On 5 October 2016, Frank Brennan gave the Fourth Notre Dame Social Justice Lecture.
He said
“It is time to see if we can design a way of getting the asylum seekers off Nauru and Manus Island in such a way that we don’t restart boats. … The suggestion that those camps need to remain filled in order to send a message to people smugglers so that the boats will stay stopped is not only morally unacceptable, it is strategically questionable. … In August, I joined Robert Manne, Time Costello and John Menadue in calling for an end to the limbo imposed on proven refugees on Nauru and Manus Island. I think this can be done while keeping the boats stopped. … Warehousing proven refugees for years on end is not an option.”
See link to lecture below:
https://www.eurekastreet.com.au/preview.aspx?aeid=49988
Fr Frank Brennan SJ has published four books on Indigenous constitutional recognition: Sharing the Country (Penguin Books, two editions, 1992 and 1994); No Small Change: The Road to Recognition for Indigenous Australia (University of Queensland Press, 2015); An Indigenous Voice to Parliament: Considering a Constitutional Bridge (Garratt Publishing, 2023, three editions) and Lessons from Our Failure to Build a Constitutional Bridge in the 2023 Referendum (Connor Court, 2024). He was a member of the Calma/Langton Senior Advisory Group on the Indigenous Voice Co-Design Process.