Refugee Advocacy Network

The Joint Select Committee on the Immigration Detention Network was damning in its assessment of the problems within the system, such as the urgency of time limits on detention, that cannot be ignored, the Australian Greens said today. “The Government and Coalition are opposed to time limits and are trying to treat this as business as usual,” Greens’ immigration spokesperson, Sen. Sarah Hanson-Young, said. “This is just simply impractical and inhumane – and is wasting billions of tax payer dollars.…

The report delivered today by the Joint Select Committee on the Immigration Detention Network contains critical recommendations that the government must urgently implement in full. “The recommendations provide a blue print for a humane, practical and cost-effective response to asylum seekers,” Greens’ immigration spokesperson, Sen. Sarah Hanson-Young, said. “Prolonged and indefinite detention is at the heart of the crisis in our immigration detention network. The evidence gathered by the Committee and the findings presented in this report are a sobering…

“ABC Radio Current Affairs Reporters, Fairfax writers and News Ltd Reporters all jumped too keenly to assume a direct correlation between an increase in asylum levels in industrialised countries and the number of boats arriving in Australia from Indonesia – and all of them got it wrong,” WA Human Rights group Project SafeCom said this morning. “There is almost never a relationship between the number of boat arrivals and an increase in asylum outflows around the world in almost any…

Australian unions are proud to support the Welcome to Australia campaign to make asylum seekers and new migrants feel welcome to our country. ACTU President Ged Kearney was today announced as an ambassador of Welcome to Australia, which aims to develop diversity, compassion, generosity and a commitment to give all individuals a fair go in our communities, workplaces and institutions Ms Kearney said she was proud to support the initiative, which celebrated the fact that Australia’s cultural diversity has helped…