Some detainees to be released

Some detainees to be released
By Elizabeth Colman, Steve Lewis and wires
March 23, 2005
From:
News.com.au

THE Federal Government's refugee policy was unravelling because it played politics with the problem, Opposition Leader Kim Beazley said today.
His comment followed Canberra's announcement it would release detainees who had been refused refugee status but who could not return to their home countries, until the situation that kept them in Australia was resolved.
"If the Government was systematic instead of political, they would have solved this problem a long time ago," Mr Beazley said in Melbourne.
Holders of the Removal Pending Bridging Visa would have to agree to return to their home countries as soon as the Federal Government considers it possible for them to do so.
They would also be required to report regularly to the Department of Immigration, but would have access to some benefits, including Medicare and short-term income support.
The visas would apply only in a small number of cases to detainees already imprisoned for a long time, Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said.
"The new bridging visa will not be available to detainees with current visa applications, or who are challenging decisions, either through review or courts," Senator Vanstone said.
Mr Beazley said that under a Labor government asylum seekers would be properly tested on security grounds but the processing would be done quickly "so we don't have people effectively locked away for very long periods of time".
"We need to keep that deterrent element there, that mandatory detention element there, but we also need to do it with humanity and expedition," he said.
"This Government mucks around with it, always looking for a political opportunity, and now their chickens have come home to roost."
Under Labor, asylum seekers would be processed within 90 days and then released, unless there were security or health reasons to keep them in detention.
For detainees, there would be a monthly review with the onus on the immigration department to justify why they should remain in custody.
The visa would also provide access to trauma and torture counselling, schooling for children, and child care tax benefits - the same as those provided to people living in Australia on Temporary Protection Visas (TPVs).
Today's announcement represents the government's first - if small - departure from its hardline stance on immigration detention.
But Prime Minister John Howard stressed it did not foreshadow a change of policy.
"We have no intention of altering the policy ... of mandatory detention. That policy has worked extremely well," he told reporters in Canberra after a cabinet meeting yesterday.
The decision to release a small number of detainees followed two days of intense speculation that the government was reconsidering the cases of Christian convert asylum seekers.
The move outraged Muslims, Labor and Family First who feared a string of copycat conversions.
But today's decision is unlikely to please refugee advocates, who argue the government's entire policy of mandatory detention is unlawful and cruel.
Amnesty International today warned against a "quick fix" approach to the problems and said there should be a presumption against detention for all asylum seekers entering Australia.
The Government's latest shift on refugee policy has come after a group of prominent Liberal backbenchers raised concerns about conditions in detention centres, with cabinet agreeing to relax strict controls on who can be released into the community. Announcing the shift, the Prime Minister insisted the Government's hardline policy on border protection and commitment to offshore processing had not been compromised.
"What we have been looking at is a situation where a person has been judged not to be a refugee. In other words, all of the avenues of examination and adjudication have been exhausted, yet for practical purposes that person can't be sent back to the country from whence he came," he said.
"While that situation continues, it's not reasonable that he or she continues to be in detention and the desire is that that person be let out into the community on the understanding that when the impracticability about the person's return has been removed, then that person will be returned to the country from whence he came. Of course, at no stage has it been judged that that person is a refugee."
Senator Vanstone will have the discretion to determine when to send stateless visa holders back to their country of origin. The new visa category will incorporate those who have exhausted their legal claims against the commonwealth.
The case of long-term stateless detainee Peter Qasim, who is in his seventh year in immigration detention, has been the focus of intense lobbying by Coalition backbenchers and advocates.
Mr Qasim, who claims to be from Kashmir, has dropped all appeals for protection and asked to be deported from Australia, but no country will accept his bid for residency.
The Howard Government had until yesterday taken a draconian approach to migration law, fighting hundreds of court battles to cement its right to detain a person living in Australia without a visa, following the arrival of the Tampa boatload of Afghan refugees in August 2001.
Mr Howard exploited community angst over refugees at the so-called Tampa election of 2001 by campaigning on the memorable slogan: "We will decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances in which they come".
Government MPs, including NSW's Bruce Baird and senator Marise Payne, Victorian MPs Petro Georgiou and Phil Barresi and West Australian member Judi Moylan, have raised the issue of children in detention and stateless detainees in the partyroom and privately with the Immigration Minister.
And Nationals Kay Hull and John Forrest have been instrumental in changing policy on asylum-seeker issues such as temporary protection visas and regional workers.
Mr Barresi told The Australian last night that he had spoken to Senator Vanstone and Mr Howard of his concerns about the "mental decay" of indefinite detainees.
"Full marks to the Prime Minister and Senator Vanstone," Mr Barresi said. "(The decision) doesn't undermine the border protection policy the Government has, but it does demonstrate a great deal of compassion."
Mr Barresi praised fellow Coalition MPs who had lobbied "discreetly" and outside of the election context and "within the system".
"Bruce Baird, Judi Moylan, John Forrest, Petro (Georgiou), these people have stood up and spoken and I'm pleased that it took that visit to Baxter to speed the process on it," he said. "Petro got the ball rolling."
The breakthrough comes as activists from the NSW Refugee Action Coalition plan to rally in the hundreds outside Senator Vanstone's house in Adelaide and then move to Baxter on Good Friday.
Including copy from The Australian
Labor 4 Refugees

The Labor Party is the Party that wants OPEN BORDERS and NO detention of anybody who arrives from any where so long as they say they are not a
Terrorist. Bogs.