Senator Andrew Bartlett
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
 
Christmas Island Update
Regular readers of this blog may recall the piece I wrote about the Vietnamese asylum seekers currently being held on the Christmas Island Detention Centre (Archives: December 10th 2004). As a follow on from that I’ve received some wonderfully positive news that refugee baby Amy who was born on the island in February last year, has been acknowledged as a refugee by Australia. Amy's young parents arrived aboard the fishing boat Hao Kiet at Port Headland on the 1 July 2003 and have since been held in detention on Christmas Island.

Amy (photographed here with Australian Olympic legend Betty Cuthbert) is among the 10 children held on the island for the past 19 months.

While this is obviously very welcome news for Amy and her parents – and they have sent messages of thanks to Australia - it still leaves nine other children and their families imprisoned on the island. These people are no threat to Australia, yet this Government continues to waste millions in keeping them out of sight and out of mind. In fact despite a blow out in costs to $336 million, the Government is pressing ahead with building a new detention centre on Christmas Island for which there isn’t the slightest need.

It really is time the Government stopped wasting both money and lives and allowed the Vietnamese refugees currently in the Christmas Island detention centre to come to Australia.

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Wednesday, January 19, 2005
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