In recent weeks I have been involved in an extended argument on the Monthly’s website over the fate of the refugees on Nauru and Manus Island whose lives all participants in the discussion agree are being slowly destroyed as a result of Australian policy over the past four years. (more…)
On April 18, the Australian government made an ‘Australia First’ announcement that abolished the current 457 visa program and replaced it with the Temporary Skill Shortage (TSS) visa. And for political effect, the move eliminated any opportunity Pauline Hanson or Tony Abbott might have to slam the government by highlighting the abuses of the 457 program by unscrupulous immigration agents. What is clear now that the dust has settled is that this change was 95% political and 5% practical, torching local political challenges and appearing to offer an Australian response to the global anti-immigration sentiment across the western world. (more…)
The current Australian values and new immigration visa debates, blusteringly initiated by Malcolm Turnbull and his would-be successor Peter Dutton, represent one of the lowest points in recent Australian political history. Are these panicking populists capable of dragging the country any lower? Very likely they will try, because the politics they have now so fully embraced can take them nowhere else. (more…)
It seems that Coalition governments have developed a habit of squeezing the citizenship “orange” for political advantage when there are some community concerns about migrants.
Last week’s announcement by the Turnbull Coalition government, at a time of poor government performance in opinion polls, of a “toughening” of the Australian citizenship test for migrants has a familiar ring to it. (more…)
Adjusting the intake in response to shifts in employment makes long-term sense.
In light of government announcement on 457 visas, I have reposted below an article originally posted on 18 November 2016. See also at end, a link to an article by Joanna Howe in The Canberra Times yesterday. John Menadue.
Oversight of the management of work rights of temporary entrants into Australia is broken and needs fixing.
The Asia Dialogue on Forced Migration (ADFM) expanded its membership, deepened its policy contributions to the Bali Process on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons and Related Transnational Crime (Bali Process) and developed its connection to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) at its meeting in Jakarta from 5-7 March 2017. (more…)
Our projections show that, on these demographic assumptions, new migrants will add about 64 per cent to the need for extra dwellings in Sydney over the decade 2012 to 2022 and 54 per cent in Melbourne. (more…)
The permanent skilled migration program should be cut by nearly half, from 128,000 (primary and secondary applicants) to around 70,000. This includes migrants granted visas under the points test and those sponsored by employers. (more…)
The concept of Australia’s Immigration Department being a minor part of a version of the United States department of homeland security is a frightening one. What will have happened to the “Welcome to Australia” banners of years past? (more…)
The burned-out mosques in Sittwe, the capital of the Rakhine state in western Burma, loom as silent reminders of an atrocity, hiding behind overgrown bushes and cement walls amid the daily port city bustle. (more…)
The only way forward in dealing with Manus Island and Nauru is for bipartisan commitment to keep the boats stopped while settling refugees in Australia.
If governments choose to make immigration policy based on populism, expect an increase in human suffering…… (more…)
Until recently cricket is a sport that has rarely engaged other minority cultures, such as Indigenous Australians or newly arrived migrants. In fact, unlike other sports such as Australian Rules football, cricket has been resistant to broaden its base. … The more multicultural Australia became, the more insular cricket became. … The integrity stops with the baggy green and the sport sells its soul to the junk food and alcohol industry. (more…)
Ultimately this argument is about a small number of people who risked their lives in the belief that Australia would provide sanctuary and a better life. In admitting them, Australia could demonstrate basic humanity, close the camps and remove an irritation from its alliance with the United States. It’s a win-win for a PM bold enough to challenge the dominant rhetoric of both major parties. (more…)
Donald Trump swept through the primary and election campaigns like a disruptive force of nature to a victory that unsettled almost all conventional wisdom about modern American politics. A shocked Democratic Party and city-based cultural elites are still in denial about his victory. (more…)
The problem is not with America and Australia – it is with Trump and Turnbull, and more urgently with Turnbull. Sooner or later he will have to decide: does he continue as the next in line of Trump’s Aunt Sallies, punching bags and door mats or does he have a plan B? Perhaps it is finally time to unleash his inner political animal – assuming, of course, that he actually has one. (more…)
Let’s hope it’s worth it. Malcolm Turnbull has sacrificed whatever remaining credibility he may still have had as a small ‘l’ liberal in a desperate effort to save his tawdry deal with the American government. What looked like a brilliant political ploy to resolve the running sore of off-shore detention, has now come back to bite him. (more…)
Donald J. Trump likes to sound off about ‘bad hombres’ sneaking into the United States to spread terror and crime. Bad hombres come in many shapes and disguises, not only as bad people but also bad ideas. (more…)
In solidarity with refugees, young Catholics joined in a Mass in Lafayette Square outside the White House. See link below to article in ‘America, The Jesuit Review’. (more…)
The Macquarie legacy is still with us. It underpins our best instincts to give all residents in this country, whether Australian born, migrants or refugees an equal opportunity in life, a second chance. That ethos of redemption is a core part of our history. (more…)
The Australia of today is vastly different to the Australia of my childhood with its widespread racism and sectarianism. It was socially suffocating. For those changes I am very grateful. There is a lot that we can be proud of. No country has integrated newcomers as well as we have. But there have been failures and remedial action yet to be taken. We are yet to be reconciled to our indigenous brothers and sisters who watched the European boat arrivals in 1788. We are yet to take our share of responsibility for the displaced and persecuted people of the world. (more…)
ASEAN’s non-intervention is aggravating the plight of ethnic Rohingya Muslims suffering widespread abuse by the Burmese military in Myanmar’s Rakhine State. The Rohingya are one of the world’s most persecuted ethnic minorities. (more…)
Casting about for ways to manage refugee flows, some European policymakers speak of emulating Australia’s use of offshore processing centres. But Australia’s approach to asylum seekers is fiscally irresponsible, morally bankrupt, and increasingly unsustainable politically. It’s no model for Europe.
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One Nation leader Pauline Hanson has reportedly proposed that every Australian be required to carry a national identity card. The rationale? The card will supposedly significantly reduce fraud by non-citizens who are resident in Australia. The proposal may be good politics – a timely diversion from Hanson’s very public tendency to lose candidates – but it is unviable. (more…)
As someone born after World War II who grew up in India, I have always wondered how it was possible for a highly civilized society like Germany to have been complicit through silence in the horror of the Holocaust. It simply wasn’t possible for people not to have known what was being done to the Jews on an industrial scale, and that too in their name. For the first time, as an Australian, I begin to get glimmers of understanding. (more…)
Human rights work has a cost, and we need to remember the cost and the toll that it takes on the people who are doing it. Those who are paying the price need the support of those who are not paying so much.
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It would be hasty to attribute the Brexit and Trump votes to a “swing to the right”, or to an ill-informed electorate. The most compelling explanations are in terms of protest votes. People’s anger of electorates has given an opening for political opportunists.
In this interview, reported in The Wire on 31 January 2016, Noam Chomsky talks about the ravages of neoliberalism. this is a repost from 21 February 2016. (more…)
This is a repost from November 3, 2016.
“Across Sydney students from a language background other than English (LBOTE) regularly make up 80% or 90% of enrolments in selective schools.”