Category Archives: Australian immigration and asylum

Asylum seekers held in Papua New Guinea blocked from talking to lawyers or doctors

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Inquiry hears that asylum seekers detained in PNG do not have access to phones, preventing medical evacuation

Asylum seekers held in a Papua New Guinean detention facility are being prevented from talking to lawyers and doctors, blocking them from medical evacuation to Australia approved under new medevac laws.

David Manne, the executive director of Refugee Legal, told a Senate inquiry on Monday that he had lost contact with one client who had been approved for urgent evacuation weeks ago but was then detained at the Bomana detention facility in Papua New Guinea.

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The asylum seekers held in a PNG prison have a choice: return to death or literally rot in jail | First Dog on the Moon

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They have already been suffering in inhumane conditions for six years. All this is well known and makes no difference

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Book charting grim life at offshore refugee ‘prison’ sweeps Australia’s literary prizes

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The Kurdish-Iranian author, who wrote using a smuggled phone, receives awards by Skype because he remains in detention

Behrouz Boochani is one of Australia’s most-celebrated contemporary writers. Last week, the Kurdish-Iranian journalist won a A$25,000 (£14,000) national biography award for No Friend but the Mountains, a book judges described as “profoundly important”. It wasn’t the first prize the book had received in Australia: it has now won the Victorian Premier’s Literary award, the New South Wales Premier’s Literary award and the Australian Book Industry’s non-fiction book of the year.

One critic described it as a “masterpiece,” another called it “the standout book of the year” and another, novelist Michelle de Kretser, said it was “lucid, poetic and devastating”.

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Behrouz Boochani wins National Biography award – and accepts via WhatsApp from Manus

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Judges call Kurdish Iranian writer and refugee’s memoir an ‘astonishing act of witness’

The Kurdish Iranian writer Behrouz Boochani has continued his sweep of the Australian literary prize landscape, winning the $25,000 National Biography award on Monday – yet another award the refugee was unable to accept in person, as he enters his sixth year of detention on Manus Island.

Boochani’s autobiography No Friend but the Mountains tells of his journey from Indonesia to Australia by boat, and his subsequent imprisonment on Manus Island by the Australian government, which continues to refuse him entry.

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Stories of home and homeland: ‘We make Australia, we are all Australian’

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The migrant experience has changed since the European postwar exodus. Five immigrants share how they made a new home

Pictures by Noel McLaughlin

The word immigrant stems from the Latin root, migrare – to change or to move from one place to another. Australia, where 28% of the population was born overseas, owes its transformation from a British colony to a cosmopolitan modern country to the presence of people from other places who’ve arrived here to build new lives.

The following stories represent five moments during the trajectory of the past five decades of Australian immigration – from the last wave of postwar European immigration to the focus on humanitarian arrivals in the 1980s to the present, a period during which aspiring Australians on temporary visas struggle to put down roots. Each of the stories is accompanied by a photo of an object, something important that reminds them of their homeland.

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Repealing medevac would be ‘a wicked thing’, Centre Alliance says – politics live

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Rebekha Sharkie says if the government is successful in repealing the legislation it will cause ‘needless harm’

On the ensuring integrity bill, Rex Patrick says there are political elements to the bill it can’t support:

The aim was to deal with misconduct and there is no question that has been in the union movement.

I have seen the fairly significant sheet of judicial rulings against some of the unions and in some instances we have some very conservative, considered judicial officers stating things like this union is simply using the fines, treating the fines as the cost of business.

Rex Patrick is speaking to Patricia Karvelas on Afternoon Briefing and says while Centre Alliance supports the intent of the temporary exclusion order bill, it will abstain from voting for it, because it can’t support it in its current form.

Labor will be passing it, although it has raised its own concerns.

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Labor supports exclusion orders for foreign fighters – politics live

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Opposition will try to introduce amendments but if that fails it will pass the bill. All the day’s events, live

tl;dr - shut the hell up.

I'm also told @ScottMorrisonMP told backbenchers who have been out and about on issues, including, lately, superannuation, to calm their farms and work through party processes. Words to that effect @AmyRemeikis #auspol

You know what it absolutely is not, and was never, going to be? A third chamber.

I'm told @SenatorMcGrath raised constitutional recognition in today's party room meeting. He asked what the position was. @ScottMorrisonMP and @KenWyattMP told him the voice could be many things & constitutional change wouldn't be radical @AmyRemeikis #auspol

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Greens senator Nick McKim deported from Manus Island

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Tasmanian member says he was asked to leave after trying to visit East Lorengau transit centre

The Greens senator Nick McKim says he was deported from Manus Island because he “simply stood on a public street and asked politely” to see conditions in a refugee and asylum seeker transit camp.

The Tasmanian senator arrived back in Australia on Saturday after he was told to leave Papua New Guinea on Thursday night.

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Judge accuses Australia of putting relationship with Nauru before the law

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Judgement follows failure to transfer seriously ill refugee under medevac laws

A federal court judge has excoriated the Australian government, accusing it of putting its relationship with Nauru ahead of complying with court orders and federal law.

The judgement by Justice Debra Mortimer was published on Friday, after the government failed to comply with a 14 June order to transfer a refugee with “serious medical and psychiatric issues” to Australia under the medevac laws.

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Former Manus Island detainee tells UN ‘human beings are being destroyed’

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Abdul Aziz Muhamat delivers a plea for urgent action to the Human Rights Council

Since Abdul Aziz Muhamat left Manus Island for the last time, he has climbed a mountain in his new home of Switzerland, and then returned to advocating for the resettlement of the hundreds of men and women he left behind.

The Sudanese refugee spent more than six years in Australia’s offshore processing and detention system in Papua New Guinea, before he was granted residency in the European nation earlier this month.

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The USA is imprisoning people it finds undesirable. Australia has already lived this nightmare | Jason Wilson

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To disestablish these camps anywhere, we need to oppose them everywhere

Australia’s economy is increasingly in the doldrums, but our leaders can point to a successful export of their own devising. In the US, the Trump administration is bedding down and expanding its network of punitive refugee camps. Like Australia’s, they have a dual function: as a deterrent to pursuing the right of political asylum, and as a political weapon.

Australia’s nightmare, like the USA’s, has been long in the making. It is a bipartisan creation. Labor, under Paul Keating, instituted the policy of mandatory detention. John Howard did much of the work of shaping it into permanent nightmare, and of turning the issue of refugees into a cudgel with which to smite political opponents.

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Paladin contract for Manus Island should be cancelled, PNG’s new PM says

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James Marape says foreign contractors should not be doing work that locals can do

Papua New Guinea’s newly appointed prime minister wants Australia to cancel its controversial contract with Paladin to deliver services on Manus Island.

James Marape, who became prime minister after the resignation of Peter O’Neill last month, told PNG’s parliament on Tuesday he would summon Australia’s diplomatic head of mission “to provide an explanation”.

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Peter Dutton claims asylum seekers refusing resettlement in US due to medevac laws

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Home affairs minister alleges 250 applications for medical transfer being reviewed by ‘activist’ doctors

Peter Dutton claims asylum seekers and refugees on Manus Island and Nauru are refusing resettlement offers in the United States because of the medevac legislation, claiming 250 applications for medical transfer were currently being reviewed by “activist” doctors.

Despite conceding last week the US was “unlikely” to resettle 1,250 refugees under the deal Malcolm Turnbull struck with the then US president, Barack Obama, and begrudgingly held to by Donald Trump, Dutton said the medevac legislation had upended the process and claimed asylum seekers and refugees were still holding out for Australia.

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Culture shock: politics upended in era of identity

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Two worldviews face each other uncomprehendingly – and the flashpoint is the climate emergency

This is the first piece in a new series on what the election result means for the progressive side of politics and the path forward

Political commentators reflexively overinterpret election results. The story we’ve been told is that the Coalition’s win means that “Australian voters” have rejected Labor’s radical plan for reform of the tax-and-spend system, confirming that Australians prefer stability and incremental change.

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Kristina Keneally says there is ‘no evidence’ medevac laws are not working

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Shadow home affairs minister says Labor would examine government amendments to laws, if necessary

Labor says it is prepared to consider government amendments to medical evacuation laws if necessary, but sees “no evidence” to suggest the laws are not working as intended.

As the home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, ramps up pressure on Labor to side with the government to scrap the so-called medevac laws passed against its will in February, Labor’s shadow home affairs minister, Kristina Keneally, said the party was standing firm in support.

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‘Not welcome’ in Australia: from Tampa refugee to Fulbright scholar, via New Zealand

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New Zealand gave a home, and hope, to Abbas Nazari. He wishes all refugee children could be given the same chance

Abbas Nazari was stranded on a ship in the Indian ocean when he first heard the words “New Zealand”.

Then aged 7, Nazari’s mother, father and four siblings were among 430 asylum seekers, predominantly of the ethnic minority Hazaras of Afghanistan, plucked from a sinking fishing boat by the Norwegian cargo ship, the Tampa. They were later transferred to the HMAS Manoora, where they waited for asylum after Australia refused to accept them; creating an international quagmire over which country would, or should, offer sanctuary on humanitarian grounds.

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Federal court overturns attempt to block medevac transfer from Nauru

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Appearing to set an important precedent, judge rules doctors don’t have to speak to patient to make assessment

The federal court has overturned the home affairs department’s attempt to block the medevac transfer of a critically ill 29-year-old Iraqi man from Nauru, by ruling that doctors don’t have to speak to a patient in order to make a medical assessment.

In a judgement delivered on Tuesday, Justice Mordecai Bromberg found in favour of the refugee, whose lawyers had claimed the department secretary, Mike Pezzullo, had refused to notify the minister of the man’s application for a medical transfer, which would commence the process.

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Keneally backs medevac laws after Dutton claims Labor may help repeal bill

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Peter Dutton says legislation creates ‘broad power’ to overrule minister but Keneally says this has been ‘misconstrued’

Kristina Keneally has reaffirmed Labor’s support for the medevac legislation after Peter Dutton claimed the opposition is looking to repeal or amend the law which facilitates medical transfers from offshore detention.

On Sunday the home affairs minister said that more than 30 people have come to Australia under the medevac bill and gave new details about the refugee swap deal with the United States, including that two Rwandans accused of murder are the only people to have come to Australia under the deal.

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Australia must use past success to reset future asylum policy, professor says

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Jane McAdam of the Kaldor Centre for refugee law argues for seven principles to inform new policy and overturn ‘draconian’ laws

Australia can reset and reform its refugee and asylum seeker policy by looking to its past successes and best current practice from around the world, a leading refugee law study centre has found, to create a “principled and pragmatic” approach.

The UNSW Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law has examined best practice refugee policy throughout the world, crafting seven principles as a foundation for “a more positive, long term approach” to how Australia treats those seeking asylum.

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US fought for right to launch fresh case against two Rwandans accepted by Australia

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Exclusive: court documents show US attorney wanted to be able to prosecute pair again for ‘horrendous’ crime, before they came to Australia in refugee swap deal

Two Rwandans accepted into Australia were accused of crimes so “grave” and “horrendous” that the United States fought for the right to prosecute them a second time, court documents show.

The Australian government sparked controversy last month for accepting two Rwandan militants previously accused of murdering tourists in targeted 1999 attacks in the Bwindi Impenetrable national park in Uganda.

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