The undiscussed refugee never-never
When Tony Abbott promises to cut bureaucracy, I rather doubt ASIO is at the top of his list of places to look for savings. It should be, given that its budget has grown from 60-odd million dollars in 2001 to [...]
Just playing politics
Today happens to be the 10-year anniversary of the sinking of SIEV X. Just a week ago the Senate voted down a remembrance motion from The Greens, so our people’s representatives chose not to remember. I haven’t had time to [...]
Where to with asylum seeker policy?
The issue likely to cause the Gillard Government the most difficulty this week is asylum seeker policy, which is due to be voted on in the House of Representatives tomorrow. It seems the votes of cross-benchers Tony Crook and Rob [...]
Quicklink: 10 policy issues more important than asylum seekers
John D has suggested a quicklink post as below. Steven Bartos at the ABC Drum suggests 10 policy issues that he considers more important than asylum seekers. He starts by saying that: A visitor to Australia with any more than [...]
Nielsen finds Labor would be 52-48 ahead under Rudd
I’ve got big doubts that polls which are based on counterfactuals have the meaning they’re purported to bear, but something must be going on when Nielsen has Labor’s primary vote at 27% but at 42% if Kevin Rudd were leader. [...]
Fantasy, politics and offshore processing
So, the Gillard government continues its bizarre negotiations with the Coalition over some legislative way to effectively overturn the High Court’s decision on asylum seekers, and revive offshore processing. A dire warning was provided to the Coalition by the Secretary [...]
Breaking the stalemate on asylum seekers and refugees II
It’s become increasingly clear that the High Court’s decision yesterday does more than block the ‘Malaysian Solution’. It also has the effect of radically challenging the validity and viability of a range of offshoring approaches to asylum seekers, both tried [...]
High Court stops Malaysian solution
It’s just been revealed that the High Court has prevented Chris Bowen from deporting asylum seekers to Malaysia. NB: Previous discussion of the legal action on LP is here. Update: The full decision of the Court is in this post [...]
Breaking the stalemate on asylum seekers and refugees: How?
The CPD suggests a return to evidence-based policy on asylum seekers. The question is: how do we get there?
Border fantasies out of control
Peter Lewis, of Essential Media Communications, has a good take on the latest Essential poll, which found that the number of respondents concerned about asylum seeker arrivals on boats dropped significantly when informed that total numbers of arrivals were actually [...]
Injunction against asylum seeker deportations to Malaysia granted
In news just in, the High Court has granted an injunction against deportation of the asylum seekers who have recently arrived on Christmas Island until tomorrow, to enable argument in a case brought to assert that their deportation is illegal [...]
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