Category Archives: Australian immigration and asylum

Deputy premier puts hand up for Victoria’s top job – as it happened

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Canterbury Road fire: firetrucks wetting down area

Supt Adam Dewberry with Fire and Rescue NSW has just provided us with an update on the factory fire on Canterbury Road in Sydney’s south-west.

Vacancy rates under 1% in most of these suburbs show the immense strain on housing availability. When you’re allocating nearly half your income on rent … the financial stress becomes unbearable.

Our index is more than just numbers; it’s a call to action. Policymakers and stakeholders need to acknowledge this growing crisis.

The relentless climb in rent and plummeting vacancy rates are not just statistics but indicators of a quality of life that is rapidly deteriorating for Australian renters.

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Federal government could pay millions in compensation over asylum seeker data breach

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Breach, discovered by Guardian Australia, resulted in information being used to allegedly threaten some in detention

The Australian government may be liable for tens of millions of dollars in compensation to asylum seekers after it posted their personal details online while they were in immigration detention.

The mass data breach, discovered by Guardian Australia in 2014, resulted in information being used, in some cases, to allegedly threaten asylum seekers, or persecute and even jail their family members.

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Home affairs under Peter Dutton was warned ‘failing’ immigration detention may have breached duty of care

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Exclusive: 2020 report told of risk to detainees’ health from indefinite detention and sending ‘prison hardened’ cohort into system

Peter Dutton’s home affairs department was warned that immigration detention was “failing” by an independent review but options to reduce reliance on detention were “not progressed”.

The report by the former secretary of the attorney general’s department, Robert Cornall, found that visa cancellations sent “prison hardened detainees” into immigration detention and warned this may breach the Australian government’s duty of care to other detainees including asylum seekers.

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Chinese migrants believe Australian media fuels hostility towards them, study shows

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Reports about China’s ‘influence’ made public more suspicious of Chinese-Australian communities, according to 70% of respondents to UTS survey

First-generation migrants from China believe Australian media reporting has fuelled unfriendly or suspicious attitudes towards them, new research shows.

The report, published by the University of Technology Sydney, explores the hopes and fears of members of Chinese Australian communities, including a parent whose child came home from school asking: “Mum, is China going to invade us?”

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Victorian recycling company found to have systematically underpaid refugees and asylum seekers

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Company formerly known as Polytrade fined more than $375,000 in the federal court

Refugees and asylum seekers employed to sort rubbish were systematically exploited and underpaid by one of the biggest recycling organisations in Victoria.

A recycling company formerly known as Polytrade, a linked subsidiary, and its owners, were fined more than $375,000 in the federal court this month, over what a judge described as “obnoxious conduct” and a “cavalier disregard” for the law, grossly underpaying migrant workers who spoke little English and were vulnerable to exploitation.

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Australia settles with family of refugee Reza Barati, murdered on Manus Island in 2014

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Exclusive: The government has reached a confidential settlement with Barati’s family, who say they ‘fought for justice for Reza’

The Australian government has reached a confidential settlement with the family of the refugee Reza Barati, nine years after he was murdered by guards inside the Manus Island detention centre, and two years after his parents sued over his death.

Barati was 23 when he was beaten to death by guards and other contractors during a violent rampage inside the Australian-run offshore detention centre in February 2014. His assailants attacked him with a length of timber spiked with nails, repeatedly kicked and punched him once he had fallen and dropped a large rock on his head.

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Business lobby rejects Coalition’s ‘disingenuous’ claims Labor pursuing big Australia policy

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Business Council of Australia wants migration to be more business-friendly and rejects concerns of a surge in arrivals

Big business has sided with the Albanese government by rejecting the “misconception” that migration is higher than normal and the “disingenuous” claim by the Coalition that Labor is pursuing a big Australia policy.

In a report titled Migration Makes Australia Stronger, to be released on Thursday, the Business Council of Australia calls for reforms to make migration more business-friendly and rejects concerns about a surge in arrivals after Covid border closures were lifted.

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Dutton wasn’t told details of Bhojani bribery investigation as it was not ‘custom and practice’, AFP tells estimates

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Federal police say they did not tell then home affairs minister name of man who was subject of Nauru investigation or that department had contracts with him

Australian federal police investigating an Australian citizen for allegedly bribing politicians on Nauru have told a Senate estimates hearing they did not tell the then home affairs minister his department was paying the man’s company multimillion-dollar accommodation contracts at the same time, because it was not “custom and practice”.

The AFP says it knew a company linked to Mozammil Gulamabbas Bhojani had multiple ongoing contracts with the home affairs department when it briefed the then home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, on its Nauru foreign bribery investigation on 12 July 2018.

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Asylum seeker walking 1,000km from Ballarat to Sydney to raise awareness about temporary protection visas

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Neil Para and his wife and two eldest children have been on a temporary protection visa since they arrived in Australia in 2012

For 11 years, Neil Para’s life has been riddled with uncertainty.

He fled war-torn Sri Lanka for Malaysia in 2008 in search of a safer life for his growing family, temporarily leaving his pregnant wife behind.

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Egyptian refugee Sayed Abdellatif cleared as security threat by Asio, but still detained after 11 years

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Abdellatif remains in Australian immigration detention, where he has been held for a decade thanks to security assessments tainted by evidence obtained under torture

An Egyptian refugee detained by Australia for more than a decade has been cleared by Asio of being a security threat, but the home affairs department continues to stall on his release.

Sayed Abdellatif arrived in Australia by boat in 2012, seeking asylum with his wife and children. Australia has recognised he has a well-founded fear of being persecuted and cannot be forced to return to his home country. But he has been denied a visa on the basis of tainted security assessments and held in immigration detention.

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Family of Iranian woman who fled death penalty should have asylum case review, court rules

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The woman managed to secure a safe haven visa but not her parents and brother, who escaped with her to Australia

The family of a woman who fled Iran after facing the death penalty for escaping an arranged marriage has been granted the chance to stay with her in Australia.

Despite an Immigration Assessment Authority decision to deport the woman’s parents and brother, the federal circuit court has ruled the trio should have their application for asylum reviewed.

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Search continues for entrepreneur after Sydney boat crash – as it happened

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Police extend search for Andrew Findlay after body of art dealer Tim Klingender was found. This blog is now closed

A man and woman will face court today in Melbourne accused of murder after the body of a man in his 40s was found in a city street, AAP reports.

Police say the charges follow an alleged incident at a home near Glen Waverley train line in Binalong Avenue, Chadstone on Tuesday, where a man in his 40s was fatally assaulted.

It can be a sensitive and confronting topic for many people so it is important that any future legislation is done through intensive and thorough consultation with all Territorians.

This is an imperative step forward for the Territory and I am honoured to play my part in this important consultation process.

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Morrison government struck secret deal to pay PNG to take refugees and asylum seekers

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Exclusive: Australian government is refusing to say how much it is giving Papua New Guinea under the agreement

The Australian government is refusing to say how much it is paying to Papua New Guinea in a secret agreement to hold about 75 refugees and asylum seekers in Port Moresby.

Parliamentary documents have revealed for the first time this week that the Morrison government signed a “confidential bilateral agreement” with PNG in December 2021, paying the PNG government to provide welfare and support for refugees forcibly sent to PNG by Australia.

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Senator says she has been ‘excluded’ from writing pamphlet – as it happened

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Patricia Karvelas challenges Littleproud’s Covid reasoning behind the Murray-Darling Basin delays on ABC RN this morning.

“This isn’t a new problem … Your government was in power when a 2019 Productivity Commission report warned that there had been limited progress returning the water to the environment,” she says. “Why didn’t you change course?”

This is a very technical piece of legislation … The 450 is additional to the 2,750 gigalitres of water in the plan, the Productivity Commission looked at the 450 gigalitres, there’s only been 2 gigalitres recovered on the 450 …

Because the neutrality test on social and economic impact on rural communities have not been passed to get more water back out of it – that’s a test the Labor government put in place, that we adhere to that the states agreed to.

He [is] going down a path that’s divided the country and meant that the attention has been taken away from managing people’s cost-of-living crisis, and focused on trying to win a referendum in which he has overreached in conflating a voice with constitutional recognition.

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Barnaby Joyce apologised to Peter Dutton for breaking ranks over the Biloela family

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A letter written at the time reveals that Joyce told Dutton he could not justify deporting the Murugappan family, whose two children were born in Australia

Barnaby Joyce appears to have blindsided Peter Dutton with his support for the Murugappan family to stay in Australia, linking his position to his pro-life stance, a newly-released letter reveals.

Joyce’s letter to Dutton in September 2019 includes both an apology to the then home affairs minister for not giving him more notice and an explanation he believes the family’s children should be able to stay because “a child has rights before they are born and after”.

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Greens and Coalition unite to refer bill to its own inquiry

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Albanese takes swipes at the Greens

The Midwinter Ball was held overnight. It seems to have been a fairly staid affair but I am still ferreting out info.

Consulting firm PwC engaged in a “calculated” breach of trust by using confidential information to help its clients avoid tax and engaged in a “deliberate cover-up” over many years, a Senate committee has found.

PwC should be “open and honest” by promptly publishing the names and details of its partners and staff involved, the finance and public administration committee has recommended.

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Australia’s use of hotels for immigration detention found to have ‘devastating’ health effects

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At the time of the Australian Human Rights Commission’s inspections, the longest continuous detention in a hotel was 634 days

The Australian government’s use of city hotels as ad hoc immigration detention centres – including confining people for nearly two years – has “devastating impacts on people’s mental and physical health”, the Australian Human Rights Commission has found.

In a report published on Wednesday morning, the commission argued that the use of hotels to incarcerate people remained a “regularised” part of Australia’s immigration infrastructure, rather than a measure of last resort, even though the number of people detained – and the length of their detention – has steadily decreased.

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Australia politics live: Mehreen Faruqi says housing fund standoff ‘not about playing political games’

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Follow latest updates live

Independent Kooyong MP Dr Monique Ryan said the crossbench was distressed by the past week in parliament:

I can speak for other members of the crossbench because we talk to each other after each question time because we found it distressing, and we wanted to stand to our feet and say that we felt it was conduct unbecoming parliament, and I think if we learn nothing from this, we have to decide as a society whether we want our parliament really to be dragging people who have gone through really difficult experiences through that sort of experience again. It wasn’t ideal. It was – I actually felt it was shameful.

I think there were serious questions that needed to be asked in the face of a minister misleading the Senate and we asked questions about who knew what, when, what was done with that information – all very legitimate questions, and this issue, when it was last in parliament was pursued ferociously by the then opposition and I think we were very careful as we could be with our tone, but to also ask legitimate questions of the government and their ministers, not just around who knew what when but also around the swiftness of the compensation payment, why some evidence in that process was explicitly excluded, and that, you know, the substantial nature of it – all legitimate questions and the right thing to do.

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Australia’s population grew at fastest rate since 2008 amid post-Covid migration boom

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The 1.9% increase to a total of 26.3m is down to more overseas students and temporary workers, but experts say the rise will flatten out

Australia’s population grew at its fastest rate in more than 13 years in 2022, in part due to a post-pandemic migration boom.

But while the figures are significant, demographer Dr Elin Charles-Edwards warned that a large portion of the migrants were only in Australia temporarily to address critical labour shortages and the numbers would fall over the coming years.

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Australia to transport last asylum seekers off Nauru within weeks, refugees say

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Exclusive: Three asylum seekers and refugee advocates say government has flagged a 30 June goal

The Australian government is expected to move all remaining refugees and asylum seekers off Nauru by the end of the month, more than a decade after offshore processing restarted on the Pacific Island nation.

But Australia will retain an “enduring” capacity for offshore detention on the island indefinitely.

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