Many cite our action as a possible new trajectory. But it is not new. In fact, over the decades that policies of mandatory detention and remote or offshore processing have endured, there have been multiple incidents of creative, high-risk media stunts. Probably the closest precedent to our action was 2004's Big Brother contestant, Merlin Luck, staging a silent protest during the live eviction show, holding a small banner which read ‘FREE TH REFUGEES’.

I often stay up late, trying and always failing to catch up on reading and study, only looking up every now and then to watch the workers across the road. It’s my own way of standing in solidarity, a pathetic gesture if ever there was one. On one such an occasion, I came across a tragic news article: having just finished a three-hour cleaning shift, a worker in one of Sydney’s shipping yards walked out of the premises and then doused himself in petrol and set himself alight.

The current focus on border protection as a matter of security is a fairly recent development. As Tad Tietze discusses, even during the twentieth century there were periods in which large numbers of people were able to freely migrate to Europe, the US and Australia. The US ignored the flow of Mexicans crossing the border after the Second World War.

20 February 1987–20 June 2013 I first met Ahmad Ali Jafari in the Villawood detention centre in mid 2012 whilst conducting art lessons with the Refugee Art Project. Though he had no experience of making art Ahmad was a willing and enthusiastic participant in our class. He was a short, compact man with a slightly rounded belly who had an air of tidiness about him.

Part of the reason why the asylum debate among the Left fails to look beyond the end of its own nose is the exclusion of racialised voices from the public arena. Understanding why white, left-wing Australians of a certain ilk are so invested in divesting their society of responsibility for racism is key to understanding why someone like Keane can dismiss ‘let them all come’ – or as I prefer it, Open Borders – as impractical and irresponsible.

The BBC has become the first news organisation to be granted access to the reopened detention facility at Nauru. Far from signifying a shift in policy, however, the arrival of the press at the site shows the government’s determination to legitimise and maintain the current system of indefinite offshore detention of asylum seekers.

It is no accident that Indigenous people are stigmatised through income management. It is no accident that thousands sit in refugee camps just off our borders. It is no accident that government benefits are so low people cannot pay rent and buy food ...

In 2010, lawyer Elizabeth O’Shea started work on her firm’s case representing Mohammed Sagar and Muhammad Faisal. The two men had received adverse security assessments from ASIO, the consequences of which were indefinite detention on Nauru.

Govt confirms they have sent women and children refugees overnight to the detention camps in Manus Island indefinitely. Shameful. – Senator Sarah-Hanson Young on Twitter, 21 November 2012

Here’s how the Australian government addresses you if you’re rich and have time on your hands. Here’s how it addresses you if you’re poor and desperate.

You can learn a lot from Schapelle Corby. Or, more particularly, from the coverage of the Corby saga. Since Corby’s arrest for drug smuggling, every development in her case has spurred a media blizzard. Most recently, of course, the prospect that she might receive an early parole became front page news everywhere. Or, at least, everywhere in Australia.

Introduction I think generally the law is under-understood. Experts comment on it, because they’re the only people who understand it. Often, they do not explain much. When they do, they are generally very diplomatic and civil when commenting publicly. There is a convention that it is necessary, if not merely important, to be deferential whenever […]

The controversy over the burial of the dead of SIEV 221 still seems to have the aura of an event that everyone agrees not to speak of ever again. Some things in life, Scott Morrison’s outrage at the SIEV 221 funerals being one of them, are just too creepy to keep talking about. For a […]

In a world in which we’ve been desensitised to the shock of war and conflict, in which those two very things are normalised, you sometimes need to slow things down, step outside and put things into perspective. This year at TiNA, I saw an event that did just that. It was the publication of Westside […]

Andrew Bolt is not happy with what I wrote in response to the suicide of Josefa Rauluni. He says I’m either a ‘liar’ or ‘simply ignorant’. I wrote that our politicians and corporate media peddled hatred and fear against asylum seekers, which created the conditions that caused Rauluni’s death. I made up a megaphone speech, […]

Two days ago, Josefa Rauluni, a Fijian asylum seeker, was killed. The newspapers reported he ‘fell’ from a roof, before quoting those who knew it was a suicide. Josefa pleaded with the government not to deport him. They didn’t listen. He jumped from the roof a few hours before they were going to expel him […]