A new report from the Human Rights Commission has damned Australia’s use of hotel detention as a breach of basic standards – but it is a practice the government has no plans to abandon.
Australia is now paying $750,000 a day to a notorious US private prisons operator to keep the remaining 100 or so asylum seekers in conditions that are slowing destroying their mental and physical health.
Refugees who are ineligible for other welfare support and in financial hardship have had their Special Benefit payments cut off, due to a technical glitch that stems from a disconnect between government departments.
As the Albanese government prepares to finalise a Nauru contract with an American prisons operator, the cost of the brutal enterprise has stretched into billions of dollars.
Almost a year after the Taliban seized Kabul, Afghans who worked for Australia are being told to cross the border into Pakistan, some without documentation, without their families and at great risk.
Days before the federal election, the Morrison government sent an unexpected letter to the Nadesalingam family, threatening to bar any further bridging visas.
The timing of a report that an asylum-seeker boat had been intercepted on its way to Australia has led to claims of manipulation and concerns over the Coalition’s links to the Sri Lankan government.
The author spent nine years of his life in detention, most recently at Park Hotel. Now he is in America, experiencing freedom he had only imagined, and wishes his friends were also free.
