Posts Tagged christmas
The problem with Nauru: a Christmas reflection – The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on December 31, 2011
Find More Stories The problem with Nauru: a Christmas reflection 
The Opposition is obsessed about re-opening Nauru as a place of offshore processing.
The Government has signalled the possibility of using Nauru, as long as the Opposition agrees to the use of Malaysia as well.
Asylum seekers continue to provide a useful political football. there are a few questions which have to be answered if we are to resolve the problem of dealing with boat people.
The first is: What is the problem we are trying to solve? is it that boat people might come to harm on the way here, or is it just that they get here?
It is tempting to think that the Opposition’s expressed concern for the safety of boat people is feigned: that their real concern is to show the electorate that they can stop boat people from getting here at all. Talk of deterrents suggests that they do not want boat people arriving here. but if you want deterrents, the risk of drowning on the way has got to be about as powerful a deterrent as you can get. So let’s give them the benefit of the doubt, and assume that their true concern is the safety and well-being of boat people.
If the safety of boat people is the issue, then the second question is: What is the best way of preventing asylum seekers from risking their lives by getting onto leaky, over-crowded boats? the answer is some form of offshore processing. but what does that mean, and where should it happen?
“Offshore processing” is a phrase which has been used to mislead the public. the proposal was not simply to send people off to Malaysia so their claims for protection could be processed: it was to send them to Malaysia and close the door behind them. Refusing to even consider their claim for protection is hardly consistent with a concern for their well-being. So, the Malaysian Solution as currently envisaged is not the answer.
Neither is Nauru the answer. this is so for a number of reasons. first, people do not get to Nauru unless they first get on a boat, to be intercepted by the Australian Navy as they approach Australian territorial waters. this does nothing to protect them from the perils of the boats. the SIEV-X, which sank with the loss of 353 lives, sank on October 19, 2001 – weeks after Nauru had been commissioned as a place of detention and the Pacific Solution had begun.
In addition, Nauru is too small to be a place of permanent settlement of asylum seekers who are taken there and are assessed as refugees. it has a population of about 10,000 people; it does not have a local supply of food or water sufficient for its own people; it does not even have a stable electricity supply or telephone service. Asylum seekers taken there and assessed as refugees would have to be resettled somewhere, and quickly. That would almost certainly mean in Australia. All the use of Nauru does is make the process unbelievably expensive. Tony Abbott’s insistence on using Nauru as a place for offshore processing is simply a way of wasting hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.
Sending people to Malaysia for processing after they have arrived here is not the answer, because (by definition) the people caught up in the Malaysian Solution have already arrived in Australia safely. this model is simply intended as a deterrent.
Any offshore processing which has the interests of refugees in mind must involve not only fair processing but also resettlement of those who are found to be refugees.
One possibility is to process protection claims while people are in Indonesia. Those who are assessed as refugees would be resettled, in Australia or elsewhere, in the order in which they have been accepted as refugees. if Australia increased its annual refugee intake, with a guarantee of at least 10,000 places for those processed in Indonesia, the incentive to get on a boat would disappear overnight. at present, people assessed by the UNHCR in Indonesia face a wait of 10 or 20 years before they have a prospect of being resettled. during that time, they are not allowed to work, and can’t send their kids to school. no wonder they chance their luck by getting on a boat. this proposal would reduce the waiting time to one or two years, and Australian officials would have an ample chance to warn people of the dangers of a trip with people smugglers.
Genuine offshore processing, with a guarantee of swift resettlement, was the means by which the Fraser government managed to bring about 80,000 Vietnamese boat people to Australia in the late 1970s. it worked, but it was crucially different from the manner of offshore processing being proposed by both major parties.
Unless offshore processing is done fairly and is coupled with swift resettlement, it is nothing but a sham to mask a desire to keep refugees out.
Christmas is a good time to reflect on whether we are, as a nation, genuinely concerned about the welfare of asylum seekers. if we are, then offshore processing can work, and would avoid the hazards of unscrupulous people smugglers and leaky boats. but only if it is done fairly, in Indonesia, and with a guarantee of swift resettlement.
Julian Burnside AO QC is an Australian Barrister and an advocate for human rights and fair treatment of refugees.
Court overturns visa ruling on Afghan teen
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on December 16, 2011
The High Court has struck down an immigration ruling preventing an Afghan refugee from bringing his family to Australia because he had turned 18 by the time the department had made a decision.
Refugee advocates have welcomed the decision, saying it could affect dozens of family reunion cases.
Sayed Abdul Rahman Shahi arrived at Christmas Island in May 2009 as a minor and was found to be a refugee.
In December that year he applied for visas for his mother and other family members to come to Australia.
But by the time the Immigration Department made its decision nine months later, he had turned 18.
If a refugee is under 18 they are regarded as having compelling reasons for wanting their family in Australia. but once they have turned 18 they have to prove their family faces substantial discrimination and persecution; a much tougher test.
“As a result the department says that he's no longer entitled to bring his family to Australia,” said Joel Townsend from Victoria Legal Aid, who is one of Mr Shahi's lawyers.
Mr Townsend says because Mr Shahi had turned 18, the department found his mother was no longer a member of his immediate family and the applications were refused.
The High Court has now ruled there was a jurisdictional error in his case.
The court has ruled it is not a requirement that the granting of such a visa to the mother be dependent on her son being under 18 at the time of the decision.
“We think this is great outcome for our client and also for quite a number of other young refugees who want to bring their families to Australia,” Mr Townsend said.
He says the High Court has now ruled the criteria for the visa should be interpreted in a way that avoids unjust results.
“So what they found was that the visa criteria should be interpreted to avoid a situation where young refugees can be adversely affected by delays in processing applications,” he said.
Mr Townsend says the ruling was a test case that could affect dozens of other reunion applications that have been rejected on the same grounds.
“I'm aware that there are some 30 or 40 people that we and a number of community legal centres have provided some assistance to and indeed the numbers across the community and across Victoria would be significantly higher than that,” he said.
“Across the country it would be substantially more than that.”
The High Court heard the case in South Australia three months ago.
During the hearing Mr Shahi's lawyers questioned whether the department had intentionally delayed Mr Shahi's case in order to meet informal quotas.
But lawyers for Immigration Minister Chris Bowen denied there was any delay and said the minister had to account for changes in circumstances.
Pamela Curr from the Asylum Seekers Resource Centre insists she has seen several cases deliberately delayed.
“I've seen letters to kids as young as 15 who have been told – you have to put in a standard application for your family, because they will not be here before you're 18,” she said.
“So what the Government's saying is, we have no intention of facilitating family reunion; you can go in line like everybody else and wait the 20 or 30 years it takes.”
Mr Townsend says the court's ruling makes it clear that delays in processing applications will not adversely affect these young refugees.
“And we think that's important because reuniting children with their families is really important in helping them overcome the trauma that they've experienced,” he said.
Mr Shahi's case will now be finalised before a single High Court judge before being returned to the department so it can review his application.
The decision is another legal blow for the Federal Government, which had its Malaysian refugee swap deal overturned by the High Court in August.
Yesterday, people smuggling charges against an Indonesian boy were dropped after lawyers proved he was a child.
Apple Wins Extension on Samsung Tablet Ban in Australia
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on December 14, 2011
December 13, 2011, 11:02 AM EST
by Joe Schneider
(Updates with judge’s comment in third paragraph.)
Dec. 2 (Bloomberg) — Apple inc. won a one-week extension of a ban on Samsung Electronics Co.’s sales of its latest tablet computer in Australia, a victory in a legal battle that began in April between the two companies and spread to four continents.
High Court Justice John Dyson Heydon today extended the ban on the release of Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 to Dec. 9. On that day, the country’s top court will consider Apple’s request for permission to appeal a lower court’s order issued earlier this week, which lifted a ban on the product that has been in place since mid-October.
“A stay for one week will cost Samsung, in effect, one week’s trade,” Heydon said, following a 90-minute hearing in Sydney. The extension will hurt Samsung “but not to extend the status quo is likely to be injurious to Apple,” he said.
The decision scuttles Samsung’s plan to begin importing the Galaxy Tab 10.1 into Australia this weekend and take advantage of the pre-Christmas shopping season. The company had said if it can’t sell the tablet in Australia before Christmas it would scrap its release in the country.
“This is a critical period of time,” Katrina Howard, Samsung’s lawyer, told Heydon today. “Even one day can make a difference.”
Samsung had planned to release the tablet for sale today at 4 p.m. Sydney time, import the product over the weekend and begin a marketing campaign, Howard said.
“Samsung believes Apple has no basis for its application for leave to appeal,” the Suwon, South Korea-based company said in an e-mailed statement distributed in Sydney.
The “high-velocity” unveiling of the Galaxy Tab into the Australian market “confirms the need for a stay,” Apple’s lawyer Stephen Burley told the judge. “Even a short release of the product can cause irreversible harm to Apple” and Samsung won’t be able to compensate Apple for those damages, he said.
Samsung fell 0.7 percent to 1.06 million won as of 10:06 a.m. in Seoul trading.
The Australian dispute is part of a battle between the companies on at least four continents that began in April, when Apple sued Samsung in the U.S. and accused it of “slavishly” copying the designs of iPhones and iPads.
The patent disputes began when Samsung released its Android-based Galaxy smartphones in 2010. Steve Jobs, the co- founder of Apple who died Oct. 5, initiated contact with Samsung in July 2010 over his concerns that the Galaxy phones copied the iPhone, according to Richard Lutton, Apple’s patent attorney, who testified in Sydney on Sept. 29.
Samsung was the world’s biggest maker of smartphones in the last quarter, with Apple being second. The maker of Mac computers dominates the tablet market.
The appeal case is Samsung Electronics Co. v. Apple inc. NSD1792/2011. Full Court of the Federal Court of Australia (Sydney).
–Editors: Edward Johnson, Anand Krishnamoorthy, Douglas Wong.
To contact the reporter on this story: Joe Schneider in Sydney at jschneider5@bloomberg.net
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Douglas Wong at dwong19@bloomberg.net
WA lawyers oppose increasing jail terms
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on November 21, 2011
Friday, October 21, 2011 » 02:30pm
Plans to increase jail terms for manslaughter and dangerous driving causing death in Western Australia have met with opposition from the Law Society of WA.
The WA government says community anger over weak sentences prompted its decision to introduce the legislation to raise the penalties.
Under the legislation, introduced to parliament on Thursday, manslaughter cases would be heard only in the Supreme Court and the maximum penalty would increase from 20 years to life imprisonment.
Cases of dangerous driving causing death would be heard only in the District Court, where the maximum penalty would be 20 years in prison.
The offence can currently be heard in the Magistrates Court, where it carries a maximum sentence of three years in prison.
In the past year, 30 cases of dangerous driving causing death were heard in the Magistrates Court and only four in the District Court.
The state government hopes to have the law passed by Christmas, providing the opposition does not oppose the plan.
But Law Society of WA president Hylton Quail says there had already been reforms made in 2008 that needed time to operate.
Mr Quail said no sentence could ever compensate for the loss of a life, but sentencing should always be up to a judge’s discretion.
He said he was particularly concerned that the legislation could negatively affect female victims of domestic violence if they accidentally killed an abusive partner.
“Women in those circumstances, at the moment, often receive very short prison sentences, and on rare occasions, even non-custodial sentences,” he told AAP.
Mr Quail said if a victim of abuse was sentenced to life imprisonment, they would have to serve a minimum of seven years in prison.
He said there was some merit in having all dangerous driving offences heard in the District Court, but he did not believe the maximum penalty should be increased.
Opposition spokesman John Quigley told ABC Radio he had not seen the proposed legislation but did not oppose the principles.
He said before 1981, WA had life sentences available for manslaughter convictions, but sentences never went close to 20 years, let alone life.
He said the maximum penalty was decreased so such cases could be dealt with in the District Court.
Mr Porter said the government’s proposal came after community outrage over several manslaughter cases in recent years, including a teenager who was shot dead over a $100 drug debt in 2007 and a father who was beaten to death with a cricket bat in 2007.
In both instances, the offenders were sentenced to less than five years in prison.
“What happened as an outcome of these two cases was not in line with the expectations of those communities and the wider West Australian community,” mr Porter said.
However, mr Quail said those cases predated reforms that took effect in 2008.
If the legislation is passed, it will bring WA into line with Queensland, South Australia, the UK, Canada and New Zealand.
AFL attacks Gillard pokies plan
Posted by Metro in Uncategorized on October 16, 2011
Julia Gillard has another headache, with the AFL lining up alongside the NRL to oppose pokies reforms.
Julia Gillard is in Canberra. She has a day of meetings, including cabinet later in the day. the government’s so-called Malaysia Solution is sure to be on the table for discussion, as is the the AFL’s entry into the debate about pokies reform.
The PM’s Malaysia pitch: Writing in News Limited tabloids this morning, Julia Gillard has made an impassioned defence of her Malaysian refugee swap plan. "Wednesday December 15, 2010, was a dark day in our nation’s history. It was also one of the most heartbreaking days in my time as Prime Minister. the images of a boat full of people – of mothers and fathers, sons and daughters – crashing into the treacherous rocks off Christmas Island is something that will never leave me … we cannot allow people smugglers to risk more lives on dangerous sea voyages to our country. that is why the Government’s agreement with Malaysia is so innovative." (read more)
Tony Abbott is in northern Tasmania today. He’ll start his day with a visit to a farm near Jetsonville.
The Opposition Leader’s pitch, in the Australian today: "Australians have learned the lessons of the global financial crisis. the savings rate has increased five-fold to the highest in more than two decades. the government, by contrast, has embarked on a debt-fuelled spending binge unparalleled in our history." (read more)
Wine story glut: SMH scribe Mark Metherell‘s wine glut report was so good it led p3 and p5. Nice one.
Diary: the inquiry into Australia’s Immigration Detention network continues today. the Economics references committee meets to discuss finance of the not-for-profit sector. the Environment and Communications references committee will meet to discuss recent ABC programming decisions. and the committee examining the carbon tax also meets today. On Q&A tonight: William McInnes, Rob Oakeshott, Janet Albrechtsen, Mark Butler and Helen Coonan.
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The Australian reports: AUSTRALIA’S resources boom could slow as commodity prices tumble, amid warnings that Asia’s growth, which spared the nation from the effects of the global financial crisis, will not withstand a downturn in the advanced economies.
The Daily Telegraph reports: OPPOSITION Leader Tony Abbott has put the Coalition on an official election war footing, warning his senior frontbench to prepare for a December poll – with Kevin Rudd as Labor leader. Mr Abbott called a special leadership meeting last Thursday in Canberra to "war-game"’ an early poll strategy.
The Age reports: FEARS that the developed world’s finance ministers will fail to deliver a credible solution to Europe’s debt crisis have nervous investors ready to sell stocks when Australian trade opens this morning.
The Financial Review reports: European officials edged towards a multi-trillion-euro plan to insulate Europe’s biggest economies and banks from the threaten of defaults in Greece.
News.com.au reports: A TOP economist and the Federal Opposition have urged the Reserve Bank to cut the cash interest rate by at least 0.25 percentage points to avoid recession.The Herald Sun reports: FOOTY clubs will tell the AFL today they stand to lose tens of millions of dollars if the Gillard Government’s poker machine reforms are introduced.
The Hobart Mercury reports: INDEPENDENT Tasmanian MP Andrew Wilkie says he is not scared of a powerful publicity campaign by the NRL and AFL against his proposed poker machine reforms.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports: SENIOR staff in the federal Attorney-General’s Department with high-level security clearances have been investigated internally for rorting their overtime claims and obtaining financial benefits by deception, according to internal government files.
The West Australian reports: Immigration Minister Chris Bowen insists all Labor MPs will vote for the Gillard Government’s legislation to amend migration laws to allow its Malaysia people swap deal, even though a number of party members are openly opposed to the change.
The Advertiser reports: RIGHT-TO-DIE campaigner Dr Philip Nitschke has gained permission to import a drug used in voluntary euthanasia. He will provide the drug Nembutal to a Victor Harbor woman who wants to die.
The Canberra Times reports: As the ACT approaches D-day for its plastic bag ban, the South Australian experience has shown that millions of bags have been removed from the environment in that state but sales of bin liners and other kitchen tidy bags have also increased dramatically.
The Courier Mail reports: QUEENSLAND doctors are demanding pubs and clubs be forced to close earlier as more patients than ever are treated for injuries caused by booze-fuelled violence.
The NT News reports: Tourists stunned as snake scoffs wallaby.
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IR Clash: A FIERY showdown is believed to have erupted in Tony Abbott’s office as senior frontbenchers demanded an explanation for his promise not to re-introduce individual workplace contracts. (Simon Benson reports)
Left agenda: LABOR’S Left, which has raised its voice strongly in caucus in opposition to Julia Gillard’s Malaysia people swap, is putting more pressure on the PM with a public campaign for sweeping party reform. (Michelle Grattan reports)
Regret: NICK Xenophon has indicated he might not have used parliamentary privilege to name a priest accused of rape had he known the man was about to take leave. (Sarah Malik reports)
Footy tax: A GRAND-FINAL week assault by AFL and NRL clubs on the government over poker machine reform will intensify pressure on Julia Gillard, who faces increasing caucus concern over the policy, the key to her power deal with Tasmanian independent Andrew Wilkie. (Sid Maher and Rowan Callick reports)
Lobbying: WEST Australian National Tony Crook faces a fortnight of intense lobbying for his vote on the asylum seeker legislation, as the government shores up its own ranks to prevent any risk of abstentions. (Michelle Grattan reports)
Moving up: THE Deputy Premier, Andrew Stoner, has denied he is planning to move to federal politics but stopped short of committing to serve his full four-year term. (Jo Tovey reports)
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Phillip Coorey writes: Politicians have never shied away from associating with sport, but sport usually has tried to stay out of politics. Until now.
Simon Benson writes: IT is no longer a case of if but when and how Julia Gillard’s prime ministership comes to an end.
Katharine Murphy writes: the PM’s fortunes keep falling, and the questions for Labor keep mounting.
Michelle Grattan writes: the AFL and NRL joining the battle against the government’s pokies reform is really bad news for a PM who has more trouble than she can cope with already.
Jennifer Hewett writes: WAYNE Swan says there’s a mood of sober realism in the international meetings he has attended in Washington.
Martin Ferguson writes: RAPID growth in the resources and energy sectors has been occurring for less than a decade but it represents a structural shift as important as the economic reforms of the 1980s and 90s.
Alexander Downer writes: YEARS ago I was in Dublin to meet with the prime minister, president and foreign minister. PM Bertie Ahern, President Mary McAleese and Brian Cowen were all buoyant. the Irish economy was booming and the newly minted euro was proving a roaring success.
Paul Sheehan writes: Ich bin ein Boomer.
Stephen Bartos writes: A visitor to Australia with any more than minimal interest in media and politics would be forgiven for thinking that our paramount policy problem is asylum seekers.
Barry Cohen writes: THERE are, the experts claim, many reasons to vote against Julia Gillard at the next election. Topping the list is the allegation that she conspired against Kevin Rudd in the greatest act of disloyalty to a leader since caucus elected John Watson in 1901.
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