Keywords: People Smugglers
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 16 August 2016
23 Comments
The suggestion that those camps need to remain filled in order to send a message to people smugglers is not only morally unacceptable; it is strategically questionable. Those proven to be refugees should be resettled as quickly as practicable, and that includes taking up New Zealand's offer of 150 places a year - just as John Howard did when he accepted New Zealand's offer to take 131 from the Tampa. It's time to act. Ongoing inaction will send a green light to desperate people to do desperate things.
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AUSTRALIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 24 February 2016
3 Comments
On Sunday, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton seemingly relented, allowing the child to be released into community detention rather than carting her off to Nauru. It has, however, been made clear that this is no prelude to settlement in Australia. Dutton's line goes to evenness in policy: 'We are going to have a consistency approach here ... intelligence out of Indonesia recently was that people smugglers were reporting ... there was going to be a change in policy.' None of these arguments passes muster.
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CARTOON
- Fiona Katauskas
- 29 July 2015
2 Comments
View this week's offering from Eureka Street's award winning political cartoonist.
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CARTOON
- Fiona Katauskas
- 17 June 2015
3 Comments
View this week's offering from Eureka Street's award winning political cartoonist.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Moira Rayner
- 20 February 2014
38 Comments
We created this risk, intending it to 'deter' boat people and people smugglers. As a consequence, we've created racial conflict in PNG and the collapse of the rule of law in Nauru. Now, it is surely a duty to re-evaluate a policy that leads to mental illness, destruction of property, hope, imagination and civil society, and death. I think we have a duty to refugees, because we are descended from refugees and may be refugees ourselves, one day.
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AUSTRALIA
- Tony Kevin
- 02 October 2013
15 Comments
Tony Abbott did handsomely in Jakarta. He was able convincingly to pitch the message that the bilateral relationship is much bigger and more important than the people smuggling issue, which he implicitly admitted had been mishandled by Australia. The national interest will be well served by the PM's deft handling of a difficult situation.
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Tim Kroenert
- 15 August 2013
2 Comments
As social commentary Elysium clearly has in mind any country that receives 'unwanted' arrivals of refugees. But it seems particularly timely in Australia, where the political response to asylum seekers who arrive by boat is simply to stop them. The response by the fictional bureaucrat Delacourt, to blow the smugglers' ships out of the air before they reach Elysium, certainly takes the 'stop the boats' mentality to its extreme.
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INTERNATIONAL
- Walter Hamilton
- 26 July 2013
11 Comments
A constitutional challenge in PNG to the resettlement agreement could quickly destroy any disincentive value as far as people smugglers are concerned. Under the country's constitution, foreigners may not be detained unless they have broken the law in entering the country. Since the asylum seekers are being sent there against their will they cannot be held to have entered illegally.
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AUSTRALIA
The sinking of the asylum seeker vessel SIEV 358 encapsulates key questions as to why these tragedies too often happen at interfaces between Australia's border protection system and maritime search and rescue system, and the under-resourced Indonesian maritime search and rescue system. Hopefully next week's public inquest by the WA Coroner comes up with some answers.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 14 August 2012
27 Comments
Amending the Migration Act to make the old style Pacific solution less susceptible to judicial review errs on the wrong side of decency. The Coalition and the Greens should unite in the Senate to oppose it. In the protection of the human rights of asylum seekers, deterrence must come second to decency and accountability, even when we are trying to beat people smugglers.
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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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AUSTRALIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 04 November 2011
20 Comments
So-called people smugglers are often penniless teenagers who are simply a link in the chain for those who are seeking legitimate asylum. The Government's new retrospective law will punish such individuals for an act that was legal at the time it was committed.
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