When the government this week announced the federal budget for 2013/14, one set of numbers was always going to grab the headlines. Treasury has forecast an increase in spending on detaining and processing asylum seekers to the tune of $3.2 billion over the next four years. This brings the total cost to over $8 billion
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The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) recently released its latest report on the number of asylum applications lodged in the 44 industrialised countries that provide statistics to the UNHCR. The 2012 report, recorded the second highest number of applications worldwide this decade with 479,300 asylum applications lodged – a global increase of 12.5%.
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In 1856 a worldwide achievement of the labour movement occurred in Melbourne. The ‘eight hour day’ was won by stonemasons working on projects at Melbourne University Parkville and the Victorian Colonial Parliament House in Spring Street. In 1934, the Eight Hour Day was renamed Labour Day and has been celebrated since then as recognising workers’
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The front page of today’s Age demonstrates aptly the problem with the politicization of the asylum seeker debate – in a vain attempt to leverage the issue for political gain, we see Scott Morrison deliberately capitalizing on an allegation against one member of the asylum seeker community, blanketly applying it to all asylum seekers, and
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Last week the Coalition announced that under their governance they would scrap the review process introduced by Labor in October 2012 for asylum seekers given adverse ASIO assessments to have them appealed. This move would mean that ASIO would be able to brand refugees a security risk to Australia, they would not have to reveal
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