Indefinite Detention

The Greens are planning on introducing legislation that will allow refugees to appeal negative ASIO determinations. This would be introduced when the Senate resumes next month.

ASIO, for the people who don't know is basically Australia's version of MI5.

At the same time Human Rights Lawyer David Manne has lodged a papers in the High Court challenging the same problem.

As it stands at the moment an asylum seeker can have a successful asylum application meaning they get refugee status, but if ASIO says "no" they can't be let into the community, or in the case of a Tamil refugee by the name of Ranjini be taken into detention after living in the community for about a year.

Now what happens is that we have people who have been determined to be refugees under the Refugee Convention, meaning they are permitted to stay in this country, but because of the negative ASIO finding cannot go into the community. It seems that all these people know is that they have a negative finding with no way of appealing.

According to the Greens there are 57 people in this situation, some of them children, who have been found guilty of "something" in a manner that resembles Kafka's The Trial. This country already has a less then stellar record when it comes to refugee issues, and this doesn't do much to help.


ASIO has already caused problems by increasing the time these people can spend in detention, and we've already seen how their lack of transparency have already caused problems, such as the case of Sheik Mansour Leghaei, who ended up being deported after an adverse check by ASIO after a long legal fight. This was despite support from various members of government, religious figures and other prominent people.

The problem is that I get the feeling that Manne's attempt will probably result in similar results to Leghaei's trial. Some of the things we ended up learning in Leghaei's case was that he didn't have a right to learn why he failed his check, that some of the possible evidence against him is either made up by others or by ASIO itself and that proceedural fairness and natural justice don't matter when it comes to national security. I think the most shocking thing to come out of that case was that apparently nobody had a right to overrule ASIO.


If you believe the more nationalistic Australians one of the qualities that makes up "Australian-ness" is "a fair go". But looking at what ASIO is doing it seems that this doesn't matter when it comes to people who come to this country to either escape danger or improve our society, or improve relations within it simple because they are foreign.

And I think that has to change.

Juliar Gillard?

So Labor decided to implement a carbon tax. Oh no the world is going to end. Yep, soon we'll see our mining industry sent overseas because it'll be cheaper to mine Australian uranium in China or something.

So of course our leader is now being called "Juliar Gillard" by some people. Stupid people.

To call her that shows such an ignorance of pretty much everything to do with politics at all. Maybe the tax is a stupid idea, maybe it isn't, but in this sense it's beside the point.

The whole "Gillard is a liar" thing is the stupid bit.

It's clear that the whole carbon tax thing is a concession to the Greens. And the reason has nothing to do with saving the Earth, or at least appearing to. It's simply political. By saying that they are going to introduce a carbon tax it ensures that the Greens will support Labor, and that support is actually pretty crucial.

In July the new Senate will convene and the balance of power will change from Xenophon and Family First to the Greens. For Labor to pass legislation they would have to deal with other parties, and the Greens are the logical choice.

So of course Gillard had to come up with some sort of incentive to get them to side with her and proposed this carbon tax. By the looks of it the Greens are happy and Gillard will have an easier time running the country.

I think people must forget that we have a hung parliament and a Senate that can be potentially hostile when they go about calling Gillard "Juliar". A situation like this is one where you need to do quite a bit of politicking to get things done. Would these same people be complaining if Abbott had won and declared that the Liberal government would be implementing such a tax?

Would these people be saying that it's fine politicking from the Liberals or would they be just as vitriolic?