Thread: Court challenge to Australia's refugee swap plan

Court challenge to Australia's refugee swap plan
Posted: 17 June 2011 1138 hrs
Photos 1 of 1
Sri Lankan asylum seekers look out from the deck of their wooden cargo ship

SYDNEY: The Australian government was Friday facing a High Court challenge to its plan to send boatpeople to Malaysia or elsewhere offshore, after lawyers said the deal would break up a family.

Canberra wants to ship 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia as it battles to stem the tide of boats arriving on its shores and dismantle people-smuggling operations.

In exchange, it will accept 4,000 registered refugees from the Southeast Asian country.

But refugee advocates say the proposal means a Kurdish man who has been granted refugee status in Australia will be forced apart from his wife and son, who arrived by boat after him and are set to be processed elsewhere.

"Really this case is about stopping the government from permanently splitting up a family who are trying to reunite and to live together in safety," said the lawyer for the woman and four-year-old child, David Manne.

Manne said under Australian and international law there was a right to family unity for refugees.

He said the family were ethnic Kurds who had been forced to flee Iraq under the former regime of Saddam Hussein and had since lived in exile, stateless in Iran.

"And for all of that time they have faced systematic mistreatment, abuse, including arbitrary -- the real risk of arbitrary detention and of other serious abuses," Manne told ABC television.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said it was inappropriate for him to comment on specific cases, but he believed the Malaysian agreement was on "very, very strong legal grounds".

Bowen said blanket exceptions to the rule of sending all boatpeople offshore would only provide a loophole for people smugglers to exploit, but confirmed that vulnerable cases would be assessed on their circumstances.

The High Court challenge follows a formal condemnation of the widely criticised plan from Australian lawmakers, with MPs, including key crossbenchers, voting 70-68 for a motion demanding the policy be abandoned.

It was the first time lawmakers have formally condemned Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who leads a fragile coalition with a mere one-seat majority.

The deal with Malaysia, which is yet to be finalised, is aimed at stopping asylum seekers arriving by boat after more than 3,000 came in the second half of 2010.

More than 250 boatpeople have arrived since the Malaysia proposal was announced in early May.

- AFP/cc

Court challenge to Australia's refugee swap plan - Channel NewsAsia

any particular reason why you have chosen to start a new thread rather than add this to your existing thread on the topic ?

https://teakdoor.com/world-news/91238...d-showing.html (Finally the Aus Goverment have started showing some balls!)

as I stated at that time the OP was

Originally Posted by Mid

GARBAGE !!

and this OP simply reinforces and vindicates my position .

Yeh you are right on both counts.
no reason other than drugs, or lack thereof.
And yes it has turned out to be crap.

thanxs for that ,

figures out today show Oz has but a miniscule amount of the worlds refugees

in fact the so called problem in Oz terms is way overstated .

"In global terms, the number of refugees and asylum-seekers in Australia (25,565) is very small."

Success keeps refugees coming: UNHCR | The Australian

They are still at it.

Rioting detainees set fires at centre

ASYLUM seekers at Christmas Island's detention centre lit fires and destroyed property for the third evening in a row last night.
Tensions boiled over about 8.30pm local time, with estimates around 100 detainees were involved in the destruction.
A mattress was reportedly set alight on the roof of one of the compounds and bins were also set on fire.

The island's local fire brigade was called along with Australian Federal Police officers. The AFP fired tear gas and bean bag bullets inside the detention centre during protests on Tuesday and Wednesday nights.

Last night a detainee from inside the centre told The Australian Online, "The situation here is very bad.''

"There's no security, it's not safe. Many people make trouble, make doors smash,'' the man who did not want to be named said. "At night the policemen have tear gas.''

The stateless asylum seeker said around 600 men had had their claims for asylum rejected and this had created frustration.

"They have been here a long time and got rejected without reason ... They can't stay in detention like animals waiting, waiting with no justice.''

He said he wanted Australians to examine the reasons why the detainees were rioting and not simply ask who had participated.

A spokesman from the Department of Immigration and Citizenship confirmed last night that "a few small fires'' had been lit.

"The department can confirm that there is an incident underway,'' he said. "Our focus currently and that of the detention centre services provider is on doing what we can to bring the situation under control with the assistance of the AFP and local fire service,'' he said.

The recent protests have seen detention centre "guards'' with just weeks of training being called upon to handcuff Christmas Island's most volatile detainees and fit them with soft helmets before locking them in isolation cells known as Red Block.

Client Service Officers employed by security firm Serco have been doing the dangerous work as recently as Wednesday night, despite the presence of 71 AFP on the island, including negotiators, protective services officers and specialist public order members.

Rioting detainees set fires at centre | The Australian

I heard in other news too that some of them had dug big holes and buried themselves in the ground up to their necks.
I was telling a colleague about this and he had a good solution for that, ironically the very first solution i had for it.
Out of curiosity, I'd like to hear others first reaction on this?

And then this.

High costs of upgrading asylum seeker detention centres

Read more: High costs of upgrading asylum seeker detention centres | News.com.au