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Asylum Seekers and Refugees

Making detention safe and humane: can we grasp a once-in-a-generation opportunity?

Making detention safe and humane: can we grasp a once-in-a-generation opportunity? Austin Asche Oration Australian Academy of Law and Charles Darwin University Nitmiluk Lounge, Level 4, Parliament House, Darwin 5pm, 19 September 2017 CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY Introduction Acknowledgements Traditional...

Category, Speech
Asylum Seekers and Refugees

Protecting refugees

As recent reports allege asylum seekers are being removed from Manus Island and returned to their place of origin, Commission President, Professor Gillian Triggs, reflects on the nation's responsibilities.

Category, Opinion
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice

Indigenous injustice: so much evidence was ignored

I was shocked but not surprised by the ABC’s Four Corners revelations last Monday night. Incontrovertible CCTV evidence of Aboriginal children subject to demeaning, debilitating and dehumanizing behaviour has galvanised the Australian community and prompted the creation of a Royal Commission with an...

Category, Opinion
Asylum Seekers and Refugees

New report reveal alarming impact of detention on children

[Check against delivery] Thank you for joining us today. Over a year ago, the Australian Human Rights Commission produced The Forgotten Children Report. This Report examined the impact of prolonged mandatory, indefinite immigration detention on the mental and physical heath of children. The findings...

Category, Speech
Asylum Seekers and Refugees

The Government, the High Court and the Migration Act

  The long running, if muted, struggle between the High Court of Australia and the Government over refugees recalls a bitter legal battle in the early 17th century. Sir Edward Coke, the first Lord Chief Justice of England, defied King James 1 by asserting the supremacy of the common law over the...

Category, Opinion
Asylum Seekers and Refugees

Magna Carta shelters asylum-seekers

NEXT year is the 800th anniversary of the Magna Carta, signed reluctantly by King John at the ­demand of his rebellious barons in 1215. Buried in the middle of this foundational document of English constitutional law — setting out the single measure for wine and ale and the rights of widows on the...

Category, Opinion
Asylum Seekers and Refugees

We can't 'outsource' our moral obligations to these people

Events on Manus Island have graphically and tragically brought to the attention of the Australian public the inappropriateness of the current arrangements for the regional processing of asylum seekers. I have been troubled by the loss of life and the injury that has occurred on Manus Island over this...

Category, Opinion
Commission – General

Time for rethink on asylum seeker treatment

I am gravely concerned that Australia's practices in relation to asylum seekers risk serious breaches of fundamental rights and freedoms under the human rights treaties by which Australia is bound.

Category, Opinion

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