Category: Immigration

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has, for the time being, rejected creation of an agricultural visa in favour of changes to the existing working holiday maker program and the seasonal worker visa (see here). These are unlikely to satisfy demands of the National Farmers’ Federation (NFF) for an agricultural visa. While most Australians would see this as a marginal issue, they should not. An agricultural visa has the potential to take us down a very slippery slope if the experience of other nations with such visas is any guide. (more…)

A recent visit to Nauru revealed the effects of Australia’s offshore detention policy and its impact on mental health.

This article was published by The New York Times on the 5th of November 2018.  (more…)

 The boss of the ACCC, Rod Sims, has told The Australian “its recent dealings with the retail telcos has highlighted a weakness with the fibre-to-the-node (FTTN) access technology”.

 For numerous broadband experts, not to mention millions of hapless NBN customers, this might be seen as a classic ‘no shit Sherlock’ moment. However, it is probably the most significant recent development in the long running saga that began with Labor’s 21st Century fibre-based national broadband network, only to end in tears for so many when former prime minister Tony Abbott ordered his heavily-wedged communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, to “destroy” the NBN. (more…)

Refugees and asylum seekers are being kept on Manus and Nauru for one purpose only – to serve the government’s party political purposes.

 We welcome US help but not offers of help from NZ.

 Keeping vulnerable people in offshore detention is not deterring boat arrivals. It is the turnback policy that is stopping the boats.  The vulnerable people in Nauru and Manus are being punished for no useful policy purpose.  They should all be brought to Australia where we have well established settlement services.

 In all this cruel mess, the ALP is silent.  Where is its courage and its humanity? (more…)

The report on the 2017-18 migration program has now been publicly released, more than two and a half months after an exclusive to The Australian newspaper and a short time after the Home Affairs department appeared before Senate estimates. As reported in The Australian, the outcome was indeed 162,417, over 27,500 below the ceiling of 190,000 – by far the largest program shortfall in at least 50 years. (more…)

The Chinese Community Council of Australia welcomes PM Morrison’s olive branch on community relations and the China-Australia relations at face value and with goodwill.  However, we reserve judgement pending resolution of issues with the Chinese Australian community. (more…)

Premier Gladys Berejiklian wants to halve Australia’s immigration intake. It is a diversionary tactic to disguise her infrastructure policy failures. Road and rail policies are in melt down 

 Immigration  does present  challenges but it is Australia’s great success story. Some of the problems that immigration faces are the result of policy failure in other areas like housing and particularly transport. (more…)

In Part 1 I pointed to opinion research which suggests that European and Australian political leaderships are playing to their narrow base, that the population has not abandoned humanitarian attitudes towards refugees, but do reject the dominant slogans of advocates and the implied consequences. I’ll comment on one of the aspects, and report on the 2017 Alexander Betts and Paul Collier book “Refuge: Transforming a Broken Refugee System.” (more…)

Both Robert Manne and John Menadue have recently put proposals at this blog for better refugee policy. As an amateur who has accumulated an awareness of the counter-intuitions, swirling dynamics  and deep knowledge required in this fiendishly complex policy space, I have no detailed prescriptions of my own other than “first, do no harm”. But the European events and an imminent Australian election suggest an urgency for advocates to review their  orthodoxies and adapt to new realities.  There’s not much public conversation and it needs to happen.  (more…)

 Scott Morrison keeps telling us that he stopped the boats. As I have said many times that is just  not true. It is fake news. But the lie has been so uncontested by the media for so long it is hard to nail the lie.Perhaps being careless in the first place the media now finds it hard to admit error

Our public life whether it be about refugees or climate change has been so debased it is becoming hard to sort fact from fiction .    (more…)

Fatima was a happy child who loved school and was a top student. She was 11 years old when she took to her bed, stopped eating and drinking, covered her head with the sheet, stopped washing and started wetting the bed. For months she would not or could not get out of bed and had to be carried to the toilet. She would not speak to her parents or friends. After over 5 years on Nauru, almost half her life, she had lost control of her destiny, had lost all hope and had lost the will to live. When she was transferred to Australia with her mother she needed tube-feeding for a week to maintain hydration and needed walking aid for two months to move around. She gradually began to eat, drink, wash and toilet herself and to socialise. She remained a hospital inpatient for two months and is expected to need several more months of outpatient treatment.  (more…)

When John Minns asked me to help launch No Friend But The Mountains in Canberra I was honoured, because I was aware of Behrouz Boochani’s journalistic work in The Saturday Paper. Now that I have read the book I am humiliated. (more…)

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Major ICT transformation projects conducted ‘in partnership’ with a big IT company are high risk. Privatisation of core government functions such as visa processing are also high risk, especially when undertaken under the cloak of commercial-in-confidence type secrecy. Doing the two together multiplies the risk big time. But that is exactly what the Home Affairs department is doing. (more…)

Major ICT transformation projects conducted ‘in partnership’ with a big IT company are high risk. Privatisation of core government functions such as visa processing are also high risk, especially when undertaken under the cloak of commercial-in-confidence type secrecy. Doing the two together multiplies the risk big time. But that is exactly what the Home Affairs department is doing.  (more…)

In the past 30 years Australia has crafted an almost uniquely cruel asylum seeker policy. Our only competitor is the proudly illiberal Hungary. When Malcolm Turnbull outlined our current policy to Donald Trump in their notorious telephone conversation, the US president was mightily impressed. “You are worse than I am.” No more evidence about the character of Australia’s asylum seeker policy is required. (more…)

Behrouz Boochani is an Iranian journalist, writer and refugee. He arrived in Australian waters by boat seeking refuge after a near fatal journey from Indonesia. He never made it to the mainland. Kevin Rudd had shut down access to Australia. Tony Abbott had opened out the desolate encampments on Manus Island and Nauru. Boochani was rescued at sea, transferred to Christmas Island and then flown to Manus. He’s been incarcerated there for more than five years. Thanks to the High Court’s morally indefensible decision in the case of Al-Kateb, he’s slated to remain on the island, isolated and alone, indefinitely. (more…)

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