Weekly media wrap - 2 March

The Abbott Government continues to defend its criticism of Professor Gillian Triggs. Described by some as an 'attack', the Government accused Triggs, the President of the Human Rights Commission which produced The Forgotten Children report into children in detention, of harbouring political bias due to the timing of the report. The advocacy group Grandmothers Against Detention of Refugee Children rallied in Melbourne in support of Professor Triggs.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton confirmed that the Bladin Alternative Place of Detention in Darwin will close in April 2015. The Coalition Government has attributed the closure to its ability to stop the arrival of asylum seeker carrying boats and the success of Operation Sovereign Borders.

According to reports in The Guardian, the trial of the two men accused of murdering asylum seeker Reza Barati in a riot on Manus Island on 17 February 2014 will soon begin. Asylum seekers on Manus Island have been asked to give evidence and are reportedly nervous about their safety if they testify.

Amnesty International has called on Australia to do more to help the millions of refugees fleeing violence in Syria and Afghanistan, including increasing Australia’s humanitarian intake. Amnesty also released its annual report in which it condemned the Australian Government for its offshore processing policies and the continuing detention.

 Meanwhile, the Obama administration is pushing to increase the number of Syrian refugees settled in the United States, but is facing resistance from Republicans concerned about security screening of refugees.

Weekly media wrap - 16 February

The Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) called for a Royal Commission into the policy of holding children in immigration detention, following the government’s release of its The Forgotten Children: National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention report. The report found more than a third of children in detention in the first half of 2014 had serious mental health disorders. It found more than 300 children committed or threatened self-harm in a 15-month period, 30 reported sexual assault, nearly 30 went on hunger strike and more than 200 were involved in assaults.

Prime Minister Tony Abbott criticised the report as ‘a blatantly partisan politicised exercise’, questioning ‘where was the Human Rights commission when hundreds of people were drowning at sea?’ Professor Triggs said she made the decision to hold the inquiry last February because the release of children had slowed down over the first six months of the new Coalition Government.  

The government announced there would not be a Royal Commission into children in detention.

 More than 200 Australian organisations (including Asylum Insight) signed a letter calling on parliament to stop holding children in immigration detention.

Meanwhile, it emerged through Fairfax media that the government had sought the resignation of AHRC president, Professor Gillian Triggs.

The High Court ordered that the Immigration Minister grant a permanent protection visa to a Pakistani refugee. It unanimously found the decision by former Immigration Minister Scott Morrison not to grant the visa on national interest grounds because the man was an unauthorised maritime arrival was illegal.

Around 300 people were feared drowned after four people-smuggling boats sank in the Mediterranean. Twenty-nine people died of hypothermia aboard Italian coastguard vessels after being picked up from a boat adrift near Libya. 

Weekly media wrap - 10 November

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison told a NSW Liberal party function that the Abbott Government would not reconsider its policy of turning back asylum seeker boats. Mr Morrison said that '[t]he government will never, ever move away from the policies that we know work'.

Meanwhile, Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs claimed that Scott Morrison is using children in detention as 'bargaining chips' to facilitate the passage of the Abbott government’s proposed changes to the Migration Act. A report delivered by the Parliamentary Committee into Human Rights states that the proposed changes are incompatible with Australia's human rights obligations.

A high-level roundtable that was run in July 2014 by the Centre for Policy Development, Australia 21 and the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law released its report. The report's key recommendations include lifting Australia's humanitarian intake to at least 25,000, processing asylum seekers in their home countries before they flee, and better treatment of asylum seekers in Australia.

Tensions at Regional Processing Centres on Nauru and Manus Island continue to rise, with reports from Nauru that an Iranian refugee was stoned and then beaten by a group of local men. The PNG Government has announced that it will begin the process of finalising refugee status determinations and will provide training to refugees in English, the national language of Tok Pisin and PNG culture in a purpose built facility.

In other international news, a boat carrying asylum seekers has capsized off the coast of Istanbul with reports that at least 24 people are dead. UNHCR welcomed a new set of international guidelines calling for countries to adopt a more gender-sensitive approach to dealing with female refugees, asylum seekers and stateless people in order to take account of the abuses they frequently suffer.