UPDATE: All 2002-2007 pages are now archived and [the hundreds of pages!] can be accessed through the links in the archive tables below. The Iraq War and terrorism pages can be accessed through the orange table, linking to our NEW Orange section on the website. There's now also a new Blog archive page - see below.

Archives

Articles, papers and speeches

16 November 2008: Petro Georgiou: The limits of tolerance - diversity, identity and cohesion - "We regressed over the last decade but not because the vision was flawed or outdated. Our society has changed greatly in the decades succeeding the initial implementation of multicultural policies and non-discriminatory immigration policies, but the principles mapped then endure."

5 November 2008: The global economic crisis as an opportunity for transformation - In Beijing during the Asia-Europe People's Forum, the Transnational Institute and Focus on the Global South took stock of the meaning of the unfolding global economic crisis and the opportunity it presents to put into the public domain some of the inspiring and feasible alternatives many have been working on for decades. This statement represents the collective outcome of our Beijing nights.

 :::NEW PUBLICATION::: 3 November 2008: Margot O’Neill, Blind Conscience: Heartbreaking picture, extraordinary cast - This profoundly moving book reveals the untold story of the people who struggled to get asylum seekers out of detention and change government policy. O’Neill paints a compelling and heartbreaking picture through an extraordinary cast of characters ... from the well-known such as Julian Burnside to Petro Georgiou, to those who are not famous but simply felt compelled to follow their consciences and act to help desperate people in desperate situations, often to the detriment of their personal well-being.

 :::NEW PUBLICATION::: 2 November 2008: Mamdouh Habib, My Story: The tale of a terrorist who wasn't - For the first time, Mamdouh Habib reveals the full story of his journey to hell and back. He exposes the complicity of the Australian government in his abduction and maltreatment, as well as its subsequent neglect of him while in Guantanamo. He also describes his encounters with other well-known alleged terrorists, including his meetings with David Hicks both in Afghanistan and in Guantanamo. "Everyone had terrible stories to tell ... catching foreigners was big business. It didn't matter if they were terrorists or not, the Pakistanis told the Americans that they were anyway."

1 November 2008: A Well Founded Fear: a disturbing documentary - An Edmund Rice Centre documentary, the result of five years work of Mr Phil Glendenning and others, reveals what we did to those fleeing their persecutors, locked op on Nauru, when we told them to go back... "Mr Glendenning says he has documented the deaths of nine of the rejected Afghans at the hands of the Taliban, but he believes the figure is actually 20."

31 October 2008: Human Rights Overboard: the Perth launch with Carmen Lawrence and Fred Chaney - with many photos. "The Australian Council of Heads of Schools of Social Work called the People's Inquiry to conduct an independent, open and transparent investigation in order to give voice to those previously silenced, to influence policy and to place the stories of detention on the public record."

11 October 2008: Immigration Detention Inquiry: Politicians and the Whistleblower - Project SafeCom's presentation at the 9 October 2008 Perth hearings of the Joint Standing Commitee on Migration's 2008 Immigration Detention Inquiry, which includes statements from an Immigration Department whistleblower. "It was you, who created public vilification of asylum seekers, and it is you who need to create instruments that undo this damage..."

29 September 2008: Shayan Badraie's Bitter Shore - The Sydney launch of Jacquie Everitt's 'The Bitter Shore'. The intrigue around the hand-written word Bucklies in a Ministerial will no doubt go down as one of the media's central trophies of the month in reporting on the book, equivalent in news value to the former Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock's use of the word "it" to describe young Shayan.

10 September 2008: Human Rights Overboard: Media reviews and opinion reactions - "Using the first-hand accounts of former child detainees and their parents, Human Rights Overboard details the impact of mandatory detention on boatpeople and other unlawful entrants before the policy was watered down." Here is the news about this foundation document of Australian refugee detention and human rights issues.

29 August 2008: This moment, Now is the Time: Barack Obama's acceptance speech - Barack Obama's speech at the Denver Democrats Convention: "America, we cannot turn back. Not with so much work to be done. Not with so many children to educate, and so many veterans to care for. Not with an economy to fix and cities to rebuild and farms to save. Not with so many families to protect and so many lives to mend."

16 August 2008: Welcome to our Christmas Island Gulag, says Immigration - In an unprecedented move, The "new mugs" immigration department invited more than 50 community representatives, working with NGO's who work with asylum seekers and refugees, to 'inspect' Australia's Island Gulag on Christmas Island. While the general flyer sent to the invited guests stated 'no photographs in detention centres', they were told on arrival that taking pictures was fine and we received more than 50 images from one of the many invited guests. Here they are, together with the reaction of those delegates who were invited to the trip: condemnation was handed out liberally, all around.

1 August 2008: Militant gunman kills asylum seeker: Vale Akram Al Masri - Shot in Gaza yesterday, Akram Al Masri came to Australia to find protection under the UN Convention - he didn't get what he came for. But his 2003 Full Federal Court case became a landmark ruling around the question whether or not Australia could lock an asylum seeker forever (yes, we could, and still can), and if we can do that if that person has asked to be removed from Australia...

1 August 2008: Petro Georgiou endorses Labor's detention softening - Project SafeCom's first reaction to Labor's announcement of major detention changes mentioned the notion of "smoke and mirrors", and now that the dust of initial reaction has settled, more in-depth reflections on the changes are what's needed. This page brings together some of these opinions, starting with Petro Georgiou, and then pieces by The Australian's Mike Steketee and Denis Shanahan.

29 July 2008: Immigration Minister Chris Evans announces mandatory detention changes - Suddenly, a major shift in our treatment of asylum seekers has been announced ... The Immigration Minister's speech was comprehensive and announced a shift from a blanket mandatory detention policy to a selective mandatory detention platform, welcome news indeed. Regrettably, while these changes in approach to detention are substantial, and on some level represent even a retreat from Labor's intent with its mandatory detention as introduced in 1992, Labor maintains its "underclass" of unannounced boat arrivals...

 :::NOW ON DVD!::: 22 July 2008: Holiday Camp: How is your liberation bound up with mine? - Holiday Camp is a 45 minutes documentary, which investigates the current Australian immigration policies in the context of 200 years of colonization. This extraordinary documentary connects the issues of indigenous dispossession, genocide, and the incarceration of refugees. It explores the implications of the mandatory detention system and the construction of national borders. Holiday Camp reclaims the voices of the marginalized and connects the issues of Indigenous dispossession, genocide, national constructions and incarceration of refugees, which are often portrayed as unrelated or divisive.

21 July 2008: Supporting GetUp!'s End Mandatory Detention campaign - Online campaign group GetUp! are partnering with a range of refugee advocacy organisations, including Project SafeCom, to send a petition to the federal government's Immigration Detention Inquiry. Chances like this don't come very often - to end a regrettable chapter of Australian history that caused unimaginable suffering to some of the world's most desperate and downtrodden.

12 July 2008: The Australia Institute: Clean coal and other greenhouse myths - This paper by George Wilkenfeld, Clive Hamilton and Hugh Saddler exposes sixteen greenhouse myths, and reiterates the basic principles of an effective greenhouse policy: no new coal-fired generation until it meets the criteria for at least half-clean use; encouragement of renewable and gas-fired generation; an increasingly stringent cap on emissions supported by a tradeable permit system; and stringent minimum energy efficiency standards for vehicles, buildings and appliances.

11 July 2008: Working with Wasim: A convergence of community - The changes that did occur and the defeat of a Bill designed to ensure all asylum seeker claims were processed offshore were in no small part due to government representatives breaking ranks after consistent lobbying by members of the refugee advocate community. A paper by Anne Pedersen, Mary Anne Kenny, Linda Briskman and Sue Hoffman.

7 July 2008: Climate Code Red - Reviews and Comments - "Having been involved with global warming climate change as a researcher in environmental health for 25 years, I can say that this is without question by far the best book to date on this issue -- the first book to have the integrity to say how the situation really is."

5 July 2008: Climate Code Red: The case for Emergency Action - Australian climate scientists David Spratt & Philip Sutton reveal extensive scientific evidence that the global warming crisis is far worse than official reports and national governments have indicated - and that we're almost at the point of no return. According to Green's Christine Milne, they "provide a valuable and sobering contribution to the policy challenge of climate change at a pivotal moment, with their key insight that the expectation of failure has become the norm in climate policy. Climate Code Red is a significant contribution which should be read by anyone seriously contemplating how to set greenhouse emission-reduction targets."

5 July 2008: Will Ross Garnaut's verdict become Kevin's Slow Boat to China? - Professor Ross Garnaut has delivered his long awaited Climate Change Draft Report, and now it's up to the Rudd government to prepare the action and implement the policies. Will Professor Ross Garnaut force Kevin Rudd's climate change leadership, or will it be silently 'averaged out' in Canberra? This page summarizes the early impressions.

1 July 2008: Climate Change: Catastrophic Impacts and Human Rights - by HREOC President John von Doussa QC: "Australia's response to climate change must be human rights compliant. What is also clear is that the international standards and norms that these rights establish themselves provide guidance to decision makers on the substantive elements of legislative and policy responses to climate change."

20 June 2008: The Gristmill: How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic - Every now and then a remarkable online resource deals with an issue so well, that nothing more needs to be added to the topic. That was also the case with the comments provided by guest contributor to the Gristmill, Coby Beck, on the issue of How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic. Here's the table of links to all related issues.

14 June 2008: This website is Uncensored ... unlike many websites in China - This page supports the Amnesty International Australia "Uncensor" campaign, highlighting human rights abuses in China in the lead-up to the Beijing Olympics 2008. More information about this campaign, and links to the Amnesty campaign website, are posted on this page.

9 June 2008: First jail them, then send the Bill: Australia bills refugees for jailtime - Australia has the audacity to first jail 'unannounced boat-using asylum seekers' who use their international right to 'seek asylum in any country' (art 14, Declaration of Human Rights), and then, upon their release sending them a Bill for the cost of just having jailed them without having committed a crime - a jailing, often for years.

17 May 2008 - Australia ends its Temporary Refugee Protection Visa Cruelties - When last week Labor's first Federal Budget came down, it brought with it provisions to end the Temporary Refugee Protection Visa, cruelly introduced by John Howard to stave off political challenges posed by right-wing nationalist-populist politician Pauline Hanson. Here is Australia's initial reaction.

8 May 2008 - Asylum assessment under Rudd: tough, or just shonky? - Labor is being tougher and more ruthless with asylum seekers than the Howard Government, according to an analysis of decisions made by the new Minister for Immigration, Senator Chris Evans. The analysis of the exercise of ministerial discretion shows that Evans has rejected 97.6% of applications since coming to power - the highest rate of rejection since 2001.

8 May 2008: UN Human Rights Commission offers Human Rights to Climate Refugees - Three reports about the United Nations Human Rights Council resolution to recognise issues connected to climate change as having a human rights framework, as well as a picture by Reuters and the Reuters Alertnet about political manipulation of climate refugees and six FAQs about climate refugees.

26 April 2008 - Kevin Rudd's Canberra 2020 Summit: a photo report - "These folks seemed pretty determined to me to see things change ... there have been some signals and signs, like signing Kyoto, like some bold statements. They have made some big election promises, and they have set themselves up to have some expectant and watchful citizens through this 2020 process."

22 April 2008: The 2020 Summit: Coal Industry Chiefs overheat Kevin's Climate - "I found myself in the climate stream with representatives of coal mining companies including Xstrata and Shell, yet not a single person from an environment Non-Government Organisation. No-one from Friends of the Earth, the Australian Conservation Foundation, Greenpeace, Climate Action Network Australia or any of the State Conservation Councils."

15 April 2008: Kevin Rudd at Peking University - A conversation with China's youth on the future. "The global community looks forward to China fully participating in all the institutions of the global rules-based order, including in security, in the economy, in human rights, in the environment. And we look forward to China making active contributions...."

14 April 2008: Project SafeCom's online People's Visa promoted - A Project SafeCom presentation at Curtin University's 2002 Conference: Australia - Indonesia border tensions: Continuing the Dialogue on Refugees, Asylum Seekers and People Smugglers. "I don't want Australia to become a maverick nation, and we're well on the way to becoming just that. And I'm honoured to be part of a fast growing number of people who do not permit that."

6 April 2008: Nick Poynder, When All Else Fails: Seeking Protection under International Treaties - In [the current political] climate [in Australia], it is not surprising that those seeking to protect human rights have begun to look elsewhere and, in the absence of any effective domestic human rights law, the international sphere is becoming increasingly attractive. An April 2003 lecture at the Castan Centre for Human Rights Law.

2 April 2008: Julian Burnside: Citizens' rights and the rule of law in a civil society: not just yet - Julian Burnside delivers The 2008 Manning Clark Lecture: "Personally, I would have preferred to see the [Howard] Government removed because of its lamentable approach to human rights and the rule of law. But perhaps Australia is not ready to embrace such notions: not just yet. In any event, the electorate saw industrial relations as a more pressing matter."

2 April 2008: Remembering Betty Dixon, our feisty advocate - Australia incarcerates asylum seekers in detention centers - but people like Betty Dixon were not willing to accept it. She did not have the face of a typical rebel against the system, a system she described as "degrading to humans and racist". She was one of the thousands of "ordinary Australians" who vigorously protested against mandatory detention, but for some reason many people remember her, even in the years after she passed away.

30 March 2008: Labor abandons its 'small' Excision Zone and chooses John Howard's radical version - 'Refugee advocates have accused the Federal Government of abandoning its softer approach to asylum seekers after Immigration Minister Chris Evans said he was yet to decide whether Labor would reassess the status of 4600 islands 'excised' from Australian territory for the purpose of immigration law.' This page follows the debate.

23 March 2008: About the Bali bombings and a refugee family - Everyone knows there were 88 Australian victims in the Bali bombings, but just a few know the unfolding details of the story of someone locked up in Woomera who lost his Indonesian wife, and who, while locked away from seeing his two small children, had to wait for justice for more than another year. Here's the story of that justice slowly unfolding and Project SafeCom's role in that unfolding.

21 March 2008: The Garnaut Climate Change Review Interim Report - Hasn't Australia changed radically in just a few months: under the former government Ross Garnaut, who has just released his Interim Climate Change Review Report, would have been stonewalled, ignored, vilified and sidelined, and Canberra would have followed a lead from industry on its opinion about him. Now he receives appause from the environmental lobby while big energy producers cringe...

19 March 2008: An Extract from Robert Manne et al, Dear Mr Rudd: Ideas for a Better Australia - "When I began commissioning the chapters for this book, what I discovered was that, among the commentators I approached, the hopes I felt about the new possibilities that would open up for Australia if a Rudd Labor government was elected were very widely shared."

19 March 2008: Reviews of Robert Manne et al, Dear Mr Rudd: Ideas for a Better Australia - With the coming of a new government in Australia, Robert Manne is probably the only person with the cultural and political capital necessary to so quickly produce a book like Dear Mr Rudd, in which an array of writers who, in Manne's words, 'stood against the predominant neo-liberal, neo-conservative tide' now present a positive program for the new government.

2 March 2008: Introduction to Seeking Asylum in Australia: 1995-2005, Experiences and Policies - Papers from a Conference at Monash University. The conference was held over the last weekend in November 2005 - a fleeting moment of peace and quiet in the recent history of Australia's refugee policy, during which the harshest aspects of the law had been relaxed...

2 March 2008: Matthew Albert, Australian Refugee Policy from an African Perspective - Matthew Albert reviews an international perspective of the Australian policy as it influences the lives of refugees in Kenya and he reflects on the domestic impact of the policy as it has effected Australia's fastest growing ethnic community, the Sudanese refugees.

2 March 2008: Julian Burnside, What the Government Will Do If They Can Get Away With It - It is hard to think of an Australian government more driven by ideological zealotry than this lot, and they will do disgraceful things if they can get away with it, and Burnside illustrates it with examples from some legislative areas.

2 March 2008: Prof Michael Clyne, Words Excusing Exclusion - The terms 'illegal', 'queue jumper' and 'border protection' and assessments of unrespectable behaviour are used by Australian politicians to generate antagonism against asylum seekers and support for government treatment of them: this is shown also against the contrast of some historical examples.

2 March 2008: David Corlett, Do We Have Obligations To Those We Sent Back? - Australia has returned failed asylum seekers to places of insecurity and uncertainty. In some instances it has returned people to situations in which they have been treated brutally, while the Australian government claims that these people have returned voluntarily...

2 March 2008: Michael Gordon, The Media's Performance: An Insider's View - Author and journalist Michael Gordon responds to criticisms of the performance of the media since the Tampa episode of 2001, outlining the obstacles faced by journalists and some of the ways they were overcome.

2 March 2008: Ida Kaplan, Pursuing Justice and Recovery for Asylum Seekers - The experiences of refugees and asylum seekers are not incidental by-products of war and conflict but are the result of systematic and planned attempts to destroy them, including torture, planned displacement, ethnic cleansing and increasingly the targeting of children, because they are the future of any community.

2 March 2008: Legal and Ethical Implications of Extra-Territorial Processing of Asylum Seekers - Monash Law Professor Susan Kneebone discusses the current European proposals in comparison with Australia's Pacific Strategy and canvasses the legal and ethical implications of such plans in the light of the international system of refugee protection.

2 March 2008: Bernadette McSherry: What the Law Requires - "Providing Mental Health Services and Psychiatric Care to Immigration Detainees". There is increasing evidence that the provision of mental health services is inadequate for immigration detainees and that the Commonwealth had breached its legal duty to provide reasonable care toward immigration detainees. This paper explores these issues based on some court cases against the Commonwealth.

2 March 2008: Klaus Neumann, Seeking Asylum in Australia: A Historical Perspective - The debate about Australia's response to refugees and asylum seekers is largely devoid of a historical perspective. In this paper, historian Klaus Neumann demonstrates the benefits of such a perspective when reflecting on the terms 'refugee' and 'asylum seeker'.

2 March 2008: Culture Shock: Australian Youth Responding to Refugees - Melbourne human rights advocate Jessie Taylor relates her experiences visiting detainees at Baxter and Maribyrnong and speaks of the challenges of bringing the refugee issue into the consciousness of her generation of young Australians, examining the complexities and difficulties involved in advocacy and the inevitable personal bonds formed.

2 March 2008: Home Is Not Home Until Human Rights Are Respected - Hotham Mission Asylum Seeker Project Community Liaison Coordinator Stancea Vichie advocates lobbying for policy change so asylum seekers awaiting the final decision about their asylum claim can find a home and start building their lives without being tormented with anxieties about ordinary life circumstances.

2 March 2008: Spencer Zifcak, No Way Out: The High Court, Asylum Seekers and Human Rights - Guided by failed court cases attempting to challenge the Migration Act and remove children from ongoing immigration detention, Spencer Zifcak makes a powerful yet gentle argument for a Human Rights Act to 'control' imbalance in Australian legislation where human rights are undermined or nullified.

27 February 2008: The Senate debates Australia's 'Excision Zone' - There's no reason in 2008 for anyone in Labor to argue that the issue of John Howard's extraordinary excision zone 'has not been discussed'. When the former government pushed through changes to that exclusion zone for refugees in 2005, Labor supported a Disallowance motion put by Democrats Senator Andrew Bartlett.

24 February 2008: Pamela Curr: American Torture, Aussie Style - ...how did the detention of asylum seekers spill over into a system of brutality with more in common with torture than respect for human rights? How did a country which has prided itself on lining up to sign onto the International conventions so wilfully breach them?

23 February 2008: What !!! - No Royal Commission??? - The Rudd government and Immigration Minister Chris Evans have moved very swiftly to undo some serious damage done to the asylum processing system under the previous government, but there has also been some serious back-tracking and summer-saulting backflips - one of them on Labor's furious former commitment to a Royal Commission into the Immigration Department.

14 February 2008: Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's Motion of Apology - Yesterday, Australia's Federal Parliament reconvened after the resounding win for ALP Leader Kevin Rudd, and the very first motion put by Australia's new Prime Minister under 'government business' was the speech to The Motion Of The Apology. Here's the movie and transcript of Kevin Rudd's speech.

12 February 2008 - The Shock Doctrine in the Northern Territory: Northern Territory Child Protection Minister Marion Scrymgour has retracted her description of of the Commonwealth Government's NT intervention as the "black kids Tampa", writes Crikey while making a link between Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine and John Howard's Intervention. Sadly enough, Crikey is right...

9 February 2008: The End of Howard's cynical Pacific Solution - 'The last 21 Sri Lankan asylum seekers on Nauru have been recognised as refugees and approved for resettlement in Australia, closing the book on John Howard's notorious "Pacific Solution".' Here's a page bringing the news, marking the end of a dark chapter.

  3 February 2008: Watching Brief: Reflections on Human Rights, Law and Justice - The first decade of the twenty-first century has seen a sharp decline in respect for human rights and the international rule of law. The legal conventions of the new realpolitic seem to owe more to Guantanamo than Geneva. In Watching Brief, noted lawyer and human rights advocate Julian Burnside articulates a sensitive and intelligent defence of the rights of asylum seekers and refugees, and the importance of protecting human rights and maintaining the rule of law.

2 February 2008: Aboriginal Elder Ian Ward: another GSL Death in Custody - Last weekend's death in custody of an Indigenous offender while in transit by van, an AIMS Van operated under the contract with Global Solutions Limited from the Western Desert to Kalgoorlie was not by any means the first serious incident by this company, the company also charged by the Federal government for the running of Immigration Detention camps...

24 January 2008: Howard Mandarins and Labor Ministers - while some advocates seem to ride a wave of euphoria that followed the November 2007 Federal election that saw John Howard assigned to the political scrap heap, Immigration Minister Chris Evans' trip to Indonesia has called forth some critical comments for more senior commentators amongst our ranks.

27 November 2007: The ALP's me-too refugee policy: Australia will keep turning the boats back - The Howard Years have finally come to an end with a resounding victory for the Rudd camp, and while we know that we will be 'more amongst friends' than before, there is still a lot of work ahead for us, in terms of creating a wholehearted implementation of Australia's obligations as a signatory to the UN Refugee Convention.

15 November 2007: Tension, self-harm and protests in Villawood - "Twenty-four hours after slashing his arms, hands and stomach, a detainee inside the high security stage 1 of Villawood detention centre is still without treatment ... others feel mistreated, abused, both through process or lack of process, or through direct abuse by guards..."

14 November 2007: Project SafeCom's 2007 Annual Report - Expectations of the number displaced people inside Australia being on the rise, and World Systems theory arguing that a serious crisis may emerge during a breakdown of capitalism and the ensuing chaos... In the centre of the storm of planetary changes, so vast, so confronting, that it now captures everyone's attention, there's also talk of vast changes to our way of life, our mode of production, and of many of the core paradigms.

27 October 2007: Ahmed al-Kateb gets permanency: Escape from a life in limbo - ... a young man with an old face who carries one of the most famous names in the legal history of this country: Ahmed al-Kateb. This week his incredible story reached something like a happy ending when he was issued a card carrying the words, "Permitted to remain in Australia indefinitely."

24 October 2007: Danielle Every, Martha Augoustinos: Constructions of racism in the Australian parliamentary debates on asylum seekers - Using an exploration of parliamentary debate during 2001, the writers argue that the government's construction of asylum seeker views was carefully and consciously constructed, and that it needs countering in equally careful and conscious ways.

22 October 2007: John Hartigan: The 2007 Andrew Olle Media Lecture - "The defence of press freedom is not a self-indulgent game. Freedom of the press, exercised responsibly, is the base line for freedom of speech generally in the community ... [New York Times editor Abe] Rosenthal's legacy is important today. His advice was never to compromise on press freedom. He told his journalists: 'Fight like hell every inch of the way.'"

13 October 2007: The American Magazine: Howard's End? - On March 11, 1996, Howard was sworn in as prime minister, a position he has kept ever since. Australians reelected him in 1998, 2001, and 2004. He's running again today. The race has been tough, and a Howard victory would be surprising -- but in each of his four previous campaigns he has faced serious obstacles.

4 October 2007: Kevin Rudd: Howard's Brutopia; the battle of ideas in Australian politics - "the culture war is essentially a cover for the real battle of ideas in Australian politics today: the battle between free-market fundamentalism and the social-democratic belief that individual reward can be balanced with social responsibility. Howard's culture war is in large part an electoral strategy drawn straight from the Republican Party's campaign manual."

 :::UPDATED Febr 2008:::: 26 September 2007: Oskar Schindler and the people smuggler - Under Australia's interpretation of what constitutes a 'people smuggler', the young man who sold the donkey to Joseph and Mary would be prosecuted and imprisoned by law ... So would the priest who helped the Von Trapp family ... this page is about Ali Al Jenabi, one of those people smugglers.

23 September 2007: Sri Lankans: you're all refugees, but not in Australia! - "What kind of country has Australia become? This is the question Australians again have to ask themselves in the wake of the Federal Government's disturbing decision to deny 72 Sri Lankans, who have been found to be genuine refugees, the right to settle in Australia."

 :::UPDATED - HUNGERSTRIKE PHOTOS::: 23 September 2007: Sri Lankan Desperation on Nauru: "we now live with indefinite expectation..." - There's something eerie about refugees, locked up and away from their human rights, celebrating World Refugee Week - but that's exactly what happened in the week of 17th to 23rd June with the Sri Lankans we sent to Nauru after they sought Australia's protection. They sent us photos and a letter; here they are.

22 September 2007: Alastair Nicholson: Human Rights Under the Howard Government - "The situation of the protection of rights in Australia is particularly precarious because of the absence of any form of a Bill of Rights at a national level. We are now one of the few civilised countries in the world to lack this protection. The introduction of such a bill is anathema to conservatives ... This is precisely why we need it, particularly when ..."

19 September 2007: Paddling Excision: Big John comes home - This Tuesday at 11:00am, Dave Corlett and Simon Keenan symbolically landed their Big John mascot on home soil - right on the rock shelf in front of his official residence at Kirribilli House on Sydney Harbour. Big John's APS / AFP Federal guards weren't all that delighted, but Sydney Water Police were very interested in the epic 3-month sea kayak journey...

17 September 2007: Dr Carmen Lawrence's Valedictory Speech - Carmen Lawrence, six months away from turning 60, this week said her farewells in the nation's Parliament, and, unlike many MPs who leave without a word, the white-haired Lawrence rose in her place on Thursday morning and said her piece. And what a piece it was. She hit all the high Cs.

26 August 2007: Tampa 2007: The Cost and The Bill, as A Price Too High is evidenced - on the sixth anniversary of the Tampa standoff, A Just Australia and Oxfam have released their report 'A price too high', while even the last of those asylum seekers who were rescued by MS Tampa is only just getting out of the woods and out of the quagmire of the political ramifications of the ensuing 'Pacific Solution'.

21 August 2007: An End to the Baxter detention centre - today is the last day of operations of the Baxter detention centre - but, there's no reason to celebrate. Far and far from Baxter, on Christmas Island, away from lawyers, advocates, Australian courts and those annoying stirring activists, another centre nears completion.

17 July 2007: Project SafeCom's 2007 World Refugee Day readings - This week's Fremantle Herald, a major Project SafeCom sponsor, features major coverage of Project SafeCom's World Refugee Day event as part of its wraparound for World Refugee Day. This page reproduces the entire section, including articles by our speakers for the event who came from The Greens, the ALP, and from Melbourne. Perth Community Television (CTV) filmed the event, and the 15-minute documentary is included on this page.

30 June 2007: Simon Keenan and David Corlett: Paddling the Excised Zone - Paddling for Refugees' founder Simon Keenan and author of Following Them Home David Corlett are embarking on a sea kayaking journey in and around the 'excised zone', those parts of Australia's north that have been cut off from Australia's migration zone...

26 June 2007: Clive Hamilton, The Australian, Free Speech and Hypocrisy - "This sorry story sheds a different light on the noble appeals of ... The Australian ... for a more open society in which free speech and a variety of opinions are not just tolerated but encouraged. The newspaper's defence of high principle is vitiated by its slavish support for the Howard Government, including its attacks on the Government's critics."

26 June 2007: Jennifer Martiniello, Howard's New Tampa: Aboriginal Children Overboard - Our Aboriginal communities are being squeezed further into dysfunction and disenfranchisement by carefully targeted political engineering, the systemic and ruthless roll-out of a planned agenda. It is no accident that Howard's scheme to address what he calls the urgency of the Little Children are Sacred report's 97 recommendations was trotted out so very quickly, and addresses so very few of those recommendations.

2 June 2007: David Marr: Careful, he might hear you - John Howard has ... cowed his critics, muffled the press, intimidated the ABC, gagged scientists, silenced NGOs, censored the arts, prosecuted leakers, criminalised protest and curtailed parliamentary scrutiny, and this has happened because we let it happen.

16 May 2007: Human tide: the real migration crisis: a Christian Aid report - "Christian Aid predicts that, on current trends, a further 1 billion people will be forced from their homes between now and 2050. We believe forced migration is the most urgent threat facing poor people in developing countries. The time for action is now."

7 May 2007: Making sense at Manning Clark House - Some material presented or published following the Manning Clark House 2007 Weekend of Ideas: the SIEVX presentation by Tony Kevin in the media segment, the Agreed Statement of Principles issued by the Conference, and a Canberra Times article by John Warhurst.

7 May 2007: Dr Eva Sallis, Australian dream; Australian nightmare: Some thoughts on Multiculturalism and Racism - "...this place is called, with terrible irony, Blackster. It is the other side of town from Baxter, and, although less money is spent here, the echoes are stark, and when I thought about it, almost all generated by the fence." The Dymphna Clark Lecture at the Manning Clark House 6th Weekend of Ideas, "A Fair Go for Refugees?"

 :::40 PHOTOS::: 6 May 2007: Kate Durham's SIEVX Art Exhibition goes to Canberra - From 30 March to 15 April 2007, as an art exhibition associated with the Manning Clark House Weekend of Ideas, reknowned Melbourne artist Kate Durham's impressive SIEVX art exhibition visited Canberra at the Theo Notaras Multicultural Centre. Project SafeCom's Jack Smit attended the exhibition's opening.

5 May 2007: Malcolm Fraser: Australians: What are we? How do we see ourselves? How do others see us? - On 30 April 2007, before a crowd of 500 staff, students, and journalists, former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser delivered the 2007 Commonwealth Lecture at Australian National University. Here's the full lecture.

28 April 2007: What you told Kevin Rudd and Tony Burke - "We decided who will come in to this country and the circumstances in which they arrive when we signed and ratified the Refugee Convention..." This page lists a selection of comments to ALP Opposition leader Kevin Rudd and Labor's Immigration spokesman Tony Burke MP in the Project SafeCom online letter campaign during April 2007.

21 April 2007: Silencing Dissent: How the Australian government is controlling public opinion and stifling debate - Over the past decade Australia has undergone a profound transformation. The Howard Government has abandoned both the quest for reconciliation and the idea of multiculturalism. It has closed our borders to all those seeking refuge here by boat, by the use of military force. It has adopted a foreign policy of a more uncritically pro-American kind than was seen...

 :::UPDATED::: 10 April 2007: Alcatraz Down Under - The monstrosity is nearly complete... - Like a gigantic scar cutting through the pristine wilderness, the Christmas Island detention centre blights not just the hillside of the island, but also the Australian psyche.

10 April 2007: You told Labor what you thought: The letter writing campaign to Kevin Rudd and Tony Burke - During the last half of April 2007 hundreds of people wrote to Labor, prior to its National Policy Conference in Sydney. Here's the text of the letter and some of the concerns about Labor's policy relating to unannounced boat arrivals as expressed in the media.

18 March 2007: The Sri Lankans: being a refugee just ain't cricket... - On this page, some of the news reports, some of the photos, all of our Press releases, and the full text of the December 2006 UNHCR report: "UNHCR's Position on the International Protection Needs of Asylum-Seekers from Sri Lanka".

27 January 2007: Five years for David Hicks: it's quite enough! - Phillip Ruddock, an Attorney-General who is 'grossly inaccurate', misleading in argument, in breach of the standards of the Australian criminal code, and who misrepresents the law? Ask former chief justice Alastair Nicholson and Queens council Lex Lazry.

26 January 2007: And the Winning Big Issue for 2007 is... - It sounds almost like the announcement by of Juan Antonio Samaranch, who announced that Syd-e-ney had won its bid to host the 2000 Olympic Games - it's just that the "winner" of the Big Issues in 2007 is a rather more disturbing announcement.

12 January 2007: Meditations on a new millennium: After the Tampa - A poem by Project SafeCom's Chair Cedric Beidatsch. "Evil does not lie in choosing to do wrong: It lies in not choosing to do good."

Update April 2008: All 2006 pages are now archived at The 2006 archives page. Links to all older archived pages are in the tables above!