That’s right, normal Aussies don’t exist. Given that is the case, you probably won’t find one in Sydney.

It translates loosely as “not pulling one’s weight” (whilst appearing to). That is, in my experience DIMIA staff, when enacting policy of the previous government, were inwardly reluctant.

This is of course was often over ridden by the natural glee of a bureaucrat when they have the opportunity to deny someone a convenience or to make someone’s life difficult.

PatrickG, bigotry sure won’t be dead while ever bumfucks like you draw breath. Makes me glad to live in GreenAcres Queensland. One helluve lot better than the toilet which Sydney is. Any time you want an impossible project, go to Sydney & attempt to find a normal Aussie. They don’t exist.

On top of that, for all the use Sydney is to Australia, it can be cut off & gifted to Norfolf Island, or Vanuata or somewhere. Sure will make the rest of us better off without haveing to pay for that grimy shithole.

I only hope Chris Evans get to read the post, and sees the error of his line-toeing ways

Mind you, I can think how to “tow” a line - but precisely how do I “toe” it?

English. Pfft.

Computer says no.

I dont know this for sure, but it would not surprise me at all if Ruddock/ Andrews therefore ended up with many more meritorious 417 applicants than Evans has. Owing to their own bullying of the Refugee Review Tribunal.

The real question may not really be about Evans and his discretion: but rather, how long do we keep people locked up who don’t satisfy humanitarian criteria? that itself is an important human rights question. At present, I believe it can be up to 5 or 6 years - which is clearly unacceptable.

For starters a s417 visa is effectively a non-convention protection visa. i.e. you only apply for it if you’ve failed to satisfy the Convention test for refugee status, for either a TPV or PPV. You have to establish that you are at substantial risk of human rights abuse, or substantial discrimination, but not for a convention reason (ie state persecution). Or you’re just at the end of the legal road, and have no other options. To even apply for a s417 you must have failed at both DIMIA AND the RRT.

Now, my own view is that we need a visa for that non-convention category, which isn’t sponsored entrants only as the current one is. Take it out of the Minister’s hands. But suffice to say, focussing on that narrow category of applicants wont necessarily tell you much about the new government’s stance on refugee and asylum issues.

Also I note Simons also asks “when will TPVs be abolished”. Well, yeah, ok - but the ALP never promised to do that. At any point. Ever. What they promised was a one-off two year maximum period of TP, follow by PP. When do we see that is the question.

Keep it real folks. As a refugee advocate, I have long considered one of the main challenges dealing with well-meaning but often ill-informed activist hyperbole.

Inform and influence to a degree I suppose, but it’s a lot more based on the ways in which power is used (or avoided) than brute expressions of political sympathy: How things are done, rather than why they are done.

Check out the wikipedia entry for organisational culture, it’s a pretty good precis.

Reading through it, and comparting with anecdotal evidence, I’d say it will be a loooong time until the organisational culture in the department has altered. It might be sped up by the fact that the damage done to the department has seen good staff leave in droves - almost anyone who can leave the department has - and a lot of those left behind aren’t necessarily the best people for the job.

I totally agree with you about the bureaucrats thing though, lol. Having been there myself, you don’t get a lot of love, from anyone!

By and large I agree with Kim’s article.

My point was that thoughtless statements such as “Immigration bureaucrats, who are the same mob who so enthusiastically embraced Ruddockism” does absolutely nothing to address the need for reform within the department and actually hinders intelligent analysis. All it does it create convenient scapegoat: “well it must be the fault of evil bureaucrats”: immigrants good, bureaucrats bad.

With due respect, you do understand that there ‘organisational culture’ and ‘the political opinions of departmental staff’ are not the same thing, right? The personal opinions of the staff doesn’t even come into it.

But proper reviews of DIMIA have shown that the organisational culture is sick, and those reviews aren’t inclined to hyperbole.

Steve, I just love your insights about Sydney, coming as they do from all the way up in Bumfuck, Queensland (didn’t you think Workchoices was popular and Howard would never get voted out, too? backed a bum steer there, mate).

Western Sydney would be stoked if refugee policy changed, given that most of the population there were refugees or immigrants themselves at one time you daffy bugger.

I don’t know where you got this idea from. The department was pretty much bullied into politicisation. I know stacks of people who work for Immigration - not one of whom ‘enthusiastically embraced Ruddockism’.

Has nobody considered the fact that this sort of knee-jerk tendency to demonise public servants as ‘bureaucrats’ (even the word had come to imply malignant cold-heartedness) might be part of the problem, rather than part of the solution?