What's new - new pages and sections in the Refugee Section

New and recent pages

2008

29 August 2008: This moment, Now is the Time: Barack Obama's acceptance speech - Barack Obama's speech at the Denver Democrats Convention: "America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend."

:::NEW PUBLICATION::: 19 August 2008: Human Rights Overboard: Seeking Asylum in Australia - Human Rights Overboard draws together, for the first time, the oral testimony and written submissions from the inquiry in a powerful and vital book that stands as an indelible record of one of Australia's bleakest legacies. "This is a profoundly important book. It is an unflinching look at disgraceful events. Too many Australians allowed these things to happen. Our generation will forever be marked with the shame of it. It is not only an epitaph for the Howard government: it is also a caution to future generations."

16 August 2008: Welcome to our Christmas Island Gulag, says Immigration - In an unprecedented move, The "new mugs" immigration department invited more than 50 community representatives, working with NGO's who work with asylum seekers and refugees, to 'inspect' Australia's Island Gulag on Christmas Island. While the general flyer sent to the invited guests stated 'no photographs in detention centres', they were told on arrival that taking pictures was fine and we received more than 50 images from one of the many invited guests. Here they are, together with the reaction of those delegates who were invited to the trip: condemnation was handed out liberally, all around.

1 August 2008: Militant gunman kills asylum seeker: Vale Akram Al Masri - Shot in Gaza yesterday, Akram Al Masri came to Australia to find protection under the UN Convention - he didn't get what he came for. But his 2003 Full Federal Court case became a landmark ruling around the question whether or not Australia could lock an asylum seeker forever (yes, we could, and still can), and if we can do that if that person has asked to be removed from Australia...

1 August 2008: Petro Georgiou endorses Labor's detention softening - Project SafeCom's first reaction to Labor's announcement of major detention changes mentioned the notion of "smoke and mirrors", and now that the dust of initial reaction has settled, more in-depth reflections on the changes are what's needed. This page brings together some of these opinions, starting with Petro Georgiou, and then pieces by The Australian's Mike Steketee and Denis Shanahan.

29 July 2008: Immigration Minister Chris Evans announces mandatory detention changes - Suddenly, a major shift in our treatment of asylum seekers has been announced ... The Immigration Minister's speech was comprehensive and announced a shift from a blanket mandatory detention policy to a selective mandatory detention platform, welcome news indeed. Regrettably, while these changes in approach to detention are substantial, and on some level represent even a retreat from Labor's intent with its mandatory detention as introduced in 1992, Labor maintains its "underclass" of unannounced boat arrivals...

:::NOW ON DVD!::: 22 July 2008: Holiday Camp: How is your liberation bound up with mine? - Holiday Camp is a 45 minutes documentary, which investigates the current Australian immigration policies in the context of 200 years of colonization. This extraordinary documentary connects the issues of indigenous dispossession, genocide, and the incarceration of refugees. It explores the implications of the mandatory detention system and the construction of national borders. Holiday Camp reclaims the voices of the marginalized and connects the issues of Indigenous dispossession, genocide, national constructions and incarceration of refugees, which are often portrayed as unrelated or divisive.

21 July 2008: Supporting GetUp!'s End Mandatory Detention campaign - Online campaign group GetUp! are partnering with a range of refugee advocacy organisations, including Project SafeCom, to send a petition to the federal government's Immigration Detention Inquiry. Chances like this don't come very often - to end a regrettable chapter of Australian history that caused unimaginable suffering to some of the world's most desperate and downtrodden.

12 July 2008: The Australia Institute: Clean coal and other greenhouse myths - This paper by George Wilkenfeld, Clive Hamilton and Hugh Saddler exposes sixteen greenhouse myths, and reiterates the basic principles of an effective greenhouse policy: no new coal-fired generation until it meets the criteria for at least half-clean use; encouragement of renewable and gas-fired generation; an increasingly stringent cap on emissions supported by a tradeable permit system; and stringent minimum energy efficiency standards for vehicles, buildings and appliances.

11 July 2008: Working with Wasim: A convergence of community - The changes that did occur and the defeat of a Bill designed to ensure all asylum seeker claims were processed offshore were in no small part due to government representatives breaking ranks after consistent lobbying by members of the refugee advocate community. A paper by Anne Pedersen, Mary Anne Kenny, Linda Briskman and Sue Hoffman.

7 July 2008: Climate Code Red - Reviews and Comments - "Having been involved with global warming climate change as a researcher in environmental health for 25 years, I can say that this is without question by far the best book to date on this issue -- the first book to have the integrity to say how the situation really is."

5 July 2008: Climate Code Red: The case for Emergency Action - Australian climate scientists David Spratt & Philip Sutton reveal extensive scientific evidence that the global warming crisis is far worse than official reports and national governments have indicated - and that we're almost at the point of no return. According to Green's Christine Milne, they "provide a valuable and sobering contribution to the policy challenge of climate change at a pivotal moment, with their key insight that the expectation of failure has become the norm in climate policy. Climate Code Red is a significant contribution which should be read by anyone seriously contemplating how to set greenhouse emission-reduction targets."

5 July 2008: Will Ross Garnaut's verdict become Kevin's Slow Boat to China? - Professor Ross Garnaut has delivered his long awaited Climate Change Draft Report, and now it's up to the Rudd government to prepare the action and implement the policies. Will Professor Ross Garnaut force Kevin Rudd's climate change leadership, or will it be silently 'averaged out' in Canberra? This page summarizes the early impressions.

1 July 2008: Climate Change: Catastrophic Impacts and Human Rights - by HREOC President John von Doussa QC: "Australia's response to climate change must be human rights compliant. What is also clear is that the international standards and norms that these rights establish themselves provide guidance to decision makers on the substantive elements of legislative and policy responses to climate change."

20 June 2008: The Gristmill: How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic - Every now and then a remarkable online resource deals with an issue so well, that nothing more needs to be added to the topic. That was also the case with the comments provided by guest contributor to the Gristmill, Coby Beck, on the issue of How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic. Here's the table of links to all related issues.

Project SafeCom's 2008 World Refugee Day event

21 June 2008: World Refugee Day 2008: Andrew Bartlett and A Nun's New Habit - Senator Andrew Bartlett, on his last day as a Senator, presents a lecture about Australia, asylum seekers, refugees and the Migration Act; and we celebrate the tens of thousands of ordinary Australians, and amongst them in particular the catholic nuns, who became a massive wall of quiet protest during the years since Tampa in the Documentary A Nun's New Habit.

16 June 2008: 2008 World Refugee Day: Who'll keep the bastards honest now? - This page contains media reportage surrounding Project SafeCom's 2008 World Refugee Day movie event at the Fremantle Film and TV Institute, and it begins with an Opinion Editorial by Queensland Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett.

14 June 2008: This website is Uncensored ... unlike many websites in China - This page supports the Amnesty International Australia "Uncensor" campaign, highlighting human rights abuses in China in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics 2008. More information about this campaign, and links to the Amnesty campaign website, are posted on this page.

9 June 2008: First jail them, then send the Bill: Australia bills refugees for jailtime - Australia has the audacity to first jail 'unannounced boat-using asylum seekers' who use their international right to 'seek asylum in any country' (art 14, Declaration of Human Rights), and then, upon their release sending them a Bill for the cost of just having jailed them without having committed a crime - a jailing, often for years.

17 May 2008 - Australia ends its Temporary Refugee Protection Visa Cruelties - When last week Labor's first Federal Budget came down, it brought with it provisions to end the Temporary Refugee Protection Visa, cruelly introduced by John Howard to stave off political challenges posed by right-wing nationalist-populist politician Pauline Hanson. Here is Australia's initial reaction.

8 May 2008 - Asylum assessment under Rudd: tough, or just shonky? - Labor is being tougher and more ruthless with asylum seekers than the Howard Government, according to an analysis of decisions made by the new Minister for Immigration, Senator Chris Evans. The analysis of the exercise of ministerial discretion shows that Evans has rejected 97.6% of applications since coming to power - the highest rate of rejection since 2001.

8 May 2008: UN Human Rights Commission offers Human Rights to Climate Refugees - Three reports about the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution to recognise issues connected to climate change as having a human rights framework, as well as a picture by Reuters and the Reuters Alertnet about political manipulation of climate refugees and six FAQs about climate refugees.

26 April 2008 - Kevin Rudd's Canberra 2020 Summit: a photo report - "These folks seemed pretty determined to me to see things change ... there have been some signals and signs, like signing Kyoto, like some bold statements. They have made some big election promises, and they have set themselves up to have some expectant and watchful citizens through this 2020 process."

22 April 2008: The 2020 Summit: Coal Industry Chiefs overheat Kevin's Climate - "I found myself in the climate stream with representatives of coal mining companies including Xstrata and Shell, yet not a single person from an environment Non-Government Organisation. No-one from Friends of the Earth, the Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, Climate Action Network Australia or any of the State Conservation Councils."

15 April 2008: Kevin Rudd at Peking University - A conversation with China's youth on the future. "The global community looks forward to China fully participating in all the institutions of the global rules-based order, including in security, in the economy, in human rights, in the environment. And we look forward to China making active contributions...."

14 April 2008: Project SafeCom's online People's Visa promoted - A Project SafeCom presentation at Curtin University's 2002 Conference: Australia - Indonesia border tensions: Continuing the Dialogue on Refugees, Asylum Seekers and People Smugglers. "I don't want Australia to become a maverick nation, and we're well on the way to becoming just that. And I'm honoured to be part of a fast growing number of people who do not permit that."

6 April 2008: Nick Poynder, When All Else Fails: Seeking Protection under International Treaties - In [the current political] climate [in Australia], it is not surprising that those seeking to protect human rights have begun to look elsewhere and, in the absence of any effective domestic human rights law, the international sphere is becoming increasingly attractive. An April 2003 lecture at the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law.

2 April 2008: Julian Burnside: Citizens' rights and the rule of law in a civil society: not just yet - Julian Burnside delivers The 2008 Manning Clark Lecture: "Personally, I would have preferred to see the [Howard] Government removed because of its lamentable approach to human rights and the rule of law. But perhaps Australia is not ready to embrace such notions: not just yet. In any event, the electorate saw industrial relations as a more pressing matter."

2 April 2008: Remembering Betty Dixon, our feisty advocate - Australia incarcerates asylum seekers in detention centers - but people like Betty Dixon were not willing to accept it. She did not have the face of a typical rebel against the system, a system she described as "degrading to humans and racist". She was one of the thousands of "ordinary Australians" who vigorously protested against mandatory detention, but for some reason many people remember her, even in the years after she passed away.

30 March 2008: Labor abandons its 'small' Excision Zone and chooses John Howard's radical version - 'Refugee advocates have accused the Federal Government of abandoning its softer approach to asylum seekers after Immigration Minister Chris Evans said he was yet to decide whether Labor would reassess the status of 4600 islands 'excised' from Australian territory for the purpose of immigration law.' This page follows the debate.

23 March 2008: About the Bali bombings and a refugee family - Everyone knows there were 88 Australian victims in the Bali bombings, but just a few know the unfolding details of the story of someone locked up in Woomera who lost his Indonesian wife, and who, while locked away from seeing his two small children, had to wait for justice for more than another year. Here's the story of that justice slowly unfolding and Project SafeCom's role in that unfolding.

23 March 2008: Riyadh sends 327 wheelchairs to Iraq - with the help of mining company Woodside Petroleum, a Perth wheelchair manufacturer, the Murdoch University Student Guild and Students without Borders, Perth-based Iraqi student Riyadh Al Hakimi successfully sent 327 wheelchairs to Iraqi children - who are injured as a result of the war - many of them in Riyadh's hometown Najaf.

21 March 2008: The Garnaut Climate Change Review Interim Report - Hasn't Australia changed radically in just a few months: under the former government Ross Garnaut, who has just released his Interim Climate Change Review Report, would have been stonewalled, ignored, vilified and sidelined, and Canberra would have followed a lead from industry on its opinion about him. Now he receives appause from the environmental lobby while big energy producers cringe...

19 March 2008: An Extract from Robert Manne et al, Dear Mr Rudd: Ideas for a Better Australia - "When I began commissioning the chapters for this book, what I discovered was that, among the commentators I approached, the hopes I felt about the new possibilities that would open up for Australia if a Rudd Labor government was elected were very widely shared."

19 March 2008: Reviews of Robert Manne et al, Dear Mr Rudd: Ideas for a Better Australia - With the coming of a new government in Australia, Robert Manne is probably the only person with the cultural and political capital necessary to so quickly produce a book like Dear Mr Rudd, in which an array of writers who, in Manne's words, 'stood against the predominant neo-liberal, neo-conservative tide' now present a positive program for the new government.

2 March 2008: Introduction to Seeking Asylum in Australia: 1995-2005, Experiences and Policies - Papers from a Conference at Monash University. The conference was held over the last weekend in November 2005 - a fleeting moment of peace and quiet in the recent history of Australia's refugee policy, during which the harshest aspects of the law had been relaxed...

2 March 2008: Matthew Albert, Australian Refugee Policy from an African Perspective - Matthew Albert reviews an international perspective of the Australian policy as it influences the lives of refugees in Kenya and he reflects on the domestic impact of the policy as it has effected Australia's fastest growing ethnic community, the Sudanese refugees.

2 March 2008: Julian Burnside, What the Government Will Do If They Can Get Away With It - It is hard to think of an Australian government more driven by ideological zealotry than this lot, and they will do disgraceful things if they can get away with it, and Burnside illustrates it with examples from some legislative areas.

2 March 2008: Prof Michael Clyne, Words Excusing Exclusion - The terms 'illegal', 'queue jumper' and 'border protection' and assessments of unrespectable behaviour are used by Australian politicians to generate antagonism against asylum seekers and support for government treatment of them: this is shown also against the contrast of some historical examples.

2 March 2008: David Corlett, Do We Have Obligations To Those We Sent Back? - Australia has returned failed asylum seekers to places of insecurity and uncertainty. In some instances it has returned people to situations in which they have been treated brutally, while the Australian government claims that these people have returned voluntarily...

2 March 2008: Michael Gordon, The Media's Performance: An Insider's View - Author and journalist Michael Gordon responds to criticisms of the performance of the media since the Tampa episode of 2001, outlining the obstacles faced by journalists and some of the ways they were overcome.

2 March 2008: Ida Kaplan, Pursuing Justice and Recovery for Asylum Seekers - The experiences of refugees and asylum seekers are not incidental by-products of war and conflict but are the result of systematic and planned attempts to destroy them, including torture, planned displacement, ethnic cleansing and increasingly the targeting of children, because they are the future of any community.

2 March 2008: Legal and Ethical Implications of Extra-Territorial Processing of Asylum Seekers - Monash Law Professor Susan Kneebone discusses the current European proposals in comparison with Australia's Pacific Strategy and canvasses the legal and ethical implications of such plans in the light of the international system of refugee protection.

2 March 2008: Bernadette McSherry, Providing Mental Health Services and Psychiatric Care to Immigration Detainees: What the Law Requires - There is increasing evidence that the provision of mental health services is inadequate for immigration detainees and that the Commonwealth hsad breached its legal duty to provide reasonable care toward immigration detainees. This paper explores these issues based on some court cases against the Commonwealth.

2 March 2008: Klaus Neumann, Seeking Asylum in Australia: A Historical Perspective - The debate about Australia's response to refugees and asylum seekers is largely devoid of a historical perspective. In this paper, historian Klaus Neumann demonstrates the benefits of such a perspective when reflecting on the terms 'refugee' and 'asylum seeker'.

2 March 2008: Culture Shock: Australian Youth Responding to Refugees - Melbourne human rights advocate Jessie Taylor relates her experiences visiting detainees at Baxter and Maribyrnong and speaks of the challenges of bringing the refugee issue into the consciousness of her generation of young Australians, examining the complexities and difficulties involved in advocacy and the inevitable personal bonds formed.

2 March 2008: Home Is Not Home Until Human Rights Are Respected - Hotham Mission Asylum Seeker Project Community Liaison Coordinator Stancea Vichie advocates lobbying for policy change so asylum seekers awaiting the final decision about their asylum claim can find a home and start building their lives without being tormented with anxieties about ordinary life circumstances.

2 March 2008: Spencer Zifcak, No Way Out: The High Court, Asylum Seekers and Human Rights - Guided by failed court cases attempting to challenge the Migration Act and remove children from ongoing immigration detention, Spencer Zifcak makes a powerful yet gentle argument for a Human Rights Act to 'control' imbalance in Australian legislation where human rights are undermined or nullified.

27 February 2008: The Senate debates Australia's 'Excision Zone' - There's no reason in 2008 for anyone in Labor to argue that the issue of John Howard's extraordinary excision zone 'has not been discussed'. When the former government pushed through changes to that exclusion zone for refugees in 2005, Labor supported a Disallowance motion put by Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett.

24 February 2008: Pamela Curr: American Torture, Aussie Style - ...how did the detention of asylum seekers spill over into a system of brutality with more in common with torture than respect for human rights? How did a country which has prided itself on lining up to sign onto the International conventions so wilfully breach them?

23 February 2008: What !!! - No Royal Commission??? - The Rudd government and Immigration Minister Chris Evans have moved very swiftly to undo some serious damage done to the asylum processing system under the previous government, but there has also been some serious back-tracking and summer-saulting backflips - one of them on Labor's furious former commitment to a Royal Commission into the Immigration Department.

:::UPDATED Febr 2008:::: 26 September 2007: Oskar Schindler and the people smuggler - Under Australia's interpretation of what constitutes a 'people smuggler', the young man who sold the donkey to Joseph and Mary would be prosecuted and imprisoned by law ... So would the priest who helped the Von Trapp family ... this page is about Ali Al Jenabi, one of those people smugglers.

:::More than 100 PHOTOS::: 17 February 2008: Photos: Manning Clark House Weekend of Ideas - the collection of photos taken by advocate Freddie Steen at the Manning Clark House sixth Weekend of Ideas, "A Fair Go for Refugees?" during the first weekend of April 2007 in Canberra's Manning Clark House in Forrest, ACT.

14 February 2008: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Motion of Apology - Yesterday, Australia's Federal Parliament reconvened after the resounding win for ALP Leader Kevin Rudd, and the very first motion put by Australia's new Prime Minister under 'government business' was the speech to The Motion Of The Apology. Here's the movie and transcript of Kevin Rudd's speech.

12 February 2008 - The Shock Doctrine in the Northern Territory: Northern Territory Child Protection Minister Marion Scrymgour has retracted her description of of the Commonwealth Government's NT intervention as the "black kids Tampa", writes Crikey while making a link between Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine and John Howard's Intervention. Sadly enough, Crikey is right...

9 February 2008: The End of Howard's cynical Pacific Solution - 'The last 21 Sri Lankan asylum seekers on Nauru have been recognised as refugees and approved for resettlement in Australia, closing the book on John Howard's notorious "Pacific Solution".' Here's a page bringing the news, marking the end of a dark chapter.

9 February 2008: Julian Burnside speaks at the launch of Watching Brief - Launch of Julian Burnside's 'Watching Brief: reflections on human rights, law, and justice', at fortyfive downstairs, 45 Flinders Lane in Melbourne, on 15 Dec 2007.

8 February 2008: The End of Scott Street: moving out, moving on - Alas, all good things must come to an end. So, come January 2008, with many boxes in the hallway, we ended the Scott Street era. On the way to new openings, new possibilities, and towards the turning of a new leaf. This page brings together some photos taken at the Scott Street house, and the article from The Fremantle Herald announcing the closure of our time there.

3 February 2008: Watching Brief: Reflections on Human Rights, Law and Justice - The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a sharp decline in respect for human rights and the international rule of law. The legal conventions of the new realpolitic seem to owe more to Guantanamo than Geneva. In Watching Brief, noted lawyer and human rights advocate Julian Burnside articulates a sensitive and intelligent defence of the rights of asylum seekers and refugees, and the importance of protecting human rights and maintaining the rule of law.

2 February 2008: Aboriginal Elder Ian Ward: another GSL Death in Custody - Last weekend's death in custody of an Indigenous offender while in transit by van, an AIMS Van operated under the contract with Global Solutions Limited from the Western Desert to Kalgoorlie was not by any means the first serious incident by this company, the company also charged by the Federal government for the running of Immigration Detention camps...

24 January 2008: Howard Mandarins and Labor Ministers - while some advocates seem to ride a wave of euphoria that followed the November 2007 Federal election that saw John Howard assigned to the political scrap heap, Immigration Minister Chris Evans' trip to Indonesia has called forth some critical comments for more senior commentators amongst our ranks.

20 January 2008: Climate Change: voices from communities affected by climate change (Friends of the Earth International) - "Cities and towns where Australians live, generally concentrated near the coast, will be affected by sea-level rise and storms and, in the North, bymore intense cyclones. Heatrelated deaths in Australia's major urban centres are expected to become five times more frequent by 2050."

18 January 2008: Richard Flanagan - Out of Control: the tragedy of Tasmania's forests - "In a world where it seems everything can be bought, all that will remain [of the Tasmanian native forests] are ghosts briefly mocking memory: a ream of copying paper in a Japanese office and a man fern in an English garden. And then they too will be gone."

UPDATE April 2008: All 2007 pages have now been transferred to The 2007 archives page. Links to all older archived pages are in the tables above!

What's new and what's News?

Labor's Chris Evans announces detention changes

A musical sample

Royal Commission

Archives

New and recent pages

2008