IT HAS become something of a parlour game among Australian politicians. Ever since 2001, when John Howard, the prime minister of the day, turned away a trawler that had rescued 433 refugees from the sinking boat smuggling them to Australia, successive governments have competed to come up with ever harsher measures to deter asylum-seekers.
They have been detained, children and the elderly included, in remote desert camps. They have been locked up for years on the Pacific islands of Manus (part of Papua New Guinea) and Nauru while their claims of asylum are processed. One government declared that the Australian islands closest to Indonesia, and hence easiest for refugees to reach, would no longer be considered Australian for the purposes of claiming asylum; a subsequent one went further and declared that all of Australia would no longer be considered Australian for the purposes of claiming asylum. Since December 2013 the navy has simply turned or towed boats of refugees entering Australian waters back out to sea.
Now Malcolm Turnbull’s conservative government has found a way to tighten the screws yet further....Continue reading
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