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No matter how the Government paints the canvas, it can never be in the best interests of an unaccompanied minor who is a refugee to be removed from Australia to Malaysia. And if such kids are irremovable, they will continue to arrive in Australia by boat.
Employed at the centre as a psychologist, I witnessed riots, hunger strikes, attempted suicides and severe depression. I realised I had a profound ethical dilemma: in being compliant to the administration, I was unable to ensure my duty of care towards these people. So I became a mole.
Julia Gillard asked her advisers to design a system not for offshore processing but for offshore dumping. If John Howard had tried this in 2001, Labor would have gone ballistic. The advice of Gillard's intermittently trusted advisers is no longer worth the paper it is written on.
I'm not worried about Gillard's abysmal rating in polls. I'm not convinced anyone but journalists and backbiters have any real desire to roll her. There is no obvious alternative to Gillard as Labor leader, but there is an obvious need for a party which stands for something.
Yesterday the Government announced it will change the Migration Act to enable the Malaysia solution to go ahead. This latest action reinforces rhetoric about queues and people smugglers that obscures the real effects and motivations of current asylum seeker policy.
The stories of Jesus' trial highlight the triumph of expediency over legality and morality. The Malaysia solution and the scramble to restore it contains detailed similarities. The people of the time are now remembered principally for their participation in an act of bastardry.
When I argued that the Malaysia solution was ethically flawed, I implied that ethical arguments in favour of the solution were unsupportable, and that those who disagreed with me should change their views. That may seem arrogant, but it is the nature of any ethical argument.
From now on, the High Court will apply a very fine tooth comb to any legislation allowing ministers to ship asylum seekers offshore. Unless there were to be a bipartisan agreement in the Parliament or a government deal with the Greens, asylum seekers arriving by boat now need to be processed fairly, promptly, on our terms and on our turf.
By pursuing the refugee swap deal with Malaysia, Australia may be in breach of one of the most serious prohibitions in international law. This raises the question of what Australia's attitude is to other fundamenal norms of international law. This question goes well beyond issues of refugee protection.
This week as we mark the 10th anniversary of Tampa, the High Court is hearing a legal challenge to the Malaysian solution and an inquiry into suicide and self-harm in detention is underway. Meanwhile a new report hopes to change the direction of the debate on refugees.
25-36 out of 55 results.