New Matilda, 4 November 2017. Read the original here. As the crisis on Manus Island deepens, it’s easy to forget the reason the detention centre is closing in the first place: the PNG Supreme court found that imprisoning Australia’s refugees breached their fundamental rights, and was therefore unconstitutional. How are those same human rights being… Continue reading Manus Crisis: Our Protests Must Build Momentum
Tag: Refugee politics
Jonathan Holmes’ Defence Of Offshore Detention Is Cultivated Racism In Action
New Matilda, 5 May, 2016. Read the original here. On Wednesday, following the horrifying self-immolations and spate of suicide attempts on Nauru, Jonathan Holmes used his Age column to break his previous silence on the Pacific Solution. The result? A gift to Peter Dutton, one of the most hypocritical and effective apologias for Australian brutality… Continue reading Jonathan Holmes’ Defence Of Offshore Detention Is Cultivated Racism In Action
Teachers should be an example and that means speaking their minds on refugees
Sydney Morning Herald, 16 December 2016. Read the original here. This week, hundreds of school teachers from the national Teachers for Refugees group will protest against our brutal and internationally condemned refugee policies by wearing "close the camps, bring them here" T-shirts to school. Predictably, the initiative has drawn strident criticism from the federal government… Continue reading Teachers should be an example and that means speaking their minds on refugees
How to justify a crisis
Jacobin, October 5 2015. Read the original here. As Europe’s asylum crisis intensified last month, prominent liberal opinion pages — the London Review of Books, Le Monde, Canada’s Globe and Mail — featured contributions from some of today’s leading thinkers. Slavoj Žižek, Jürgen Habermas, and Peter Singer all offered their analysis of what must be… Continue reading How to justify a crisis
Manus Island: The government uses the logic of terrorism in its treatment of asylum seekers
The Guardian, Monday 19 January 2015. Read the original here. Seven-hundred men taking part in a week-old hunger strike and protest; unconscious bodies strewn over the ground from lack of stretchers; between 30 and 40 cases of stitched lips; parched asylum seekers desperately grabbing for the water bottles placed tauntingly just beyond their reach. The… Continue reading Manus Island: The government uses the logic of terrorism in its treatment of asylum seekers
The price of Australia’s war on asylum
New Matilda, September 9 2014. Read the original here. So often, since the Tampa, we’ve asked, what next? What will the next asylum outrage be that the Australian government finds it necessary to justify? Last week, Hamid Kehazaei’s death from septicaemia after a foot infection became the latest answer. Another sacrifice to the idols of… Continue reading The price of Australia’s war on asylum
There’s no evidence to prove asylum seeker advocates ‘coach’ how to self harm – because we don’t
The Guardian, July 14 2014. Read the original here. A new culprit has emerged in the human rights catastrophe of Australian asylum policy: refugee advocates themselves. Since Friday, The Australian’s Paige Taylor has reported unsubstantiated allegations against asylum-seeker advocates, specifically my colleague at the Refugee Action Coalition, Ian Rintoul. Taylor has reported false allegations by… Continue reading There’s no evidence to prove asylum seeker advocates ‘coach’ how to self harm – because we don’t
The struggle for refugee rights can be won
Speech given at the Sydney March in March rally, March 2014 New Matilda, August 17 2014. Read the original here. I’d like to begin by acknowledging that we’re meeting on the ancient land of the Gadigal people — land that was never ceded. There’s a clear link between Australia’s dispossession of indigenous people and its… Continue reading The struggle for refugee rights can be won
Writing letters of protest won’t change Australia’s refugee policy
The Guardian, Friday 21 February 2014. Read the original here. Regardless of who was directly behind this week’s horrifying attacks on asylum seekers in Manus, the ultimate responsibility lies with Australia’s bipartisan refugee policy. As a result, many people are agonising over how to play a role in ending Australia’s escalating violence against refugees. In… Continue reading Writing letters of protest won’t change Australia’s refugee policy
Distortions and lies on refugees
New Matilda, August 22, 2012. Read the original here. Last week’s decision to resume offshore processing on Nauru and Manus Island represents much more than either a clear political vindication of the Coalition or the latest cynical assault on refugees by the Australian state. Quite aside from its immediate human and political consequences, last week’s… Continue reading Distortions and lies on refugees
Actual Tasks 