Last week Chris Bowen announced that the ‘no advantage’ principle would extend to asylum seekers arriving by boat whose claims are processed onshore in Australia. This is in direct response to the arrival of 7500 asylum seekers post August 13, and the realisation that it was impossible to accommodate this number on Nauru and Manus
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The plan to detain asylum seekers for processing on Nauru and Manus Island has failed even before the first detainee has arrived. The belief that this policy could be effective was built upon the false premise that the first ‘Pacific Solution’, implemented under the Howard government was effective in deterring boat arrivals. In fact boat
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The airing of SBS’s ‘Go Back To Where You Came From’ this week has injected a much needed dose of reality and perspective into a debate dominated by sound-bites, spin and misinformation. The program has taken 6 ‘celebrity’ guests and flung them into the very real situations faced by asylum seekers in some of the
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They wept, they wrung their hands, they swore not over their dead bodies as they declared their mission to prevent further loss of life at sea. They then supported a solution which requires asylum seekers to get into dangerous, overloaded, fishing boats and to set off into the vast ocean with the hope that the
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The Gillard Government’s ‘Migration Legislation Amendment (Offshore Processing and Other Measures) Bill 2011 breaches all the key legal obligations we have as a signatory under the Refugee Convention contrary to the Prime Minister’s claims. What this law breaches under the Refugee Convention Article 16: Access to Courts These legislative amendments provide no legal guarantee of
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