Senator Andrew Bartlett
Thursday, July 28, 2005
 
More of Australia excised as Xmas Island camp empties

Today it was announced that the remaining Vietnamese detainees on Christmas Island who have been held there for over 2 years would be given visas.

This means that every one of the 53 Vietnamese asylum seekers who arrived at Port Headland on 1 July 2003 have received visas (plus two babies born later). Every single one of them was initially rejected by DIMIA officials. Some were later given visas by the Refugee Review Tribunal, some had success in the Federal Court and the remaining few were given visas through Ministerial discretion.

This is all good news, but how many millions of dollars and years of suffering could have been avoided if there had been a proper and humane process operating in the first place?

The work of many advocates and supporters to keep pressuring for justice for these people should be acknowledged, especially the people of Christmas Island, and WA refugee advocate Kaye Bernard who kept pressuring day after day and had great success in drawing media attention to the absurd situations these people were put through.

This is yet one more reason why our Migration Act should be completely overhauled. Two recent Federal Court decisions add even more reason. One noted the unauthorised search, questioning and detention of a man holding a student visa, the other which showed that the Department and the Tribunal have not been properly applying the Refugee Convention to refugees on temporary protection visas.

Yet at the same time as the camp empties, the Minister has once again moved to excise thousands of Australian islands from the Migration Zone. This has been defeated by the Senate at least twice before, but will obviously be harder to stop this time. This is a seriously dangerous approach, as it enables Australian government officials to make migration decisions about people in Australia without any recourse to the law at all. As we know, actions by DIMIA and the government can be bad enough even when the Migration Act applies, but imagine what it is like when they can ignore it completely.

Of course, even though the Christmas Island centre is now empty, the Government is still planning to spend over $300 million building a new one!

posted by Andrew Bartlett @ Thursday, July 28, 2005 Permalink
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