Detention Reform and Alternatives in Australia Case Management in the Community As an Alternative to Detention
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Immigration Detention in Nauru
Immigration Detention in Nauru March 2016 The Republic of Nauru, a tiny South Pacific island nation that has a total area of 21 square kilometres, is renowned for being one of the smallest countries in the world, having a devastated natural environment due to phosphate strip-mining, and operating a controversial offshore processing centre for Australia that has confined asylum seeking men, women, and children. Considered an Australian “client state” by observers, Nauru reported in 2015 that “the major source of revenue for the Government now comes from the operation of the Regional Processing Centre in Nauru.”1 Pointing to the numerous alleged abuses that have occurred to detainees on the island, a writer for the Guardian opined in October 2015 that the country had “become the symbol of the calculated cruelty, of the contradictions, and of the unsustainability of Australia’s $3bn offshore detention regime.”2 Nauru, which joined the United Nations in 1999, initially drew global attention for its migration policies when it finalised an extraterritorial cooperation deal with Australia to host an asylum seeker detention centre in 2001. This deal, which was inspired by U.S. efforts to interdict Haitian and Cuban asylum seekers in the Caribbean, was part of what later became known as Australia’s first “Pacific Solution” migrant deterrence policy, which involved intercepting and transferring asylum seekers arriving by sea—dubbed “irregular maritime arrivals” (IMAs)—to “offshore processing centres” in Nauru and Manus Island, Papua New Guinea.3 As part of this initial Pacific Solution, which lasted until 2008, the Nauru offshore processing centre was managed by the International Migration Organisation (IOM). -
Asylum Seekers in the Pacific (Manus, Nauru)
Dialogue: Asylum Seekers in the Pacific (Manus, Nauru) Guest edited by J C Salyer, Steffen Dalsgaard, and Paige West “It Is Not Because They Are Bad People”: Australia’s Refugee Resettlement in Papua New Guinea and Nauru j c salyer, steffen dalsgaard, and paige west Expanding Terra Nullius sarah keenan No Friend But the Mountains: A Reflection patrick kaiku Becoming through the Mundane: Asylum Seekers and the Making of Selves in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea paige west (continued on next page) The Contemporary Pacic, Volume 32, Number 2, 433–521 © 2020 by University of Hawai‘i Press 433 Dialogue: Asylum Seekers in the Pacific (Manus, Nauru) continued Guest edited by J C Salyer, Steffen Dalsgaard, and Paige West The Story of Holim Pas Tok Ples, a Short Film about Indigenous Language on Lou Island, Manus Province, Papua New Guinea kireni sparks-ngenge A Brief on the Intersection between Climate Change Impacts and Asylum and Refugee Seekers’ Incarceration on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea robert bino Weaponizing Ecocide: Nauru, Offshore Incarceration, and Environmental Crisis anja kanngieser From Drifters to Asylum Seekers steffen dalsgaard and ton otto The Denial of Human Dignity in the Age of Human Rights under Australia’s Operation Sovereign Borders j c salyer Weaponizing Ecocide: Nauru, Offshore Incarceration, and Environmental Crisis Anja Kanngieser The Pacific Solution (2001–2008) and Operation Sovereign Borders (2012–present) expanded Australia’s territorial and juridical borders through the establishment of three offshore regional processing centers in the Pacific nations of Nauru and Papua New Guinea (Manus Island) and on Christmas Island (an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean). -
The Pacific Solution Or a Pacific Nightmare?: the Difference Between Burden Shifting and Responsibility Sharing
THE PACIFIC SOLUTION OR A PACIFIC NIGHTMARE?: THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BURDEN SHIFTING AND RESPONSIBILITY SHARING Dr. Savitri Taylor* I. INTRODUCTION II. THE PACIFIC SOLUTION III. OFFSHORE PROCESSING CENTERS AND STATE RESPONSIBILITY IV. PACIFIC NIGHTMARES A. Nauru B. Papua New Guinea V. INTERPRETING NIGHTMARES VI. SPREADING NIGHTMARES VII. SHARING RESPONSIBILITY VIII. CONCLUSION I. INTRODUCTION The guarantee that persons unable to enjoy human rights in their country of nationality, who seek asylum in other countries, will not be returned to the country from which they fled is a significant achievement of international efforts to validate the assertion that those rights truly are the “rights of man.” There are currently 145 states,1 including Australia, that are parties to the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugees Convention)2 and/or the 1967 Protocol relating to the Status of Refugees (Refugees Protocol).3 The prohibition on refoulement is the key provision of the Refugees Convention. Article 33(1) of the Refugees Convention provides that no state party “shall expel or return (refouler) a refugee in any manner * Senior Lecturer, School of Law, La Trobe University, Victoria 3086, Australia. 1 As of February 1, 2004. 2 July 28, 1951, 1954 Austl. T. S. No. 5 (entered into force for Australia and generally on April 22, 1954). 3 January 31, 1967, 1973 Austl. T. S. No. 37 (entered into force generally on October 4, 1967, and for Australia on December 13, 1973). 2 ASIAN-PACIFIC LAW & POLICY JOURNAL; Vol. 6, Issue 1 (Winter -
Asylum in Australia: 'Operation Sovereign Borders' And
Asylum in Australia: ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ and International Law Joyce Chia,* Jane McAdam** and Kate Purcell*** I. Introduction On 18 September 2013, the day the Australian Coalition government was sworn into office, a new border protection policy took effect. Termed ‘Operation Sovereign Borders’ (OSB), it is based on the premise that Australia is facing a ‘border protection crisis’ that ‘requires the discipline and focus of a targeted military operation’.1 As a military-led operation, the government maintains a high degree of secrecy about its activities, which include intercepting and turning back asylum seeker boats. From early 2012 until mid-2013, there was a considerable increase in the number of asylum seekers seeking to reach Australia by boat — both in terms of total numbers (over 35,000 between January 2012 and July 2013) and intensity (over 3,000 arrivals per month between March and July 2013). Although these numbers remained very small in global terms (representing just three to four per cent of total asylum applications), 2 and 88 per cent of them were found to be refugees or otherwise in need of international protection,3 the unauthorised arrival of asylum seekers became one of the key political issues in the 2013 federal election. Playing upon generally poor community understandings about forced migration and common anxieties about ‘the uninvited’, terrorism, and security, politicians on both sides had championed increasingly draconian deterrence mechanisms — even when couched in the ostensibly humanitarian language of ‘saving lives at sea’.4 It was in this context that OSB was developed. This article begins by examining the background to OSB and what is known about its practical operation. -
Australian Border Policing: Regional 'Solutions' and Neocolonialism
RAC55310.1177/0306396813509197Race & ClassGrewcock 5091972014 Commentary SAGE Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore, Washington DC Australian border policing: regional ‘solutions’ and neocolonialism MICHAEL GREWCOCK Abstract: Australia’s punitive border policing regime, aimed at deterring asylum seekers attempting unauthorised entry into the country, was ratcheted up even further in 2013 by the former Labor-led government and its successor (as of September 2013), the Liberal National Party Coalition. In effect, under the guise of combating ‘people-smuggling’, and a pledge to ‘Stop the Boats’, policies such as the mandatory detention of unauthorised arrivals and the use of off-shore detention facilities have been made even more draconian. Now the aim is to block entirely any right to resettlement or residence for refugees in Australia itself, using the weaker and poorer states of Nauru and Papua New Guinea, historically under Australia’s control, to act – to their own long-standing detriment – as detention and resettlement centres, for increasing numbers of migrants. Keywords: asylum-seeker, Australia border policing, immigration detention, Indonesia, LNPC, Nauru, Pacific solution, Papua New Guinea, people- smuggling, Stop the Boats On 19 July 2013, Australia’s Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd1 and Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister, Peter O’Neill, convened a joint press conference to announce the signing of a Regional Settlement Arrangement (RSA) for asylum Michael Grewcock teaches law and criminology at the Faculty of Law, University of New South Wales, Sydney. His primary research interests are border policing and state crime. He is a member of the editorial board of the journal State Crime. Race & Class Copyright © 2014 Institute of Race Relations, Vol. -
Sharon Pickering (2005) Refugees and State Crime, the Federation Press, Sydney, ISBN: 1 86287 541 3
Sharon Pickering (2005) Refugees and State Crime, The Federation Press, Sydney, ISBN: 1 86287 541 3 Unlike 2001, the 2004 federal election was not primarily fought around racist images of boatloads of refugees 'invading' Australia's shores. However, the detention and mistreatment of mentally ill Australian resident Cornelia Rau, the Federal Government's intensifying and largely unreported program of forced deportations, 1 the unlawful deportation of Australian citizen Vivian Solon and the deaths in custody of 13 immigration detainees since December 2000 reflect the ongoing human rights violations committed b~ the Australian state against 'unlawful' migrants. With the findings of the Palmer Inquiry likely to generate further much-needed critical debate, Sharon Pickering's book is a timely reminder of the dismal reality of Australia's border protection policies and one of the few serious attempts by criminologists to analyse the Australian state's responses to forced migration.3 Pickering describes her task as 'mapping the construction of refugee deviancy and how the ensuing state response can be considered illegitimate and potentially criminal' (p l ). She starts by locating Australia's refugee policy within the wider law and order discourse entrenched by neo-liberalism throughout the Global North. ln this context, refugees seeking asylum outside of the Australian Government's tightly prescribed legal framework arc acting simply out of choice and must suffer the consequences if their gamble fails. Moreover, the very fact of them attempting to exercise their rights under international Jaw qualifies them as dangerous and triggers state-driven processes of exclusion and criminalisation, which help construct and rely upon rationales for ignoring human rights obligations. -
Submission to the Royal Commission Into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability
Submission to the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability Submission on laws, policies and practice affecting migrants, refugees and citizens from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds January 2021 Sydney Centre for International Law The University of Sydney Law School Building (F10) Camperdown Campus, The University of Sydney NSW 2006 [email protected] With Macquarie Law School Social Justice Clinic About the Sydney Centre for International Law The Sydney Centre for International Law (SCIL) was established in 2003 as a centre of excellence in research and teaching in international law. The centre fosters innovative, interdisciplinary scholarship across the international legal field, and also provides an avenue for the public to access international legal expertise. It operates within the University of Sydney Law School, building upon its well-recognised history of strength in this area. This submission was prepared by the following SCIL interns under the supervision and with the assistance of SCIL Director Professor Mary Crock. Parts 1 – 3; Part 10 Sarah Charak*; Wendy Chen*; Angus Chen*; Sherry Xueyi Jin; John McCrorie*; Leah Park; Rachel Sun*; Emma Louise Tirabosco;* Siobhan Walsh; Frank Gang Yang. Parts 4 - 6 Freya Appleford*; Sarah Charak; Angus Chen; Jake Jerogin*; Emma Kench*; Maxine McHugh; Miranda Hutchenson; Anton Nguyen*; Alexandra Touw; Jiann Yap; Alan Zheng*; Kevin Zou*; Part 7 Jess Mitchell*; Anisha Gunawardhana*; Part 8 Mary Crock; Olivia Morris; Part 9 Mary Crock with Macquarie University Law School Social Justice Clinic and the National Justice Project– Associate Professor Daniel Ghezelbash; Thomas Boyes, Sarah Croake, Jemy Ma; and Sara Hakim* (as a volunteer at the National Justice Project). -
Any One of These Boat People Could Be a Terrorist for All We Know!
Article Journalism 12(5) 607–626 ‘Any one of these boat people © The Author(s) 2011 Reprints and permission: sagepub. could be a terrorist for all we co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1464884911408219 know!’ Media representations jou.sagepub.com and public perceptions of ‘boat people’ arrivals in Australia Fiona H McKay Monash University, Australia Samantha L Thomas Monash University, Australia R Warwick Blood University of Canberra, Australia Abstract In April 2009 a boat (named the ‘SIEV 36’ by the Australian Navy) carrying 49 asylum seekers exploded off the north coast of Australia. Media and public debate about Australia’s responsibility to individuals seeking asylum by boat was instantaneous. This paper investigates the media representation of the ‘SIEV 36’ incident and the public responses to media reports through online news fora. We examined three key questions: 1) Does the media reporting refer back to and support previous policies of the Howard Government? 2) Does the press and public discourse portray asylum arrivals by boat as a risk to Australian society? 3) Are journalists following and applying industry guidelines about the reporting of asylum seeker issues? Our results show that while there is an attempt to provide a balanced account of the issue, there is variation in the degree to which different types of reports follow industry guidelines about the reporting of issues relating to asylum seekers and the use of ‘appropriate’ language. Corresponding author: Fiona H McKay, MPH, PhD candidate, Consumer Health Research Group, School of Primary Health Care, Monash University, Building 1, 270 Ferntree Gully Road, Notting Hill, Victoria 3168, Australia. -
Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee Inquiry Into The
Submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee Inquiry into the administration and operation of the Migration Act By Angus Francisi Introduction This submission focuses on the first term of reference of the Senate Legal and Constitutional Committee Inquiry into the administration and operation of the Migration Act. In particular, this submission focuses on the administration and operation of the detention and removal powers of the Migration Act 1958 (Cth) (‘MA’). The Cornelia Rau and Vivian Solon cases highlight the failure of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (‘DIMIA’) to properly administer the detention and removal powers found in the MA. According to Mick Palmer, the head of the government initiated inquiry into the detention of Cornelia Rau, this is a result of inadequate training, insufficient internal controls, lack of management oversight and review, a failure of co-ordination between Federal, State and non-government agencies, as well as a culture within the compliance and detention sections of DIMIA that is ‘overly self-protective and defensive’.ii The Palmer Report unearthed what has laid stagnant on the surface of earlier public inquiries into the operation of the MA: an attitude within government that the powers to detain and remove unlawful non-citizens are wide and unfettered. This attitude is evident in the way in which the detention and removal powers in the MA are often exercised without due regard or concern for the individual subject to those powers. This position is unlikely to change, even if, as inquiry head Mick Palmer recommended, effective personnel and cultural change takes place within DIMIA. -
Citizen Action in Support of Asylum Seekers in Australia 2001-2006
‘I had to do something. I couldn’t do nothing!’: Citizen Action in Support of Asylum Seekers in Australia 2001-2006. Diane Gosden Thesis submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy School of Social Sciences Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences University of New South Wales 2012 PLEASE TYPE THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES Thesis/Dissertation Sheet Surname or Family name: GOSDEN First name: DIANE Other name/s: MARGARET Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD School: School of Social Sciences Faculty: Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Title: 'I had to do something. I couldn't do nothing!': Citizen Action in Support of Asylum Seekers in Australia 2001-2006 Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE) This thesis is an examination of social action opposed to particular Australian government policies. The policies concerned are those affecting people seeking asylum without authorised entry documents. The period examined is from 2001 to 2006. It is argued that the social action contributed to the achievement of shifts in public opinion and policy during this period. The context in which this local action is examined is the international system of asylum, and the responses of developed countries to flows of incoming asylum seekers. Political rhetoric has often demonised those seeking asylum, and the term 'asylum seeker' increasingly has negative connotations for many people in developed countries. At the same time, groups of people in asylum destination countries such as Australia, have also responded with support and assistance for asylum seekers. Using ethnographic methodology and drawing on theories from refugee studies, and collective action and social movement theory, this thesis explores the nature of this particular response. -
The Pacific Solution As Australia's Policy
THE 3AC,F,C SOL8TI21 AS A8STRA/,A‘S P2/,CY TOWARDS ASYLUM SEEKER AND IRREGULAR MARITIME ARRIVALS (IMAS) IN THE JOHN HOWARD ERA Hardi Alunaza SD1, Ireng Maulana2 and Adityo Darmawan Sudagung3 1Faculty of Social and Political Sciences, Universitas Tanjungpura Email: [email protected] 2 Political Sciences Iowa State University Email: [email protected] 3International Relations Department Universitas Tanjungpura Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT This research is attempted to answer the question of why John Howard used the Pacific Solution as Australian policy towards Asylum Seekers and Irregular Maritime Arrivals (IMAS). By using the descriptive method with a qualitative approach, the researchers took a specific interest in decision-making theory and sovereignty concept to analyze the phenomena. The policy governing the authority of the Australian Government in the face of the Asylum Seeker by applying multiple strategies to suppress and deter IMAs. The results of this research indicate that John Howard used Pacific Solution with emphasis on three important aspects. First, eliminating migration zone in Australia. Second, building cooperation with third countries in the South Pacific, namely Nauru and Papua New Guinea in shaping the center of IMAs defense. On the other hand, Howard also made some amendments to the Migration Act by reducing the rights of refugees. Immigrants who are seen as a factor of progress and development of the State Australia turned into a new dimension that threatens economic development, security, and socio-cultural. Keywords: Pacific Solution; asylum seeker; Irregular Maritime Arrivals ABSTRAK Tulisan ini disajikan untuk menjawab pertanyaan mengapa John Howard menggunakan The Pacific Solution sebagai kebijakan Australia terhadap Asylum Seeker dan Irregular Maritime Arrivals (IMAs). -
Australia Has an Appalling History of Mismanagement of Welfare Issues Relating to People Detained in Its Immigration Centres
Macquarie Law Journal (2005) Vol 5 81 CONTRACTUALISM, EXCLUSION AND ‘MADNESS’ IN AUSTRALIA’S ‘OUTSOURCED WASTELANDS’ ∗ LYNDA CROWLEY-CYR I INTRODUCTION Australia has an appalling history of mismanagement of welfare issues relating to people detained in its immigration centres. How is this possible in the ‘lucky country’ where Australians pride themselves on mateship and giving everyone ‘a fair go’? Theories of contemporary contractualism1 offer one possible explanation. Most concepts of the state2 assume statehood involves certain functions. This article deals with the way that different facets of the state - especially its market, fortress and security facets - have fused together to manage ‘wasted lives’3 in detention centres in Australia. This fusion of the state has converted ‘illegal outsiders’ (asylum seekers and refugees) into ‘rightless’ homines sacri.4 My intention is to use contemporary contractualism as the lens through which we can consider how the state has failed to discharge its obligations to detainees under its care. Contemporary contractualism is an ideology that legitimates exclusion by limiting its process to the purchase of outputs rather than the delivery of outcomes.5 This is a ∗ LLB (QUT), LLM (JCU), James Cook University. This article is based on a paper presented at the British Criminology Conference, Leeds, 12-14 July 2005. My special thanks to Professor Paul Havemann and Carole Caple for their invaluable assistance in the development of the ideas in this article. 1 I use the term ‘contemporary contractualism’ here to refer to transactions that can appear contractual in nature but that do not necessarily draw on the principles of contract law as traditionally understood.