Mission & Justice

Yuko Narushima; 4/7/08

The Federal Government’s upgrade to the empty detention centre on Christmas Island cost $318 million - considerably more than the recent renovation of the Sydney Hilton and $120 million over budget. The revamp on the tropical island 2650 kilometres north-west of Perth was meant to cost $197.7 million for the “humane detention” of boat people offshore. But since it was handed over to the Department of Immigration in April, the 800-person compound has not held a single detainee and lies staffed and idle, draining taxpayers of $7.1 million a year.

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Nicola Berkovic; 30/6/08

Harsh penalties for employers of 457 visa workers and increased powers for immigration officers are part of a shake-up of Australia’s temporary skilled migration program to be proposed today by the Rudd Government. Immigration Minister Chris Evans said the new laws would help prevent the exploitation of foreign workers and ensure the wages and conditions of Australian workers were not undercut. Senator Evans will today release a discussion paper on proposed reforms to the 457 visa regime, as part of a major review promised in April. Proposed changes include expanded powers for immigration officers to enter and search workplaces to determine whether employers are complying with sponsorship obligations.

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Tony Koch; 28/6/08

Manslaughter charges have been recommended against the designer and builder of an Immigration Department patrol boat that sank in the Torres Strait in October 2005 with the loss of all five people on board. Queensland Coroner Michael Barnes is expected to deliver within three months his findings on the inquest into the deaths of two male immigration officials, two women and a four-year-old girl, all Torres Strait islanders, when the Malu Sara was lost between the islands of Saibai andBadu. Counsel assisting the coroner Mark Gynther has provided a 128-page submission on which all other counsel at the inquest have been asked to comment on behalf of their clients. If Mr Barnes adopts the recommendations, the Department of Immigration is likely to be exposed to massive compensation payouts to the families of the five who died.

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Mary-Anne Toy; 21/6/08

Bill Zhang, a school teacher who became a dissident after being swept up in the 1989 Tiananmen Square democracy protests, killed himself last Saturday night. He threw himself off the sixth or seventh floor of a friend’s housing estate in the southern province of Guangdong because he had lost the will to keep fighting to return to Australia. Mr Zhang (not his real name) lived in Sydney for eight years, driving a bottle recycling truck in Botany, while he kept applying for a protection visa. He was refused six times - the refugee tribunal doubted his story - and ended up in Villawood detention centre before being deported last year.

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20/6/08

The Federal Government will give $3.4million in grants for special assistance to refugees and others who need it to prepare for the controversial citizenship test. The Citizenship Support Grants program will provide funding for 33 community organisations nationally, including migrant resource centres and English language service providers. The Minister for Immigration, Chris Evans, said: “These organisations will offer a range of services to support up to 35,000 people who may have difficulty in undertaking the computer-based citizenship test”, such as low English proficiency, a lack of formal education, difficulty performing in formal testing, or little or no experience with computers.

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Paul Maley; 20/6/08

Laws allowing authorities to bill illegal immigrants for the costs of their detention fail the cost-benefit ratio, with the amount of money raised by the scheme directly offset by the cost of administering it. Immigration Minister Chris Evans told the Senate yesterday the Government would overhaul the laws, which Immigration Department figures reveal to be unproductive. Under the Migration Act, detainees are liable for the costs of their own detention. Last year, the Immigration Department sought total payments of $28,960,617. In the same year, the Immigration Department wrote off $28,910,699, although it was not necessarily debt incurred in that same year. About $616,111 in debt was waived.

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19/6/08

Jesuit Refugee Service Australia director, Fr David Holdcroft, has called on the Federal Government to change a “ludicrous” system which prevents asylum seekers from appealing to the minister until every stage of the assessment process has failed. According to Fr Holdcroft a better outcome can be achieved by extending the legal definition of refugee to encompass the full range of international human rights obligations to which Australia is party, a JRS media release states. JRS Australia works with asylum seekers in the community, many of whom are denied the right to work. “These people are placed in the ludicrous situation of expecting to fail every stage of refugee assessment before they can appeal directly to the minister. At this stage they often cannot work as a condition of their visa and have to rely completely on the kindness of others to survive,” Fr David Holdcroft said.

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Rochelle Siemienowicz; 12/6/08

Film Review: Hope: 104 minutes. Rated: M. Director: Steve Thomas
In October 2001, a people-smuggling boat sank on its way from Indonesia to Australia. 353 people died, many of them women and children who were trying to join their husbands and fathers already here on temporary protection visas. This tragedy barely surfaced in our media, for these were the overheated days of post 9/11, and Australians were angrily arguing about another maritime accident, known as the ‘children overboard incident’. This film seeks to remedy this ignorance, by telling the story of the SIEV-X (Suspected Illegal Entry Vessel ‘Unknown’) through the account of one its survivors, Amal Basry, whose name means ‘Hope’ in her native language. With her hair covered in a dark scarf, this middle-aged woman looks very ordinary — like any other suburban grandmother of Middle-Eastern descent. But when Amal speaks she has a voice that demands to be heard, and a story that is unforgettable.

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Bernard Lane; 11/6/08

So-called visible migrants and refugees - think of dark-skinned Sudanese - have been recent arrivals in country towns. “This is the cutting edge of migration resettlement,” sociologist Brian Galligan said. “If you’re visibly distinct and you come to Melbourne, you can fit in, you can join a community (of fellow migrants). If you go to Colac (in country Victoria) or Albury (in NSW) you’re going to be much more in a ’stand out’ situation.” The professor of political science at the University of Melbourne and his team have won a $350,000, four-year, Australian Research Council grant to study and learn from the encounter between regional Victoria and these migrants.

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11/6/08

The controversial issue of immigration detention centres and their alternatives will be examined by a parliamentary inquiry. Refugee advocates have repeatedly called for an end to mandatory detention, saying it leads to mental health problems. Immigration Minister Chris Evans has asked a committee to examine issues such as the criteria for detention and length of time in centres, alternatives such as residential housing and community detention and detention centres’ physical environment. There are 461 people in immigration detention. Some are asylum seekers, others are appealing against deportation following criminal offences and others have breached visa conditions or entered Australia illegally.

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