Keywords: Christmas Island
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CARTOON
- Fiona Katauskas
- 01 May 2013
1 Comment
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AUSTRALIA
We now have another distressing and perplexing case of possible Australian failure properly to use intelligence information to save lives. If the unnamed agency that briefed AMSA did have the relevant coordinates, and yet did not pass them to AMSA to pass to BASARNAS, it could be complicit in the deaths of up to 58 people last week.
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AUSTRALIA
The details of the event as so far publicly known suggest seriously life-threatening negligent process. No one would have died if this unnecessary and, on the face if it, unprofessional halt and boarding had not taken place. No amount of blaming the asylum seekers' poor seamanship can get around that fact.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
Ceilings creep upward in silent communion. Porcelain hands like the soft robes of Jesus, reach across a domed fresco from Bethlehem to Nazareth ... When darkness settles on rocks and stones, old churches shrug back into themselves, back into their timber rafters that squeak a thousand Amens.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 26 June 2012
18 Comments
Last week’s tragedy of another mass loss of life at sea between Indonesia and Christmas Island focuses our minds yet again on an intractable public policy problem for Australia – our search for a coherent, workable and moral asylum policy.
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AUSTRALIA
- Aloysious Mowe
- 20 December 2011
10 Comments
Of course we want people to stop making the hazardous boat journey to Christmas Island, but tow-backs and off-shore processing are immoral and stupid. Australia must engage with others in the region to find ways to ensure people are not driven to make desperate journeys.
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AUSTRALIA
- Tony Kevin
- 19 December 2011
20 Comments
The latest tragedy comes ten years after SIEV X and a year after the Christmas Island shipwreck. It will be exploited by both Gillard and Abbott to further their border protection policies. Questions surround the disaster that the Australian Government would prefer not be asked.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
Christmas for crabs; their island blooms with a rare largesse of flesh mashed to pulp on rocks — such 'palatable human refuse'.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 19 July 2011
12 Comments
This is not a regional solution to a regional problem, but a bilateral attempt at solving an Australian problem. To stop the boats, one needs to engage in measures contrary to the Refugee Convention. Church groups can not endorse something they know to be either unworkable or immoral.
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AUSTRALIA
- Greg Foyster
- 20 June 2011
22 Comments
One day a stranger knocks on the door. 'Help!' he shouts. 'The people in my house are trying to kill me!' Instinctively, you reach for the door handle. A wrinkled hand, old yet firm, grabs your wrist. You look up and see your landlord, a bald man with thick rectangular glasses and bushy eyebrows.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Andrew Hamilton
- 12 May 2011
27 Comments
Anne Frank described a refugee as a parcel that is sent from post office to post office. The 'Malaysian solution' is like solving the problem of overloaded post offices by sending incoming parcels straight to the shredder.
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AUSTRALIA
Last November, a refugee boat was lost at sea en route to Christmas Island. It's presumed the 97 on board perished. Evidence suggests Australia's Border Protection Command selectively chooses to make little or no effort to find and help SIEV boats in possible distress.
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