Asylum Seekers

June 2013

Fun and Games

By Michaela McGuire

The final minutes of yesterday’s Question Time perfectly summed up the week in politics. Christopher Pyne asked the Prime Minister for her comments on a Sydney Morning Herald article in which an anonymous whistleblower told Fairfax that a detainee has been released into the community, just weeks after threatening staff at a detention centre. Gillard called the question a stunt, played o

Current Issue

Villawood’s bad neighbour problem

By Fiona Harari

Since the housing department moved him to Miowera Road eight years ago, Jones has become accustomed to the screams in the night from his faceless neighbours, and the sirens don’t bother him any more. But his partner, mother of six Tracy Tisdell, is less keen on those “cranky” after-dark sounds and thinks the whole place should be moved. “If we’re in the lounge ro

May 2013

We Don’t Live Here Anymore

By Michaela McGuire

"Australia is no longer in Australia's migration zone" sounds like an Onion headline, but unfortunately it's straight out of the government's playbook. Yesterday, Parliament voted to excise the Australian mainland from Australia’s migration zone, closing the doors to refugees but opening the window for the rest of the world to make as much fun of us as they like. Our policies are beyond parody now. Coaliti

April 2013

White Noise

By Michaela McGuire

Last week, the Associated Press announced that it was banning the term ‘illegal immigrant’ from its stylebook. Many major news organisations in the United States had already vowed to stop using the term, believing that it dehumanised those it described. Whether AP’s decision had anything to do with external pressure, or whether it was simpl

March 2013

Asylum Seekers: Another Stolen Generation. Patrick McGorry

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Patrick McGorry, Australian of the Year in 2010, is one of Australia's leading mental health advocates and thinkers. At the Thinking For Yourself conference, McGorry speaks about the damage caused by successive governments' asylum seeker policies.

March 2013

David Corlett on Attitudes to Asylum Seekers: Are We As Bad As We Seem?

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At the Thinking For Yourself conference, organised by La Trobe to honour retiring academic Robert Manne, Corlett speaks about Australian public attitudes to asylum seekers. Presented by La Trobe University, March 2013

March 2013

Thinking for Yourself. David Manne on the Ethics of Protection

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David Manne addresses the Thinking For Yourself Conference (arranged in honour of Manne's uncle, Robert Manne) on the ethics of protecting the rights of those that seek shelter on our shores. Presented by La Trobe University, March 2013

Australia’s shipwrecked refugee policy

Tragedy of Errors

By Robert Manne

Since 1976 fewer than 50,000 asylum seekers have reached Australia on boats. More than half have arrived since the election of the Rudd government; more than a third – over 17,000 – in the past 12 months. Until the Tampa incident in late August 200

November 2012

Let them pull their weight

By Nick Feik

I’ve always found Tony Abbott’s stance on asylum seekers loathsome. He refers to refugees as ‘illegal’ despite knowing it’s entirely legal to seek asylum. He recently announced the Coalition would reduce Australia’s refugee intake, seemingly just to show he

November 2012

This is Not-Australia

By Nick Feik

The government is seeking to excise mainland Australia from the migration zone – but only for unauthorised arrivals. For the rest of us, Australia will still be here. So, refugees won’t be able to seek asylum if they arrive by boat. Because no matter where

The story of a people smuggler

Small Fry

By Ruth Balint

In November 2010, three young Indonesian men were arrested at Ashmore Reef with 37 asylum seekers on board a fishing boat. They were taken to Christmas Island, where they spent three months in the ‘Indonesian camp’ of the detention centre, and then to Darw

Comment: The Australian Solution

By Waleed Aly

There was a Pacific Solution, a Malaysia Solution and, fleetingly, until someone thought to ask the Timorese, an East Timor Solution. But what exactly is the problem? I’m not asking rhetorically. It’s a serious question, perhaps the most serious question in the enti

A People-smuggling Trial

All at Sea

By Sian Powell

A semi-literate Indonesian hired hand started thumbing the tears from his cheeks in the dock of courtroom LG2 in Sydney’s Downing Centre last April. He faced a roomful of imposing figures: two defence barristers and a crown prosecutor in black gowns, a judge resplendent in black, scarlet and lilac, an Australian Federal Police officer, two corrective servi

Scott Morrison

So Who the Bloody Hell Are You?

By Nick Bryant

In a country that has always exhibited a fickle streak towards foreigners heading for its shores, Scott Morrison is especially well credentialled to speak on the subject of his shadow portfolio, immigration. The Liberal politician who has spent much of the past 18 months regurgitating the phrase ‘stop the boats’ was also the managing director of Tourism Australia, who asked the rest of the wor

December 2011

The Search for the Least Bad Asylum Seeker Policy

By Robert Manne

“When the facts change I change my mind. What do you do, Sir?” – John Maynard Keynes On the weekend perhaps two hundred asylum seekers bound for Australia perished off the coast of Java. One key question about Australia’s asylum seeker problem was fina

September 2011

Asylum Seeker Policy: From stalemate to hope?

By Robert Manne

Since 1976 some 25,000 asylum seekers have arrived on Australia’s shores. Despite these modest numbers, the issue has played a major role in our politics for at least the past twelve years. Yet never in that period has the situation of asylum seeker politics

Comment: Ten Years After Tampa

By Peter Mares

John Howard’s stand on the Tampa is generally seen in retrospect as a political masterstroke that stopped the boats and helped him to secure the 2001 federal election. But to leaf through newspaper clippings from those intense days of late August and early September 2

The Hot Seat

By Jana Wendt

The Malaysian Solution, a project he claims largely as his own (“Courageous, minister”, I hear Sir Humphrey Appleby snorting), holds out one of the few prospects of redemption in the government’s valley of tears. With unshakeable faith, Bowen believes the scheme will work – that his planned dispatch to Malaysia of 800 Australian boat arrivals, in return for five times as many proven refuge