Editor Brian Harrod Provides Comprehensive up-to-date news coverage, with aggregated news from sources all over the world from the Roundup Newswires Network
Category Archives: Australian immigration and asylum
A British backpacker who worked as a waiter in Sydney has won a long-running legal dispute against Australia’s “backpacker tax” in its highest court.
On Wednesday the high court ruled in favour of Catherine Addy, finding the tax which slugged working holiday-makers thousands of dollars more than Australians discriminated against her on the basis of her nationality and infringed a treaty Australia signed with the UK.
An asylum seeker inside a Melbourne hotel being used as an “alternative place of detention” by Australian Border Force says detainees are frustrated and scared after three of them tested positive for Covid.
Mustafa Salah, 23, has spent the better part of eight years inside Australian detention facilities offshore and within its borders.
Asylum seeker advocates are calling for people held in immigration detention to be released into the community after Victorian health officials revealed a guard at a facility in Melbourne had tested positive for Covid-19.
Victoria’s Covid commander, Jeroen Wiemar, on Sunday confirmed at least one coronavirus case at the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accomodation centre in Broadmeadows in Melbourne’s north.
After fleeing persecution in Myanmar, Ealom was detained in a ‘torture camp’. Using tricks learned from Prison Break, he snuck his way out
In 2013, when Jaivet Ealom sat squeezed in a boat with other asylum seekers, he prayed, not for the first time, for an easy death. They were far from shore off the coast of Indonesia, the vessel was sinking, and Ealom could not swim.
Fishermen from a nearby island came to the rescue, hauling each passenger from the half-submerged vessel. Ealom was saved. But during the chaos, a small baby fell into the ocean. “It never resurfaced,” remembers Ealom. “[The mother] just screamed from the bottom of her lungs. It was traumatising.”
“We need to decide how long we can live like this,” says Jennie Edeleanu.
Fifteen months after the coronavirus pandemic brought international travel to a standstill, Australia’s progressive tightening of its borders is forcing newly arrived migrants such as Jennie and her fiance, Steen Reed, to consider leaving permanently.
Campaigners say minister’s decision must be ‘first step’ in returning Murugappans to Queensland
The immigration minister, Alex Hawke, says the government’s decision to allow the Murugappan family to live in community detention in Perth will not provide a pathway to permanent resettlement in Australia.
Lawyers for the family welcomed the government’s announcement on Tuesday that they will be removed from Christmas Island, but insisted it must be a “first step” to returning them to the Queensland town of Biloela.
The immigration minister, Alex Hawke, is set to announce on Tuesday that the Murugappan family will be released from detention on Christmas Island and allowed to reunite on the Australian mainland.
Hawke will use his ministerial discretion to allow the family to return but the government is not expected to make any substantive changes to their visa status which is still being argued in the courts.
It’s been a bit of a heavy morning so far, so here is some dinosaur news from the Guardian’s amazing new science reporter Donna Lu:
A new species of dinosaur discovered in south-west Queensland has been officially recognised as the largest ever found in Australia and among the biggest in the world.
The Australotitan cooperensis, a plant-eating dinosaur of the family known as titanosaurs, likely lived between 92m and 96m years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
Less than 3% of Australians over 16 have been fully vaccinated against coronavirus but health chiefs are tipping numbers will soar in coming weeks.
The sluggish national rollout of jabs continues to spark concern with Melbourne in the grips of another lockdown-inducing outbreak, reports Matt Coughlan from AAP.
There are multiple strains and we will continue to see Covid adapt and mutate – that’s what these viruses do.
We’re likely to see other strains emerging. The sooner we can get the world vaccinated, the less likely it is that it can mutate.
Australian-born Tharnicaa Murugappan in Perth hospital with suspected blood infection after Tamil family’s 18-month detention on island
The youngest daughter of the Tamil family from Biloela who have been detained for more than 18 months on Christmas Island has been evacuated to Perth for emergency medical care, advocates have said.
Tharnicaa Murugappan has been evacuated along with her mother, Priya, after being hospitalised with a suspected blood infection.
Asylum seekers medically evacuated from Nauru and PNG may also be considered in move advocates describe as a massive step forward
New Zealand’s government is now in regular conversation with Australia about how to resettle refugees from Australia’s offshore detention regime – a significant step towards a resolution, advocates say, eight years after New Zealand first offered.
Immigration minister Kris Faafoi confirmed to the Guardian that “New Zealand’s offer to Australia to resettle 150 refugees being held offshore still stands” and that “officials continue to explore how this might be implemented”.
Mike Pezzullo announces digital permit system to verify vaccination status; NSW Upper Hunter byelection results heap pressure on Labor as federal politicians return to Canberra. Follow all the updates live
Tanya Plibersek gets straight into it - asking about Grace Tame’s comment on the Betoota Advocate podcast (we reported that a few posts below)
Can the Prime Minister confirm that was his response to this brave woman’s extraordinary speech?
I would agree it was, indeed, a very brave speech, Mr Speaker. I can’t recall the exact words I used, Mr Speaker, but I wouldn’t question that in any way shape or form, what Grace Tame has said. That is roughly my recollection. That was a very brave statement.
That is exactly what I meant when I said that to her on that occasion. It was a very proud moment for her and her great struggle and challenge over a long period of time and what she did on that occasion was speak with a very strong voice about what had occurred to her, Mr Speaker.
Security guards who work for the Australian embassy in Kabul have staged a peaceful protest on the streets of the Afghan capital, campaigning for access to visas and resettlement in Australia, fearing for their lives and the safety of their families.
In September, Australia, following the US and other coalition forces, will withdraw their military from Afghanistan, after 20 years of war.
Sixty-six people who’ve spent up to seven years in detention on PNG and Nauru and 78 onshore, plus their family members, passed initial approval
Almost 150 refugees held within Australia’s offshore processing system in Papua New Guinea and Nauru, or in onshore detention, are in the last stages of approval for resettlement in Canada.
The non-profit migrant and refugee settlement service Mosaic, based in Vancouver, said it had successfully submitted applications on behalf of 66 people in PNG and Nauru, a further 78 in onshore detention, and 98 family members in third countries.
Men brought to Australia for medical care removed as Kangaroo Point hotel owners reclaim possession
Nineteen asylum seekers brought to Australia from Nauru and Manus Island for medical care have been forcibly removed from the the Kangaroo Point Central Hotel and Apartments in Brisbane, which was used for their long-term detention, supporters say.
It is understood they have been taken to the Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation Centre on the outskirts of the city, but it is unclear if the men will be held there long term or be moved to another centre or another state.
Jacinda Ardern has long criticised the policy and now the deportation of a 15-year-old boy has seen calls for Australia to be referred to the UN
They may be close allies, but the latest flare-up in a long-running diplomatic standoff between Australia and New Zealand has seen relations between the two nations hit an all-time low.
The source of the friction is a controversial deportation policy which Australia uses to deport hundreds of New Zealanders every year. Part of the country’s hardline and oft-criticised immigration policies, the dispute resurfaced last week when the Australian home affairs minister Peter Dutton used a television interview to refer to the policy as “taking the trash out”.
Jacinda Ardern, who says she ‘never agreed with the policy’, is seeking more information about the 15-year-old
Australian authorities deported a minor to New Zealand as part of a program home affairs minister Peter Dutton described as “taking the trash out”.
The New Zealand prime minister, Jacinda Ardern, confirmed that one of the people deported from Australia earlier this month was under the age of 18, but said she was not aware of any further details about the case.
While the US and UK battled resurgent nativism, Australians met the health and economic challenges of the coronavirus pandemic with resilience and optimism – and strong support for multiculturalism
Politics, and media coverage of politics, is powered by conflict and spectacle. But social scientist Andrew Markus wants to focus on something quieter: the resilience and optimism of Australians during a crisis; a country under duress that chose not to fracture.
Markus is principal researcher on the Scanlon Foundation’s annual Social Cohesion report – a project that has mapped a migrant nation since 2007. The report published on Thursday is a snapshot of a country managing a once-in-a-century crisis.
Hotel quarantine places should be kept for stranded people desperate to come home, medic says
An emergency doctor has slammed Australia’s visa policies as “madness” and “dangerous” after he and his partner were told they must fly abroad and return to obtain a family visa.
The federal government has been under fire over requirements baked into some visa categories that compel applicants to be outside the country at the time they are granted. The rules have forced applicants to travel out of Australia, stay offshore for several days, then return – a requirement described as “madness” during a global pandemic.
Global group urges the Morrison government to be vigilant about the growth of far-right extremism here
The Morrison government has been urged to treat the deadly mob assault on the US Capitol as “a wake-up call”, with a leading human rights organisation saying Australian security agencies must counter the growth of rightwing extremism.
Human Rights Watch published its annual global report on human rights abuses on Wednesday evening, calling on US allies such as Australia to work with the incoming Joe Biden administration to “shore up a global defence of human rights”.