As news came out yesterday evening that a Syrian refugee passport was found next to one of the terrorists in the Paris attacks on Friday, predictably the media pounced, and all the right wing refugee-demonisers came out in force. Our very own stop-the-boats-fetishest, Tony Abbott, spoke with his media team – the Daily Terrorgraph, sorry Daily Telegraph – who today published
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Australia’s Minister for Saying-We’ve-Stopped-the-Boats – one Mr Peter ‘PDuddy’ Dutton – was out and about this morning defending what he and his government believe is the best and most successful immigration policy EVER. I decided to check out PDuddy’s claim against the following officialesque list… The Top 5 signs your Refugee Policy is a disaster Number Five: Refugees would rather
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Nauru was described by The Economist in 2001 as a hotbed of incompetence – as “Paradise Lost…..an enormous moth-eaten fedora: a ghastly grey mound of rock surrounded by a narrow green brim of vegetation“. That same year, Nauru became a cornerstone of one of the LNP’s favourite policies – their refugee policy. In the heady days of the Abbott PMship, barely a day went
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Geoffrey Robertson’s recent appearance on Q and A reminded me of the value of considering a situation through the eyes of another via a hypothetical situation… Here’s one to have a go at by: Reading the Hypothetical (and extremely fictional) story. Considering the three options. Checking out the ‘Things to consider’ section. And then…. Voting for the option you would choose if you were
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It’s something we take for granted isn’t it? That each of us has a country – a place to put our feet – on a planet where 71% of the surface is covered by ocean. Like having air to breathe, we assume that having somewhere to stand, to walk – is a basic right of existence. Our bodies aren’t exactly ocean-friendly – not for
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As most people know, laws came into effect on 1 July this year making it a crime for an ‘entrusted person’ – such as a doctor – to talk to the press about what’s going on in detention centres like Nauru or Manus Island, with a threat of two years imprisonment if they do. Having put up a shroud of secrecy
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Unless you’ve been on a desert island or in a coma, you’ve heard Tony Abbott boast over and over and over again that: “We’ve had a lot of really significant achievements over the last year: We stopped the boats. We scrapped the carbon tax. We scrapped the mining tax“ These three issues were a key part of Abbott’s 2013 election
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