Australia paid companies linked to suspected drug and weapons smuggling to run offshore detention, review finds

Home affairs minister Clare O’Neil says scathing report shows offshore processing ‘used as a slush fund by suspected criminals’

Contractors suspected of drug smuggling and weapons trafficking were handed multimillion dollar contracts due to a lack of due diligence in the administration of Australia’s offshore detention regime, a scathing report has found.

The home affairs minister, Clare O’Neil, has seized on the findings of the inquiry to claim that the now opposition leader, Peter Dutton, oversaw “an offshore processing regime being used as a slush fund by suspected criminals” when he was the responsible minister.

A company whose owners were suspected, through the ownership of another company, of seeking to circumvent US sanctions against Iran, and with extensive suspicious money movements suggesting money laundering, bribery and other criminal activity;

Companies under investigation by the Australian federal police (AFP)

A company whose chief executive was being investigated for possible drugs and arms smuggling into Australia, “although, at the time it would have been unrealistic to have expected those responsible for contract and procurement to be aware of this”; and

An enterprise suspected of corruption.

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Watchdog lambasts Australian Border Force and home affairs deportation procedures

Ombudsman’s scathing report finds agencies have ‘little acknowledgement’ of impact of detention on detainees’ health

The Australian government has failed to set up an appropriate process to deport people held in immigration detention, a scathing report by the independent watchdog has found.

The commonwealth ombudsman found the Australian Border Force and home affairs department’s processes do not contain “timeframes for steps” towards deportation “or otherwise adequately reflect the significant impact of any delay upon a person’s liberty”.

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Australia urged to quash convictions of all Indonesian children jailed as adult people smugglers

Exclusive: Leader of successful class action says government should ‘step in to overturn the convictions’, amid calls for a formal apology

The Indonesian fisher who led the challenge against Australia’s unlawful detention of hundreds of children found on people-smuggling boats has urged the government to help quash all remaining convictions linked to the scandal.

The federal government relied on a deeply flawed age assessment technique – interpretations of wrist X-rays – to detain hundreds of Indonesian children found crewing people-smuggling boats in 2009 and the early 2010s.

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Child among asylum seekers returned to country of origin after being sent from Australia to Nauru

Home affairs department confirms eight of the 11 people flown to island nation in September have since returned home

Eight of the 11 asylum seekers taken to Nauru in September – including a woman and child – have returned to their country of origin.

In October Guardian Australia revealed the transfer, the first by Australia to the regional processing centre in nine years, which occurred just months after the last asylum seekers were removed from the Pacific nation.

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Australia urged to speed up visas for Afghan women who fear being sent back to Taliban rule

Many waiting for a ticket to Australia are in Pakistan, where local authorities are undertaking a mass deportation

Afghan women’s rights defenders who have fled the Taliban’s rule say they are at risk of imminent return to Afghanistan by Pakistani authorities, prompting calls for the Australian government to step in and expedite their protection visas.

The federal government has received more than 215,000 humanitarian visa requests from Afghan nationals since the fall of Kabul to the Taliban in August 2021, granting 15,852 visas so far as of December 2023.

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Freed immigration detainee sues Australian government for damages for alleged false imprisonment

Stateless Kurdish man’s compensation case is the first sparked by high court ruling that indefinite detention is unlawful

A stateless Kurdish man released from immigration detention is seeking “aggravated” and “compensatory” damages for alleged false imprisonment – the first such case sparked by the high court’s ruling that indefinite detention is unlawful.

The intellectually impaired man, known as DVU18, has sued the immigration minister, Andrew Giles, through a litigation guardian, in a case that could pave the way for the 149 people released to sue for hundreds of thousands of dollars of compensation each.

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Australia’s ‘inhuman’ offshore detention regime denounced by global human rights organisation

Report by Australian chapter of advocacy group says policy is ‘embarrassing’ and at odds with country’s commitment to Refugee Convention

Australia’s reputation on human rights took a hit on the world stage last year, Human Rights Watch’s latest annual report has said, after the Labor government returned asylum seekers to offshore immigration on Nauru less than three months after the last detainees were removed.

Despite labelling Australia as a “vibrant democracy” that “mostly protects the civil and political rights of its citizens”, the Australian chapter of the global human rights advocacy group has levelled heavy criticism at the federal government’s decade-long “inhuman” offshore detention regime, with Australian director Daniela Gavshon describing the policy as “embarrassing” for the country.

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Two more immigration detainees arrested in wake of high court ruling

Seven of at least 148 people released after November judgment have since been rearrested

A further two former immigration detainees released in the wake of the high court’s NZYQ ruling have been rearrested after breaches of their conditions.

The men’s arrests over the Christmas period bring the total number of arrests to seven since the high court ruled that indefinite detention is unlawful where it is not possible to deport the non-citizen. At least 148 people have been released as a result of the November ruling, sparking a political crisis for the Albanese government.

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Australian news live: major Victorian road project blows out by more than $10bn; backing UN Gaza ceasefire vote the ‘right call’, PM says

PM says: ‘Hamas can have no role in the future governance of of Gaza, and we need to work towards a political solution.’ Follow the day’s news live

Focus on mental health

The government will be injecting $456m into digital mental health services – including Lifeline and Beyond Blue – to give people to with anxiety and depression better access to mental health services.

Some people go through situational distress through a relationship breakdown or a job loss or bereavement, and they need relatively short periods of support. They might not have a diagnosable mental illness, but they’re certainly distressed and they need support and that really is what the digital investment we’re looking at today is particularly targeted that there are people who go through periods of anxiety and depression and better access.

There’s definitely a gap there for people with more complex needs, but better access which is the scheme that provides Medicare rebates for psychological therapy, the one that we’re talking about, that is not designed to pick up those people and really we need to find alternative systems of support for them.

That is really the concerning growing area of need in the country, not just here in Australia and other countries as well.

They’re now close to $100 a session on average, but there’s many that are higher than that as you indicate. So affordability is a driver of inequity as well and so we’re looking at ways in which we can put out different systems for people who just don’t have the capacity to pay those sorts of gap fees.

We’ve made clear that we will always make the ADF available to states and territories when it’s needed. But we do need to have some other options in place.

We’re a lot better prepared as a country than we were heading into black summer four years ago.

At the federal level, things have significantly changed. We’ve now got one coordinated Emergency Management Agency rather than responsibilities being split between different agencies. We’ve started building a national emergency management stockpile for the very first time, we’ve got the largest fleet of firefighting aircraft that Australia’s ever seen.

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Immigration minister lifts ankle bracelet and curfew conditions for two ex-detainees suing Australian government

Andrew Giles eases visa restrictions for at least two of the three people challenging new rules in high court

The immigration minister, Andrew Giles, has quietly lifted the ankle bracelet and curfew conditions from at least two of the three people released from detention who are challenging tough new visa rules in the high court.

Guardian Australia understands that Giles has exempted a Chinese asylum seeker known as S151 and an Afghan refugee known as AUK15 from the conditions, a move that could thwart their attempts to expedite cases against draconian emergency legislation passed after the ruling that indefinite immigration detention is unlawful.

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Chiropractor asks for no jail time after subjecting refugee to forced labour at Melbourne confectionery shop

Seyyed Farshchi, 50, worked refugee ‘relentlessly’ for little pay and threatened to have him sent back to his home country

A Melbourne chiropractor who subjected a vulnerable refugee to forced labour for his own financial gain has urged a judge not to send him to prison.

A county court jury in October found Seyyed Farshchi, 50, guilty of causing a person to remain in forced labour and conducting a business involving forced labour.

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Tropical Cyclone Jasper live update tracker: category 2 storm hits North Qld, more than 14,000 homes lose power, BoM radar track map – latest

BoM tracker map shows forecast path of category 2 cyclone will hit north of Cairns and Port Douglas on the Queensland coast at about 1pm with heavy rain, 140km/h winds and storm surge predicted. Follow the latest Australia news and weather updates today

Ceasefire ‘can’t be one-sided’

Emergency management minister Murray Watt is also speaking to ABC RN this morning, and was asked about the PM’s joint letter with his New Zealand and Canadian counterparts urging a ceasefire.

[It] shows that we want to work with like-minded countries towards what would be a just and enduring peace. I think the whole world has been pleased to see the release of hostages and the pause in hostilities that we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, but what we need to do is move towards a sustainable ceasefire …

I think everyone who watches this conflict unfolds on their television screens, is really disturbed about the loss of life that we’re seeing go on at the moment.

I think that’s the value that a country like Australia can play here by really taking that even-handed approach that does call out the abhorrent behaviour by Hamas, but also as a friend of Israel, calls on them to respect international humanitarian law.

We are alarmed at the diminishing safe space for civilians in Gaza. The price of defeating Hamas cannot be the continuous suffering of all Palestinian civilians.

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Up to 220 Indonesians could be compensated after children wrongly jailed in Australia as people smugglers

The children were wrongly deemed to be adults by federal police and Australian courts, who were relying on a wildly inaccurate technique

Up to 220 Indonesians could receive compensation after they were wrongfully prosecuted and detained as adult people smugglers in Australia despite being children at the time.

Earlier this year, the federal government agreed to settle a significant class action brought by a group of Indonesian children who were falsely prosecuted as adult people smugglers between 2010 and 2012.

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Australia news live: ABC cancels The Drum; two feared dead in NSW plane crash

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Education review due

Education minister Jason Clare spoke to ABC News Breakfast just earlier about the much-anticipated review into Australia’s education system, released today.

You talk about entrenched disadvantage in our schools, this report tells us we’ve got one of the most segregated school systems in the OECD, not by the colour of your skin but the size of your parents’ pay packet. Children are more likely to fall behind at school if they’re from a poor family and from the bush, but if they’re at a school where a lot of people are experiencing disadvantage it’s even harder to catch up. There’s a number of things we need to do to turn that around.

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Australia news live: Shannon Fentiman announces tilt at Queensland Labor leadership

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Palaszczuk made decision ‘in the interest of the state’, Swan says

ALP national secretary Wayne Swan has spoken to ABC RN about Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s resignation announcement yesterday.

That’s always ever present for any leader at any time but I think she made the decision in the interest of the state and I think in her own interest as well.

I think people are sensibly discussing what the options are and if one candidate has a pretty clear majority then I think it would be unlikely that you’d see a battle, because it would simply be very difficult for the government over a period of time when they need to re-establish a leader in the job.

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Labor targets student and some worker visas in overhaul of Australia’s temporary migration program

Government says temporary migration system is ‘broken’ and changes to student and skilled worker visas are needed to address exploitation

The Albanese government will lift the bar for international students and some workers to get a visa and as it seeks to overhaul what it says is Australia’s “broken” temporary migration program.

A new 10-year temporary migration strategy to be released on Monday will include moves to crack down on the use of student visas as a “back door” entry for employers looking to import low-skilled workers, while the government will also create new visas targeting highly skilled workers, particularly those in growth industries. It comes with the government flagging that overseas migration has peaked and is set to fall in the next 12 months.

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Bill Shorten says it would have ‘helped’ if high court released reasons for indefinite detention ruling earlier

High court demolished indefinite detention system and ‘within one month the Albanese government’s resolved it’, Labor minister says

Labor frontbencher Bill Shorten said it would have been “helpful” if the high court had given its reasons for ruling indefinite detention was unconstitutional at the same time it handed down its decision.

The Albanese government has spent the last month weathering criticism it was too slow to react to the high court’s decision, which overturned a 20-year precedent allowing the government to indefinitely detain refugees and migrants it could not deport.

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Anthony Albanese announces plan to reduce immigration levels following Covid influx

Overhaul follows once-in-a-generation review which found immigration system ‘badly broken’

The prime minister, Anthony Albanese, has flagged a major plan to return immigration to what he believes is a sustainable level after a post-Covid influx.

Immigration will be scaled back to what are considered sustainable levels hand-in-hand with a crackdown on abuses of Australia’s intake of overseas students.

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Sixth former immigration detainee arrested in Melbourne for allegedly breaking curfew

Government scrambles to respond to last month’s high court ruling which led to the release of at least 148 detainees

A sixth former immigration detainee has been arrested in Melbourne after being released due to last month’s high court ruling.

A 36-year-old Eritrean-born man was arrested after allegedly failing to comply with a curfew, the Australian federal police said in a statement on Friday night.

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Australia news live: Daniel Andrews fires up over ‘Dictator Dan’ moniker; festival-goers warned about heatwave conditions

Former Victorian premier gives first interview after resignation, saying ‘the haters hate and the rest vote Labor’. Follow the day’s news live

James Ashby to stand for One Nation in Queensland seat

James Ashby, the chief of staff to One Nation leader Pauline Hanson, will stand for the party in the seat of Keppel at next year’s Queensland state election, AAP reports.

The Nationals are dead in Queensland’s parliament while the Liberals are lurching further left in their attempts to secure inner-Brisbane seats.

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