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Category Archives: Australian immigration and asylum
Multiple global news organisations call for release of men, who fled their country only to become embroiled in Australia’s detention system
The Senate has passed a motion calling on the government to recognise the increased risk it has placed on two gay Saudi journalists by keeping them in detention after they claimed asylum last month.
Guardian Australia can reveal that multiple news organisations around the world have called for the release of the men, warning the Australian government they are watching the case closely.
The opposition leader, Anthony Albanese, says there have been more than 400 ‘senseless loss of life’ since 2001. Follow all the day’s politics – live
Cormann’s full response to the order to produce the Morrison-Fuller transcript has been tabled. The full text of the letter is below.
Dear President
I refer to the motion moved by the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator the Hon Penny Wong, and agreed by the Senate on 2 December 2019, requesting documents associated with phone call between the Prime Minister and the Commissioner of the New South Wales Police Force that took place on Tuesday, 26 November 2019.
Labor is furious at the government’s response to an order to produce the transcript of the Morrison-Fuller phone call about the Angus Taylor police investigation.
The Labor leader in the Senate, Penny Wong, read the government’s response to the Senate after it was provided to her at the outset of Senate proceedings by the finance minister, Mathias Cormann. The letter simply referred the Senate to previous answers and said the documents would be subject to a public interest immunity claim because they relate to a police investigation.
This is transparency from the Morrison government. This is the transparency and integrity, or lack thereof from the Morrison government.”
PM concedes a misstep in his defence of minister as Labor continues its attack. All the day’s events, live
From Peter Dutton’s office:
The Australian Government has declared three terrorist attacks for the purposes of the Australian Victim of Terrorism Overseas Payment (AVTOP) scheme.
The Senate is finishing up its divisions on the ensuring integrity bill. That’s brought on the second reading debate, where we go into the amendments.
We’ll be in amendment hell until about 11.45am. Then it’s usual Senate business for a bit, and then straight back into the IR bill. The only thing that will interrupt it then, is question time.
After six hellish years inside Australia’s offshore detention regime, Boochani reflects on the country that rejected him, his new-found freedom and the friends he left behind
“One day,” Behrouz Boochani said, observing the bleakness of the abandoned Manus detention centre, its dark form illuminated by wood stripped from the buildings being burned for light, “we will meet in some other place, far away from here.”
That was two years ago, in the middle of a warm November night, when Boochani helped smuggle this reporter into the decommissioned Manus Island detention centre where 400 men were holding out against being forcibly removed: rationing their dwindling supply of food and medicine, guarding against the violent police crackdown they knew was coming, repairing the freshwater wells that had been deliberately spoiled by the retreating guards.
Exclusive: Men who fled own country after threats to out them have been detained in Australia
Two Saudi journalists who fled the country after one was interrogated and threatened with their relationship being outed by authorities have been detained in Australia after seeking asylum.
The men, who arrived in Australia some weeks ago, have drawn stark similarities between their treatment in Saudi and their treatment in Australia. They allege they have been threatened with violence twice by other detainees while in the detention centre, intimidated by guards, and witnessed rampant drug use among detainees.
How poignant that Behrouz was freed from Australia’s grip and welcomed by Christchurch, a city that knows prejudice only too well
Today our world is a little freer, a little fairer, and a little more hopeful. Today, one less innocent man is incarcerated in Australia’s detention camp on Manus Island, guilty only of seeking refuge from persecution. Behrouz Boochani was no ordinary detainee. The Iranian Kurdish journalist and author became the voice of Manus detainees, and with it the persistent conscience of us all as we learned of the atrocities committed by the Australian government on its remote Pacific island detention camps.
How poignant that he was finally freed to visit Christchurch, a city that knows only too well the violence and suffering borne of prejudice. A city that wrapped its arms so warmly around its refugee community after a terror attack just seven months ago, to heal their wounds and stand for inclusion. Behrouz has said that Christchurch has taught the world about kindness this year. He is also quick to note that the prejudice that leads to violence against refugees is the same that underpins policies allowing cruel treatment of them by governments such as Australia’s. For him, the plight of refugees and displaced persons across the globe right now is connected to the fear-mongering politics of Donald Trump and Scott Morrison.
Official reception highlights New Zealand’s differences with Australia over immigration
The city of Christchurch has welcomed Behrouz Boochani with a civic reception and a traditional Māori mihi whakatau – a formal welcome – as his presence, and liberty, in New Zealand once again underscores the country’s political differences with Australia over immigration.
Boochani was formally greeted from the plane by the mayor of Christchurch and the city’s Māori leaders, who told him he was welcomed by the mountains, the rivers, and the people of the city.
Kurdish Iranian refugee and journalist – a multiple award-winner for documenting life in Australia’s offshore detention system – has left Papua New Guinea
Behrouz Boochani, the Kurdish Iranian refugee and journalist who became the voice of those incarcerated on Manus Island, has landed in New Zealand and says he will never return to Papua New Guinea or Australia’s immigration regime.
“I will never go back to that place,” he told the Guardian, shortly after leaving PNG. “I just want to be free of the system, of the process. I just want to be somewhere where I am a person, not just a number, not just a label ‘refugee’.”
Family appeals to immigration minister David Coleman to stop their deportation to Bangladesh
A five-year-old boy born in Australia is facing deportation to Bangladesh with his family after their visa applications were refused because his “mild disability” would be a burden on the medical system.
Dr Mahedi Hasan Bhuiyan arrived in Australia on a student visa in 2011. He and Rebaka Sultana married the next year in Bangladesh and she joined him in Australia in 2013. Later that year their son, Adyan, was born at a Geelong hospital.
Video footage shows 24-year-old woman and her stepmother being pulled over and belittled by two officers
Two New South Wales police officers have been found to have engaged in serious misconduct after they racially abused and belittled two Afghan women at a traffic stop in western Sydney.
Authorities believed Mimi Mefo, an award-winning journalist who works for Deutsche Welle in Berlin, might try to stay
A Berlin-based journalist who was due to speak at a press freedom conference in Brisbane has said she was denied a visa by the Australian government because they believed she might try to stay.
Mimi Mefo, an award-winning Cameroonian journalist who currently works for Deutsche Welle, was scheduled to deliver a keynote address at the Integrity 20 conference on Friday.
ALP requests documents about Barr investigation into the Mueller report. Plus, new AFP commissioner faces Senate estimates, and media companies unite against secrecy laws. All the day’s events, live
Scott Morrison adds to the answer to Warren Snowdon’s question:
On 13 September of this year, I can confirm that the tender was awarded to Australian company Oricon an engineering company that, will lead the Kakadu road strategy and they’ll work in a consortium with PwC, and PwC Indigenous consulting, beginning the work immediately.
The roads of strategy will be developed in.conjunction with the tourism master plan, access to key sites and planned upgrades. I thought the member would be interested in that additional information.
The folders are stacked.
We are done as soon as Greg Hunt finishes this dixer.
Maythem Radhi accused of being part of syndicate that charged 421 mostly Iraqi and Afghan refugees for place aboard Indonesian boat
An Iraqi man has been charged in Australia with people-trafficking in connection with the drowning deaths of more than 350 asylum seekers in the 2001 SIEV X tragedy.
Maythem Radhi, 43, was arrested at Brisbane airport late Friday after being extradited from New Zealand and has been charged with “organising groups of non-citizens into Australia”, police say.
Anthony Albanese asks PM why he’s raising hopes on dam support. Plus Jacqui Lambie raises concerns over Turkish invasion. All the day’s events, live
Because it is only “radicals” who care about the climate, apparently.
#owningtheleft
Labor's declaration of a climate emergency is just a sop to the superglue protestors and radical greens. Labor remains desperate to receive the support of the radical activists despite what they've said since the election. Labor can't be trusted to fight for jobs.
Tony Burke jumps up to congratulate Tony Smith on the integrity award he received today (have a look a few posts down and check out Kenneth Hayne’s speech) and thanks him for some of the difficult decisions he took during the medevac debate (you may remember that Smith stuck to the parliament rules, and ensured the parliament had a vote, and also ordered the solicitor general advice Christian Porter was relying on to shut down the debate, be tabled – which revealed the advice was not iron-clad).
Scott Morrison then gets up to add his congratulations, and a few in Labor respond with “now you think about it” to which Morrison gets very upset and accuses Labor of politicising the moment.
More than 50 men, including Benham Satah, who witnessed murder of Reza Barati, have been held for two months
Asylum seekers who have been approved for medevac transfers to Australia are among 52 men who have been locked up in Port Moresby detention without access to phones or lawyers for the past two months.
Among those detained is Benham Satah, the Kurdish Iranian man who witnessed the murder of Reza Barati in 2014, and who was allegedly about to be transferred to Australia for care.
Lawyers for refugees say case important given the government wants to repeal medevac legislation
Peter Dutton is seeking to appeal in the high court a federal court ruling relating to dozens of medical transfers of asylum seekers and refugees.
The government argued the federal court had no jurisdiction to hear cases brought on behalf of refugees and asylum seekers in offshore centres on Manus Island and Nauru, who were seeking urgent medical transfer to Australia.
Fifty-two refugees and asylum seekers in offshore detention have received temporary protection visas or safe haven enterprise visas
Some 52 refugees and asylum seekers in offshore detention have received temporary protection visas or safe haven enterprise visas, according to new statistics that fly in the face of the Morrison government’s refusal to allow the Biloela Tamil family to stay.
The home affairs department has revealed to a Senate inquiry that of the 3,127 people classified as “illegal maritime arrivals” who have been taken to a regional processing country since 2011, some 52 have received visas and now face legal limbo if banned from permanent settlement in Australia.
Federal court in Melbourne extends injunction preventing the removal of the family from Christmas Island to Sri Lanka
Two Tamil asylum seekers and their Australian-born daughters will remain on Christmas Island until at least Friday afternoon after the federal court extended the injunction preventing the Australian government from deporting them back to Sri Lanka.
Priya, Nadesalingam and their two Australian-born children Kopika, 4, and Tharunicaa, 2, were sent to Christmas Island over the weekend after the court granted an injunction until 4pm on Wednesday preventing the government from deporting Tharunicaa until the application had been heard.
On 5 March last year, Australian Border Force officers accompanied by Serco guards stormed the modest Biloela home of Tamil husband and wife Nadesalingam and Priya, and their two Australia-born daughters Kopiga, 2, and Tharunicaa, then just nine months old.
Peter Dutton says family of four ‘not owed protection’ after they were removed from deportation flight in Darwin thanks to court injunction
A Tamil asylum-seeker family whose deportation was halted in mid-air on Thursday night do not deserve protection from Australia, Peter Dutton has said.
The family of four were put on a non-commercial flight from Melbourne bound for Sri Lanka about 11pm on Thursday.