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Keywords: Manus Island

  • MEDIA

    In defence of 'court jester' Mark Knight

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 19 September 2018
    14 Comments

    The tradition of court jesters licensed to criticise the king exists in many cultures. It is part of a broader tolerance of satire in which the foibles and sins of the great can be safely criticised. The Shakespearian fools are typical in representing the view of the common man as he speaks truth to power. Printed cartoons stand in this tradition.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    How we decide if asylum seekers lie

    • Douglas McDonald-Norman
    • 14 September 2018
    6 Comments

    In the five years I worked in refugee law, some of the most complicated challenges I encountered were questions regarding the 'truthfulness' or 'credibility' of an asylum seeker's claims. These subjective findings of credibility can make the difference between a person being granted asylum or being turned away.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    A Migrant and Refugee Week stocktake

    • Carolina Gottardo and Nishadh Rego
    • 20 August 2018
    13 Comments

    This remarkable policy of what Dr Eve Lester calls 'planned destitution' combines the most extreme instincts of neoliberal, nationalist and authoritarian thinking. Fundamentally, it derives from the Minister for Home Affairs' far reaching powers to determine the rights and entitlements of non-citizens such as people seeking asylum.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Cry, the murderous country

    • Fatima Measham
    • 02 August 2018
    16 Comments

    Indifference to human life is what made Australia, and it still permeates its approach to crises. As with many things, Indigenous experience provides the lens with which to see things clearly. First Nations people know the fatal measure of our indifference. It manifests in many other areas too.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    Whatever happened to 'kindness to strangers'?

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 11 July 2018
    14 Comments

    It has become clear that the brutal Australian treatment of people who seek protection is part of an international punitive policy. This is sometimes attributed to a failure of political leadership. But it may reflect a deeper cultural change in the Western attitude to strangers, seen in migrant and refugee policy, penal policy, international relations and the scope of the rule of law.

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  • INTERNATIONAL

    All hail Queen Jacinda

    • Morgan Godfery
    • 02 July 2018
    3 Comments

    New Zealand’s Jacinda Ardern is a global celebrity: a prime minister on parental leave and a social democrat who can actually win elections. But is New Zealand really the left-wing paradise the global left wants it to be?

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Triggs champions common compassion

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 13 June 2018
    16 Comments

    In the 1930s a Jewish Australian was trying to bring to Australia a Jewish family who were in grave danger in Austria. Asked by immigration what made him want to bring the family of his daughter's pen friend, none of whom he had ever met, he replied, 'Common compassion.' The family could not come, and most were later killed.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Close the camps now and stop the posturing

    • Frank Brennan
    • 25 May 2018
    25 Comments

    For the good of the refugees who have languished for five years on Nauru and Manus Island, and for the good of the Australian body politic, it's time to put an end to this inhumane chapter in Australian history. Keep the boats stopped. Bring New Zealand into the mix now. Empty the camps. And fight your elections on matters of substance.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Must we remain so exceptionally cruel?

    • Fatima Measham
    • 24 May 2018
    3 Comments

    These are people living precariously: pregnant women, families with young children, elderly people. They are being 'transitioned out' of Status Resolution Support Services based on 'job-readiness'. The move not only illustrates the arbitrary nature of immigration policy, which sets people up to fail; it is institutionalised sadism.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Stigmatising those in need is a grubby game

    • Andrew Hamilton
    • 23 May 2018
    8 Comments

    These initiatives are sideshows, grubby and voyeuristic. They mask the simple truth: that governments have the duty to respect people as human beings and not ciphers, to provide benefits that help people to live with self-respect, to take responsibility for the disadvantage of Indigenous Australians and to involve them in its healing.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Thirst for righteousness over Aboriginal deaths

    • Michele Madigan
    • 24 April 2018
    13 Comments

    Commemorating the 25th anniversary of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, NITV re-screened Richard Frankland's 1993 documentary Who Killed Malcolm Smith? Watching it, it became totally clear to me about Manus Island and Nauru. Perhaps as a nation this violence, this contempt of the 'other', is in our DNA.

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  • AUSTRALIA

    Turnbull's unfinished business for 2018

    • John Warhurst
    • 02 February 2018
    7 Comments

    There are opportunities for both sides of politics, government and opposition, in the leftovers from 2017. The balance looked to have shifted somewhat back towards the government in the final weeks of last year. The task of Malcolm Turnbull will be to begin the new year as he ended the last.

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