Also filed here:

• Categories
  • No categories

Join the celebrations

After campaigning with others on refugee and asylum seeker issues since 2001, TEAR, UCA, RAC, GetUp and all the rest can join the celebrations.

(Ben’s take from the tear network below)

The Immigration Minister has proposed changes to make detention of aslyum-seekers a last resort and put in place clear boundaries so that it cannot be indefinite and unreviewable.
Asylum seekers coming by boat to one of the places that the previous Government excised from Australia’s migration zone will now also have access to assistance and review of their cases – rights the former
policy stripped them of.

We are very supportive of the Government’s proposed changes. We hope and pray that we will never again see people (including many children) locked up for years, with all the associated mental and physical harm,
while they seek protection in Australia.

A new, humane policy

The Government has decided to take a risk-based approach to deciding whether an asylum seeker should be detained or not. If a person poses no danger to the community, they will be allowed to remain in the
community until their status is determined.

You can read the Minister for Immigration’s entire speech here
http://www.minister.immi.gov.au/media/speeches/2008/ce080729.htm
The Minister outlines the values that will inform the new policy as well as some of the practical details.

Children will not be detained in an immigration detention centre. People who arrive by boat at excised places, which include Christmas Island and Ashmore Reef, will be detained soley for health, identity and security checks.  People who arrive by boat at excised places will now have access to legal assistance and an independent review of unfavourable decisions.  Only people who pose a risk to the community or who have repeatedly refused to comply with their visa conditions will be detained. Once in detention, a detainee’s case will be reviewed every three months to ensure that further detention is justified.

Thank the Immigration Minister

Send an email now
Senator.Evans@aph.gov.au

thanking the Immigration Minister for these changes. Ask him to
make these policy changes law so that no future Government can return
to detaining children, or keeping people in detention indefinitely and
without review.