So far I have spoken in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Hobart and Launceston, Adelaide, Perth and Benalla in North East Victoria.

The idea for the forums came ahead of a visit to Papua New Guinea (including Manus Island), that I made in August, following my retirement from the Federal Parliament.

I wanted to get the message across to Australians and our government that even with the closure of the detention centre on Manus Island, the next step must be taken for those who remain in PNG as asylum seekers.

We must continue to urge the Australian Government to resettle those eligible asylum seekers in New Zealand.

The existing situation continues to cost Australians too much both financially and in terms of our reputation in Papua New Guinea and the Pacific.

The overwhelming response from the PNG people has been that it is time to end detention and they are proud and supportive of the action taken by their Prime Minister, James Marape, to initiate the termination of services provided to asylum seekers detained on Manus Island.

During my two terms as Member for Indi between 2013 and 2019, eight branches of Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) in the electorate and the then National President, Marie Sellstrom, ensured I was informed of the status of those seeking asylum in Australia but placed in offshore detention in PNG and Nauru and in onshore detention in all Australian states.

Working with Rural Australians for Refugees provided the opportunity to speak directly to Australians about respect, justice and compassion for those seeking asylum and the need to find a solution to the plight of people "dumped" in PNG.

It is also important to respect the rights of PNG to manage its own affairs in the best interests of the country and its people.

I want to do more than speak to rural and regional Australians about the plight of asylum seekers.

I want everyone I speak with to take action and write to their local MP and State senators in the Federal Parliament. By taking this kind of action throughout our communities, there is a greater chance the Government will listen and respond.

Many within the faith communities I have spoken to in the past month support this approach. The Josephites, Brigidines, Baptists, Uniting Church and Anglicans have all provided venues for the speaking tour we have organised.

I thank them and my friends within RAR for their help.

Now we are asking all faith communities to support our request that the Australian Government end the punishment of people seeking asylum. Please write to the Australian Government and Parliamentarians, asking them to work cooperatively with the New Zealand and PNG Governments to find a resolution to the unacceptable quarantining of human beings on the islands of PNG and Nauru.

Pope Francis has said, "Migrants, refugees, displaced persons and victims of trafficking have become emblems of exclusion". It is shameful the Australian Government and the country's major political parties have taken this approach.

On September 30, 2019, Fr Giorgio Licini, General Secretary of the Catholic Bishops Conference of PNG and the Solomon Islands wrote:

"Nauru and Papua New Guinea fall within the majority of countries that, in spite of all the goodwill, still can't ensure proper care for their citizens.

"These countries have few doctors, scarcity of medicines, lack of equipment and lack of facilities.

"Thousands of people die in PNG every year from curable diseases despite everybody's efforts. Trying to push the idea that asylum seekers and refugees in PNG have proper health care is laughable and irritating."

Together with Rural Australians for Refugees, I ask all those who believe in social justice and human rights, especially the Bishops of New Zealand, to support Fr Licini and urge the Governments of New Zealand, PNG and Australia to work together to find a resolution to this issue seeking a fair and just process for people seeking asylum in the Asia Pacific Region.

• Cathy McGowan AO, Former Australian Independent Federal Member for Indi
• Image: Planning Institute Australia

Besides pushing for a definitive end to the detention of refugees on Manus Island, the bishops are also highlighting the plight of various groups in the country who have not gained refugee status.

In a recent Church-led public forum in Port Moresby, the difficulties and uncertain futures faced by asylum seekers and stateless people with permissive residency were discussed.

The president of PNG's Catholic Professionals Society, Paul Harricknen, says both PNG and Australian governments must stop holding 600 refugees on Manus as it is unlawful.

In 2016, PNG's Supreme Court ruled that holding men on Manus against their will was unconstitutional. PNG's government claims the men are no longer detained on Manus, but Harricknen says the men have no freedom, are monitored and are kept against their will.

"Most of them do not want to stay in PNG because in the first place PNG was not their destination.

"And for them to be brought here and detained and continue to be detained, whether you keep them on Manus, whether the detention centre is closed, whether you keep them in a hotel and give them money and expect them to run around, that's still detention."

The Church has written to PNG's government about the medical condition of the refugees on Manus, calling for a dignified ending to Australia's indefinite detention of the men in PNG.

Harricknen says the government indicated it is outside its power to do anything about it.

The Church is seeking support from the International Organization for Migration and the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to push the governments to end the plight of the men on Manus.

Comments from the refugees who attended the forum spoke of the difficulties and uncertain futures faced by asylum seekers and stateless people with permissive residency.

While one refugee pointed out his and other refugees' indebtedness to PNG, others spoke of hardship.

"It's also very hard, like when I go out sometimes some people they call 'asylum seeker' or 'refugee'. It still make hard. It's not easy. We need justice. My other friends they got refugee certificates, so I'm the rejected one and I don't know what will happen, and I stay six years."

Source

• Radio NZ
• Image: aljazeera.com

Abdul Aziz Muhamat fled persecution in Sudan only to be detained by Australia in Papua New Guinea, where he became a spokesperson for hundreds of men held there for five years. Continue reading

Despite a promise that interpreters would be available, the English speaking Kurd said he had to volunteer to help patients and doctors communicate. Continue reading

He said their story shows us the power of people's everyday humanity and decency. "These men highlight an important story that has been missed by many."

The two Manusian men, Father Clement Taulam and Michael Kuweh, have defied the Papua New Guinea and Australian governments by calling for assistance for the refugees and asylum seekers on Manus.

Speaking at his Papitalai parish church on Los Negros Island across a small bay from the detention centre, Taulam said the enforced shutdown of the centre had left people vulnerable and suffering.

Over years of pastoral care, he has built up friendships with many of those in the centre, he told the Guardian and the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

Kuweh spent decades in the PNG military, rising from an enlisted rank to become a senior officer. He trained and served alongside Australian troops for years.

He said Manusians were famously hospitable and had welcomed West Papuan refugees.

But Manusians were stopped from providing food, water and medical assistance to the refugees and asylum seekers inside the detention centre.

"Five years is a gruelling experience for many, and it doesn't sit well for us, because ... we are people of hospitality and the current situation is [that] the authorities denied us to give them [help]: 'You can't do that.' Well, you can't stop a Manusian to deliver anything.

"I cannot leave my neighbour hungry. And leaving [people] without basic needs is out of the ordinary. Whose policy is that? Inhuman, totally inhuman."

Other reports say that local Manus people who had been trying to bring food by boat to the refugees and asylum seekers at the centre were intercepted by the police.

They were strongly warned not to do so again and released.

Karapanagiotidis said the responsibility for assisting should not fall to Manusian citizens.

"The villains are not the local people of PNG," he said. "Many feel as much unease, disgust and distress as to what has been done to the refugees and people seeking asylum on Manus as we do. The fault lies with the Australian government."

Source

• The Guardian
• Asylum Seeker Resource Centre
• Social Concerns
• Image: The Guardian

The remaining refugees and asylum seekers of the Lombrom Naval Base insist that their new locations in Lorengau closer to community areas will be unsafe, and refuse to leave.

During this crisis, the Turnbull government has become visibly irritated at Ardern's offer to accept 150 men from the centre. Such indignation was going to be hard to avoid.

The New Zealand Labour Party had been accused by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop for undue interference regarding the dual citizenship of Barnaby Joyce.

Egg had to be promptly cleared off her face once Ardern formed government.

Given Australian coolness to the NZ refugee offer, Ardern has taken a different tack: approach the Papua New Guinean government for an independent arrangement, cutting out the intransigent middle man.

Australian immigration minister, Peter Dutton, was far from impressed, adopting a threatening pose.

New Zealand, he promised, 'would have to think about their relationship with Australia and what impact it would have'. 'They'd have to think that through, and we'd have to think that through.'

Dutton was so unimpressed as to directly question the judgment of New Zealand's prime minister.

The offer, for instance, to supply up to $3 million to the PNG government to assist the refugees was 'a waste of money in my judgment, I mean give that money to another environment somewhere, to Indonesia, for example'.

Having berated Ardern's choices and suggestions, Dutton then did what Australian politicians in the past have done to their New Zealand colleagues: insist upon ample gratitude.

'We', exclaimed Dutton, 'have stopped vessels on their way across the Torres Strait planning to track their way down the east coast of Australia to New Zealand.'

This had taken 'many hundreds of millions of dollars into a defence effort to stop those vessels ... We do that frankly without any financial assistance from New Zealand.'

Australian papers and media outlets have also been mobilised to undermine New Zealand refugee policy.

Classified material had supposedly found its way to Brisbane's Courier Mail, registering 'chatter' from people smugglers pointing the finger to New Zealand as a richer target.

Suddenly, it seems, Australia's Border Protection Force had gotten busier, intercepting four vessels, carrying 164 people destined for New Zealand — another reason for Auckland (sic) to be respectful. Continue reading

Sources

• Eureka Street article by Dr Binoy Kampmark, a former Commonwealth Scholar who lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.
• Image: Newshub

"The purpose of the protest was to prevent anyone inside from leaving", Peace Action Wellington spokeswoman Emma Cullen said.

"We're shutting them down for as long as we can … at least until the evening, to affect these people, and for these people to acknowledge and question what their government is doing," Cullen said, according to Stuff.

Three protesters chained themselves by the neck to the gates.

One of them, Helen Lyttelton, said she was protesting for the people without food and medication and said they were an incredibly vulnerable population.

"We're here to show them we don't need Australia's permission to take on refugees. All they're seeking is safety ... and they've been unable to leave."

She hoped high commission staff, when they tried to leave, would have some empathy for what the Manus Island detainees had experienced.

"For years, they've been unable to move. They've not had freedom of movement for up to four years."

Earlier this month, the word 'SHAME' was scrawled across the high commission's driveway and a poster declaring 'Justice for refugees' was posted on the front gate.

An unidentified liquid was also splashed over the sign at the front of the building.

Source

• Stuff
• NewsTalkZB
• SBS
• Asia Pacific Report
• Image: Stuff

In 1992 we introduced a system of indefinite mandatory detention for asylum seekers who arrive by boat.

Since that time, we have accepted the idea that certain categories of refugees and asylum seekers can be imprisoned indefinitely; that those who are intercepted by our navy should be forcibly returned to the point of departure; that those who haven't been able to be forcibly returned should be imprisoned indefinitely on remote Pacific Islands; and that those marooned on these island camps should never be allowed to settle in Australia even after several years.

How then has this come to pass? There are two main ways of explaining this.

The first is what can be called analytical narrative: the creation of an historical account that shows the circumstances in which the decisions were made and how one thing led to another.

I have tried my hand at several of these.

The second way is to look at more general lines of explanation. I want to suggest five possibilities.

These general lines of explanation are not alternatives to each other but complementary. Nor do they constitute an alternative to explanation by way of analytical narrative.

Rather, they attempt to illuminate some of the general reasons the story took the shape it did.

Immigration absolutism
It is very common to explain the creation of Australia's uniquely harsh anti-asylum seeker system of border control as a partially disguised return of the old racism of the White Australia Policy.

This now seems to me mistaken.

Even though there have been occasional political hiccups - I think of Blainey in 1984, Howard in 1988, Hanson 1.0 in 1996 and Hanson 2.0 in 2016 - one of the more remarkable achievements of Australian history has been the seamless transformation of white Australia to a multiracial and multicultural society since the early 1970s. Continue reading

• Robert Manne is Emeritus Professor and Vice-Chancellor's Fellow at La Trobe University.

"It is time to find an alternative and conscionable solution, including accepting New Zealand's offer of resettlement and bringing the remaining detainees on Manus Island to Australia," said Bishop Vincent Long Van Nguyen.

A number of Catholic agencies in Australia have also voiced concern in a joint statement.

They are urging all Australians to express their concern for the circumstances of the men on Manus Island by contacting their local federal MP to demand an immediate change "to this expensive, unworkable and unprincipled policy."

The Statement makes the following points:

• The men on Manus Island have the right to food, water and shelter; to freedom and liberty; to be free from inhumane and degrading treatment, and to seek and receive protection.
• The Australian Government is legally and morally responsible for the lives of these men who have been arbitrarily and indefinitely held in limbo for more than four years.
• The only humane resolution to the current impasse is for the Australian Government to bring every refugee and person seeking asylum on Manus Island to Australia where they can be permanently resettled or have their claims processed in safety and with dignity.
• Offshore processing for the purposes of deterrence, whether in PNG, Nauru or anywhere else, is inhumane and unsustainable, and must cease to be a part of any Australian policy.

The Catholic agencies that signed the statement are:

Catholic Alliance for People Seeking Asylum (CAPSA), Catholic Social Services Australia, Jesuit Refugee Service (JRS) Australia, and Jesuit Social Services (JSS).

Source

• Diocese of Parramatta
• Australian Jesuits
• Image: The New Daily

She says there is no help available for people suffering from mental illness.

Last week an apparent suicide of a Tamil detainee was closely followed by that of an Iranian refugee, both of whom were living in the East Lorengau Transit Centre on Manus.

Keogh said she spent a day trying to get treatment for another Sri Lankan refugee who was having a psychotic episode.

The situation was dire. "I think it's high level. If the people at the hospital are saying there are three cases of psychosis at the moment - well, with psychosis, you don't know what they're going to do next," she said.

"If people can run naked through the town and no-one's allowed to apprehend them or do anything with them, the police could put them in the lock-up which would only add to their trauma. Any of those three could die imminently."

Keogh told RNZ that when they asked the people at the Transit Centre for help they said "Look, we're sorry but there is no psychiatric help at that hospital, there's nowhere on this island, there's nowhere you can take him, we can't do anything."

Australian and PNG authorities are moving ahead with plans to close the Manus Island detention centre by October 31.

The refugees inside have been told to move to alternative accommodation, mainly the transit centre, so the detention centre can be shut down.

"When they were in the camp [detention centre] anyone in a psychiatric state had people monitoring them and watching them the whole time. Here [at Lorengau] they don't have it," said Keogh.

Source

• RNZ
• Sunshine Coast Daily
• ABC News
• Image: Canberra Times

The Australian-run facility is due to close by the end of October but the PNG government is worried it will be left to care for about 800 men still there.

The Kurdish journalist and detainee Behrouz Boochani said about 60 men were transferred to Port Moresby earlier this month and that another 30 would be moved today. Continue reading

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 and electricity at the Foxtrot compound which is part of the original facility.

In May the Australian government announced the facility would shut down after it was deemed illegal by the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea.

The Australian authorities want the refugees to move to a new site; the protesters say they are being aggressively relocated to the Transit Centre in nearby Lorengau

The East Lorengau Refugee Transit Centre, the new facility on Manus Island, is intended to temporarily house refugees awaiting resettlement.

"We are not safe outside the fences, and immigration are trying to make life impossible for us inside," said Behrouz Boochani, a Kurdish journalist who fled Iran and has been on Manus Island since 2013.

"We are protesting peacefully for our human rights, and to call on Australia to uphold its commitments to offer us protection as refugees," he said.

The detainees, men who sought asylum in Australia, say they are being forced to settle in PNG.

Iranian refugee Amir Taghinia said at yesterday's rally that Australian media was censoring news of the protest.

"Power and water mean nothing. Even if they cut the food we are not going to go to Lorengau, we do not want to be settled in PNG," he said.

The men also marked the first anniversary of the death of Pakistani refugee Kamil Hussain, who Mr Boochani said had drowned while being "held against his will in an Australian concentration camp."

Source

• RNZ
• New York Times
• Image: ABC

A group of detainees has asked the New Zealand prime minister Bill English for asylum as they say PNG is incapable of resettling them when the detention centre closes. Read more

Refugees and detainees were told to consider their options, but not to leave it too late to make a decision.

"No one will be resettled in Australia," an official said.

In an announcement at the centre on Tuesday detainees were told that one of its four compounds known as Foxtrot would be closed on 30 June.

An accommodation block within Foxtrot, N Block, is to be emptied by 28 May.

"Once closed electricity will be turned off and your belongings will be relocated. The area will be locked and no one will be permitted to enter," a PNG official said.

The official said other compounds would be closed and demolished "in the coming months," and that "better information about the next phase of Manus Regional Processing Centre demolition will be provided in due course".

Refugees can move to accommodation in the PNG community or go to the Transit Centre in nearby Lorengau.

Those eligible for resettlement to the United States, will be settled in

Foxtrot's non-refugees (detainees whose claims for asylum have been rejected) can apply for voluntary repatriation or temporarily move to another compound.

Non refugees have been given a deadline of 31 August to apply for voluntary repatriation with Australian assistance.

Previous detainees to accept repatriation are reported to have been offered $US25,000.

Those who did not apply were warned they would be removed from PNG by the government of Papua New Guinea "without any reintegration assistance".

"Non refugees have no other options,""the official said, although one such asylum seeker, Azzam el Sheikh, has had his deportation stopped by a PNG court while his refugee determination process is reviewed.

Source

• channelnewsasia.com
• radionnz.co.nz
• Image: abc.net.au

This style of diplomacy has been going on for a number of years.

Whether it's morning-after kayaking on Sydney harbour or taking in our own Southern Alps, the annual Prime Ministerial sleepover says a lot about the relationship between New Zealand and Australia.

That relationship is almost unique for neighbouring countries - close enough culturally and historically to share a lot in common, but far enough away geographically to never have come into real conflict over borders or resources.

The relationship is built on shared values.

They include a strong sense of internationalism, of doing our bit in the world, whether that's in foreign conflicts, peacekeeping or overseas aid. And they include a commitment to honesty and giving people a fair go.

As anyone who can remember a childhood game of truth or dare will know, late at night on sleepovers is when a new level of honesty comes out.

It's when the relationship deepens - when we share secrets and tell the truth.

And that's what we need from English and Turnbull at Friday's soiree, because right now the Australian Government is betraying our shared values.

What has emerged in Australia in recent years would have been difficult to imagine just a decade or two ago.

On Nauru and Manus Island, over 2,000 refugees and people seeking asylum have been forcibly detained in conditions that Amnesty International has found amounts to the legal definition of torture - not a statement we make lightly.

In a tacit admission of guilt, when the Australian Government recently signed on to the UN's Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture, they wrote in a carve-out for their refugee 'processing centres' on Nauru and Manus Island, knowing they would not pass international scrutiny.

Things are so bad, so hopeless, that after three years of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment on Manus Island, 21-year old Iranian refugee Loghman Sawari recently fled in a bid for asylum in Fiji.

Sadly, he was forcibly returned to Papua New Guinea to languish there some more.

This is not compassion. This is not a fair go. Continue reading

• Grant Bayldon is executive director of Amnesty International NZ.

As well as going after $6.7 billion in its omnibus savings bill, it could go after the billions more it costs to run our immigration detention centres: $9.2 billion in the past three years, $3.9 billion to $5.5 billion in the next four, according to the most complete accounting yet of the costs normally hidden in inaccessible parts of the budget.

It comes as an Audit Office report identifies the cost per offshore detainee: a gobsmacking $573,100 per year.

For that price - $1570 per day - we could put them up in a Hyatt and pay them the pension 15 times over.

It costs less than half that, $200,000 a year, to house a typical onshore prisoner; a mere fraction of that, $72,000 including super, to pay a typical full-time worker, and just $20,700 a year to pay a full pensioner.

Ninety-nine per cent of the population don't come anywhere near $573,100 a year in income or cost. The census stops asking when income sails past $156,000.

But the comparison with wages isn't strictly valid. It understates the outrageousness of the $573,100 price tag.

The $573,100 isn't being paid in return for a detainee's labour, in return for a contribution to society, as are wages.

It is being paid to prevent the detainee contributing to society.

It is what economists call a deadweight loss.

We get nothing in return for it, apart from less of what we could have had.

And perhaps because it is not meant to make economic sense (and perhaps because the Department of Immigration and Border Protection has operated as something of a law unto itself), it hasn't even made financial sense.

The Audit Office says the department breached public service guidelines by not conducting proper tenders for the contracts to provide services to Manus Island and Nauru, at times falsely claiming it faced urgent and unforeseen circumstances. Continue reading

Sources

• The Sydney Morning Herald article by Peter Martin, economics editor of The Age
• Image: France 24, The Observers

The Executive Committee of the Federation of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Oceania, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands have issued a statement condemning what is happening to asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.

"Callousness can never be the proper response to human tragedy."

"We applaud PNG's Supreme Court's decision that the Manus Island detention centre is unconstitutional and illegal and we trust the Australian and other authorities will act swiftly in implementing a humane plan of rehabilitation for the detainees."

The executive committee also:

• Congratulated and offered encouragement to the Governor of Port Moresby on the development of this city and his commitment to justice, integrity and service in civic leadership
• Expressed their satisfaction that The Papua New Guinea Government has recently passed a Bill agreeing to implement the strategies proposed by the Paris COP21 meeting about climate change and sustainable development.
• Expressed support for the West Papuan people's desire to participate fully in the Melanesian Spearhead Group (MSG)

The Executive Committee of the Federation of Catholic Bishops Conferences of Oceania ( Australia, New Zealand, PNG/SI, CEPAC) is currently meeting in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea.

Source

• Supplied
• Image: Supplied

Appearing on the ABC's 7.30 program last Thursday, after The Guardian's release of 2000 incident reports from Nauru, the Minister for Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton told Leigh Sales, "I would like to get people off Nauru tomorrow but I have got to do it in such a way that we don't restart boats."

He went on to say, "We have had discussions with a number of other countries, but what we're not going to do is enter into an arrangement that sends a green light to people smugglers."

Dutton appreciates that Nauru and Manus Island are ticking time bombs.

During the election campaign, Malcolm Turnbull said that we could not be misty-eyed about the situation on these islands, a situation of Australia's making and a situation funded recurrently with the Australian cheque book. Now that the election is over, neither our politicians nor their strategic advisers can afford wilfully to close their eyes to the situation.

The majority of asylum seekers on Nauru and Manus Island have now been proved to be refugees. They are not going to accept cheques to go back home and face renewed persecution. That's why they fled in the first place. Most of these people have had their lives on hold, in appalling circumstances, for over three years.

It's time to act. Ongoing inaction will send a green light to desperate people to do desperate things.

While respecting those refugee advocates and their supporters who cannot countenance stopping the boats coming from Indonesia, I think it is time to see if we can design a way of getting the asylum seekers off Nauru and Manus Island "in such a way that we don't restart boats," ensuring that we continue to send a red light to people smugglers in Java. Continue reading

• Father Frank Brennan, S.J. is Professor of Law at the Australian Catholic University.

With very few of the refugees willing to be resettled in Papua New Guinea, it is unclear where the refugees and asylum seekers will go after Manus closes.

Australia's immigration minister Peter Dutton has made it clear that those on Manus will never be resettled in Australia.

"While people smugglers continue to target Australia, the Coalition Government has ensured no boats have made it here in the past two years and more. This effort to combat people smugglers must and does continue," Dutton says.

Some in Papua New Guinea are unhappy with the prospect of hundreds of asylum seekers being resettled into their country and there have been reports of asylum seekers being attacked by locals.

The prime minster of Papua New Guinea Peter O'Neill said a series of options are being advanced. It was important that the process is not rushed, but carried out in a careful manner, as they consider options, he said

Papua New Guinea's supreme court ruled in April that holding people against their will on Manus is illegal. The country's top judge Sir Salamo Injia last month expressed frustration that Papua New Guinea and Australia's governments were not complying with the ruling by closing the centre.

There are more than 900 men held on Manus, who were forcibly transferred there by Australia since 2013 after fleeing from countries such as Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Source

• radionz.co.nz
• channelnewsasia.com
• Image: stuff.co.nz

Paul Stevenson has had a life in trauma. The psychologist and traumatologist has spent 40 years helping people make sense of their lives in the aftermath of disaster, of terrorist attacks, bombings and mass murders, of landslides, fires and tsunamis.

He's written a book about his experiences, Postcards from Ground Zero, and for his efforts in assisting the victims of the Bali bombings, the Australian government pinned an Order of Australia Medal to his chest.

Now, he says, it is the Australian government deliberately inflicting upon people the worst trauma he has ever seen.

Over 2014 and 2015, Stevenson made 14 "deployments" - as they are called in the militarised argot of those secretive worlds offshore - to Manus Island and Nauru, where about 1,500 asylum seekers who tried to arrive in Australia by boat are held on behalf of the Australian government. His role was to counsel and care for the mental health of the Wilson Security guards.

Stevenson is president of the Queensland branch of the Australian Democrats. The party is not registered in the state, so he is standing in this federal election as an independent, with the support of his party.

He doesn't know whether his slim electoral chances for a Senate seat - "somewhere between zero and a half" - will be helped or harmed by speaking to the Guardian. But he says he feels it is incumbent on those who have been inside Australia's offshore detention centres to tell those at home the truth about regional processing.

He says he approached the Guardian, compelled by conscience to speak, "because I believe in our democracy".

Over a career spanning decades Stevenson has worked with the survivors of the Port Arthur massacre, the Thredbo landslide, the Boxing Day Indian Ocean tsunami, the Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005. He has counselled diplomats after embassies were bombed, and families who have lost loved ones to bushfires and floods.

Stevenson says that the great privilege - "the joy, even" - of working in the field of trauma is witnessing people fight back from cruel circumstance, working with people "who are incredibly brave, incredibly resilient, incredibly positively focused about what they're doing". Continue reading

Sources

• The Guardian, from an article by Ben Doherty and David Marr, who work for The Guardian.
• Image: CPA