics in Canberra during the Howard years. 14 March 2009: What if no one had spoken out against this policy? - 'The Rise of Asylum Seeker and Refugee Advocacy in Australia'. By Diane Gosden, "...this paper examines the rise of an asylum seeker and refugee advocacy movement in Australia in recent years. A harsh onshore refugee policy with mandatory detention has existed for more than a decade, and had been contested by small numbers of concerned individuals and core refugee, human rights, professional and church groups." 9 March 2009: Kevin Rudd's The Monthly Essay: The Global Financial Crisis - Kevin Rudd established himself in 2006 as a philosopher and thinker on social issues with an article about John Howard's views on the economy with the essay "Howard's Brutopia". For a second time, also in the respected magazine The Monthly, Rudd wrote about Politics and Religion, and about his respect for Dietrich Bonhoeffer's theology - just a month later. This is his third contribution, of February 2009. 3 March 2009: The jailing of Daniel Snedden: an Australian gets jailed for years, without charges - "Any Australian can lose his liberty, be put in custody along with other criminals, can be removed from this country for however long it takes in another country that the government has accepted as an extradition country and it is said that that is not punishment and he never has an opportunity for a judicial officer of this nation to have a look, even on the papers, as to whether or not..."
26 February 2009: Australia's Climate Action Summit: Time for Climate change action - Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong avoid the issues, while thousands of people respond by 'Encircling The Parliament' ... The Rudd government's climate change policies, strategies and carbon reduction targets may well have been announced with much fanfare, but most of the announcements have amounted to a big sell-out to the polluters and they seem to pander to ....
20 February 2009: Australia takes its sun for granted - How Australia ignores its abundant sun and its energy contribution to a post-carbon society. An investigation into the Australian government's avoidance to use its main asset, the sun, and how it could power much, if not all of Australia's energy needs. Australia is not just avoiding its role in building a post-carbon economy, but more disturbingly, that it keeps itself beholden to the lobbying powers of the polluting industries that use coal as its core energy source. 19 February 2009: Black Saturday 2009: Reflections after the Victorian Fires - "It's possible some people may feel upset by the link being made in the media here and overseas between bushfires and climate change. I understand that people are shocked with grief. But there are many things we can and must learn from this tragedy, and one of them is this: The climate has changed. Our 5 per cent by 2020 carbon pollution reduction target is no longer politically viable. We are facing a climate emergency and [are] running out of time." 19 February 2009: A Possie in Aussie: Nayano Taylor-Neumann's response to Tampa - Since Tampa 2001, thousands of ordinary Australians stood up and baulked at the treatment of 'unannounced and boat-faring' arrivals on our shore. This page is the story of one of those advocates and activists: Nayano Taylor-Neumann from South Australia. She became a worker at a settlement program, a Blogger and a PhD student. And she became one of Project SafeCom's supporters and members. 7 February 2009: Linda Briskman at Project SafeCom's 2008 AGM - "Organisations like Project SafeCom are not out to win the popularity stakes with government; like other organisations the emphasis is on bringing about an inclusive society where human rights are not violated and where human rights tenets are to the forefront of our thinking."
25 January 2009: President Barack Obama's Inauguration Speech - Barack Obama, America's 44th president, was inaugurated on January 20, 2009 as the first Afro-American president in US history. Here's his historic inauguration speech, both as a video and in the full transcript, followed by an excerpt of Guy Rundle's latest book 'Down to the Crossroads'.
11 January 2009: Israel, your local and lethal bully: the 2009 onslaught on Gaza - 18 Israelis have been killed by Hamas rockets in the last 8 years, yet in 15 days in early 2009 854 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza - 236 children and 100 women - and 3680 have been injured. Israel is indiscriminately slaughtering Palestinians in Gaza and acts like a heinous Holocaust perpetrator. 11 January 2009: Rudd government opens John Howard's Gulag - The horrendous centre suddenly had to be opened. In early December 2008, just before the Immigration Minister Chris Evans was due to retire on his Christmas holidays, there was talk in the immigration department, duly 'leaked' to the media, that "another seventy" arrivals should be expected soon, and a week after this information became public, just before Christmas, it was announced that the 800-bed Gulag was open for business. 9 January 2009: Broadcasting our news alerts - In August 2002 we sent our first and eleborate News alert, followed by another one in November that year. We repeated the initiative when country-wide outrage erupted as a result of the Anti-terrorism Bill 2005. From 2009, after the creation of our new database platform by David Coulter, we've started to use the pure HTML News alerts again to broadcast our news and progress periodically. 8 January 2009: Climate Troubles: the condemnation of Australia's Climate targets - The Rudd government's 'softly-softly' 5% targets have been roundly condemned by NGO's, climate scientists - and also by Ross Garnaut, Australia's climate change consultant, who was commissioned to write the papers, and now the head of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Professor James Hansen, has written an open letter to Barack Obama about Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong's targets. UPDATE April 2010: All 2009 pages have now been copied to The 2009 archives page, and they will as per usual be removed from other pages. Links to all older archived pages are in the tables above! |
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