This is an advertisement posted by the Liberal Party on YouTube.
It is the third advertisement on boats and aslyum seekers in the first week of the election campaign. [Read more…]
“Our Policy Is Clear” – Liberals Pounce On ALP’s Border Protection Dissension
May 09, 2016
The Liberal Party has seized on dissension in Labor ranks over offshore processing of asylum seekers.
The ALP candidate for Melbourne, Sophie Ismail, went on the record today as favouring bringing asylum seekers to Australia and processing them here. Melbourne is held for the Greens by Adam Bandt.
The Liberals released the advertisement shown below. It quotes Ismail and other comments by retiring WA MP Melissa Parke and Tasmanian Senator Lisa Singh. The repeated “our policy is clear” comments from Opposition Leader Bill Shorten are taken from his media conference today where he was questioned about Ismail’s comments. [Read more…]
Immigration Detention And Children: Statement From Immigration And Border Protection Department
Mar 08, 2016
This is a statement on immigration detention and children, issued by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
The statement was issued by the Secretary of the Department, Michael Pezzullo.
Later in the day, a further statement was issued, following criticism of the third paragraph’s statement that “suggestions that detention involves a ‘public numbing and indifference’ similar to that allegedly experienced in Nazi Germany” were offensive.
Both statements are shown below.
Statement from Michael Pezzullo, Secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
Immigration detention and children: separating fact from fiction
Consistent with the law of the land, and under direction of the government of the day, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection operates a policy of keeping children in detention only as a last resort, and releasing those children that might be in detention as soon as reasonably practicable.
This is a very contentious area of public policy and administration. Sometimes emotions rise and facts gets distorted. For the reputation of my Department and its officers, it is crucial that I set the record straight: the Department and its uniformed operational arm, the Australian Border Force, does not operate beyond the law, nor is it an immoral ‘rogue agency’.
Recent comparisons of immigration detention centres to ‘gulags’; suggestions that detention involves a “public numbing and indifference” similar to that allegedly experienced in Nazi Germany; and persistent suggestions that detention facilities are places of ‘torture’ are highly offensive, unwarranted and plainly wrong – and yet they continue to be made in some quarters. [Read more…]
Melissa Parke: Speech On Asylum Seekers
Feb 29, 2016
The retiring ALP member for Fremantle, has addressed the House of Representatives on the treatment of asylum seekers.
Parke, 49, who has held Fremantle since 2007, spoke in the Grievance Debate in the Federation Chamber.
- Listen to Parke’s speech (10m)
Speech by Melissa Parke, member for Fremantle, to the House of Representatives.
Ms PARKE (Fremantle) (17:46): I was preselected to run for Labor in the federal seat of Fremantle while I was still working for the United Nations overseas. One of the main motivations for coming back to Australia to stand for parliament was to help to improve asylum seekers policy that had for so long been misused by the government of Prime Minister John Howard for cynical political purposes.
On my first day back to Australia on 20 June 2007, I gave a speech in the Fremantle Town Hall to mark World Refugee Day. I had worked a lot with refugees during my time with the UN, especially in Kosovo and Gaza. I had seen Kosovars streaming back from neighbouring countries to their burnt-out homes in Kosovo to live in tents in the middle of the harshest winter on record. I worked with Palestinian refugees in the Middle East who had been forced from their homes in 1948 and 1967 and who were living in appallingly dire conditions for decades in the hope that they would one day return to their homes. [Read more…]
