The Wellbeing Budget contained a surprise immigration initiative, aimed at stopping ‘boat people’. This isn’t a new risk, so Newsroom’s Laura Walters asks why the big boost now? The Government has allocated an extra $25 million over four years to prevent people from being smuggled to New Zealand by boat. It was a surprise new initiative Read more
Posts Tagged ‘Boat people’
35 refugees from Nauru fly to USA – none from Muslim majority countries
Monday, July 9th, 2018
On Sunday, thirty-six refugees exiled to Nauru by Australia flew to the USA to be resettled. They are Afghan, Pakistani, Rohingyan and Sri Lankan. The group did not include refugees from Iran or Somalia or any of the Muslim majority countries banned from the US, which account for about half of all refugees on Papua New Read more
Manus Island refugees protest over moves to evict them
Thursday, August 3rd, 2017
A protest is continuing at the refugee prison camp on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island. On Wednesday, speakers addressed a rally of about 900 detainees demonstrating against moves to evict them. Under PNG law the Australian-run facility must close by November after four years of operation. The protest was a response to cuts to water Read more
US to resettle Nauru and Manus refugees
Tuesday, November 15th, 2016“I can now confirm that the Government has reached a further third country resettlement arrangement for refugees presently in the regional processing centres. The agreement is with the United States,” Turnbull told a press conference in Canberra. He said the agreement, to be administered with the United Nations Refugee Agency, is available only to those Read more
Where will 800 asylum seekers from Manus go?
Friday, April 29th, 2016Papua New Guinea said on Wednesday it will close an Australian immigration centre on a northern island after its Supreme Court ruled it unlawful, but Australia ruled out accepting more than 800 asylum seekers detained there A spokesperson for Dutton did not immediately respond for requests for comment on the closure but Dutton said in Read more
Australia spends £29 million to resettle just two refugees
Friday, March 11th, 2016Australia spent £29 million on a deal with Cambodia to accept its refugees but the scheme has been labelled an “expensive joke” after just two people took up the offer to relocate. The four-year deal, signed in 2014, was designed to resettle hundreds of refugees who have been transferred by Australia to the tiny Pacific Read more
Will Australia ask NZ to help with Nauru refugees?
Tuesday, September 15th, 2015
Australia has agreed to take 12,000 refugees living on the borders of Syria and northern Iraq. It continues however to refuse entry to refugees on boats from Indonesia. The head of Australia’s Refugee Council says he expects Australia will soon ask New Zealand to help get it out of trouble with the Nauru asylum seekers’ Read more
What will we do when boat people reach NZ?
Tuesday, June 16th, 2015
Last week 65 boat people from Sri Lanka and Bangladesh were intercepted by the Australian navy off eastern Indonesia. They were heading For New Zealand. In reply to their request for asylum in New Zealand, they have been advised to contact United Nations officials in Australia. Since at least 2010 the Prime Minister John Key Read more
Iron curtain of secrecy over refugee detention centres
Tuesday, June 2nd, 2015
“The Abbott Government is erecting an iron curtain of secrecy over what is happening and what has happened in Australia’s immigration detention system,” says barrister and spokesperson for the Australian Lawyers Alliance, Greg Barns. “The Australian Border Force Act, supported by the ALP and opposed only by the Greens, effectively turns the Department of Immigration Read more
If boat people arrived in NZ would would we do?
Friday, June 27th, 2014
The New Zealand Government has not ruled out the possibility transferring any boat people reaching it shores to detention centres in third countries. It has rejected of the recommendation made by the United Nations Human Rights Council to rule out the transfer of asylum seekers to detention centers in third countries. This is one of Read more