https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/nov/01/nauru-children-morrison-removed posted:

The Australian government is set to move all children now held in immigration detention on Nauru to Australia by the end of the year.

George Brandis, the former attorney general and who is now the high commissioner to the UK, confirmed the plan in a radio interview in London early on Thursday morning.

“There are hardly any children on Nauru and in New Guinea and we expect that by the end of this year there will be none,” Brandis told LBC radio.

His comments follow reports in the Australian newspaper, which said it had been told that the remaining 40 children of asylum seekers still living on Nauru would be relocated to Australia by the end of the year.
Coalition attacks critics of Nauru policy as number of children falls below 40
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It reported that 46 babies have been born to asylum seekers held in indefinite detention on the island since it was reopened as a place of offshore detention in 2012, an average of eight a year.

Guardian Australia confirmed on Wednesday that the number of children had dropped to 40 owing to ongoing medical transfers, with the assistant minister for international development, Anne Ruston, saying all those children lived outside the detention centre itself, in the community with their families.

“There is no bigger issue at the moment than Nauru,” Ruston told the Australian Council for International Development’s annual conference.

Guardian Australia has confirmed that 135 people have been brought to Australia from Nauru since 15 October, including 47 children. Of the 135, just 49 were moved by the government without legal intervention by advocates or lawyers representing the asylum seekers.

The government spent $480,000 in the first quarter of this financial year on legal costs responding to or challenging court applications for medical transfers. It spent $275,000 in the whole of 2017-18.

Scott Morrison on Tuesday said the government was “quietly” removing children from the island nation, telling reporters this week the number had halved over the past nine weeks.

“We haven’t been showboating about it, we haven’t been doing any of those things,’’ the prime minister said.

The children and families have been sent to locations across the country. Many are being housed in detention facilities.

Guardian Australia understands there are children in numerous hospitals receiving treatment, including at the Royal Children’s hospital and Monash hospital in Melbourne, the Royal North Shore hospital and Westmead Children’s hospital in Sydney, a hospital in Adelaide, the Lady Cilento in Brisbane, and some have gone to Gold Coast University hospital.
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The Coalition MP Craig Kelly told Sky News on Wednesday the government wanted to “wrap that up” by the election.

Tony Abbott told Radio National the people “are not being resettled in Australia”. “They are being moved to Australia on a case-by-case basis if that is required for urgent and significant medical treatment,” he said.

Asked if they would stay in Australia, the former prime minister replied: “Nope, they are coming to Australia to be treated but the government has made its position absolutely crystal clear that people who come to Australia illegally by boat will never be able to settle here permanently.”

Asked how the number of medical transfers squared with his comments that people Nauru receive better medical treatment than in some regional Australian towns, Abbott replied that some conditions cannot be treated on Nauru.

The announcement comes after campaigns grew to include hundreds of charities, human rights groups, medical and legal organisations, as well as thousands of doctors. The UN high commissioner for refugees and Médecins Sans Frontières have called for the evacuation of all asylum seekers and refugees, saying the health situation is just as concerning for adults.

The Coalition MP Julia Banks last week pleaded for both parties to stop playing politics and bring families here.

The former human rights commissioner Gillian Triggs, who was hounded by the government for her 2014 report about the condition of children in offshore detention, said the report was “the best news we have heard for a long time”.

But she said focus must remain on the push to end the practice of offshore detention for good.

Triggs told the Radio National Breakfast host, Fran Kelly, that “political events and community approaches have quite simply forced the government’s hand”.

Those events include the win of the independent Kerryn Phelps in Wentworth, who centred her byelection campaign on getting children off Nauru.

Triggs said the federal court had also played a role, in ordering a number of children with “really urgent medical problems” to be brought to Australia rather than being sent for medical care in Taiwan, the government’s preferred option.

But Triggs expressed concern for the remaining 1,000 adults on Nauru and Manus Island – assuming that families are brought to Australia along with children – who she said were suffering similar mental and physical health complaints.
How Australia finally started to care about asylum seekers and refugees on Nauru
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“For very obvious reasons one tends to emphasise the children … but of course the same arguments apply to their parents, to their grandparents, but most especially to these young men who are on Manus for the most part,” she said.

“They have been there for five years or longer and they are in utter despair with very similar medical indications.

She said Abbott’s claims about conditions on Nauru were “disgraceful”.

“There has been endless reports and endless evidence to the same point and I think it’s beyond belief that senior politicians will continue to argue that this is a perfectly benign place,” she said.

According to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, the 41 families moved to Australia included eight who were moved by court order, 21 under concessions made after legal intervention, and 12 moved at the initiative of Australian Border Force.

Guardian Australia has confirmed at least two chartered Nauruan Airlines flights have brought people to Australia in the past 10 days, including several to Adelaide on Monday.

There have been at least 17 children – with their families – housed in the Melbourne detention centre. It is expected that most will be moved within two to three weeks once housing, support services and schools have been organised.

George Newhouse, director of the National Justice Project legal organisation, which represents many of the families, welcomed the apparent announcement “for the most part”.

Newhouse said an end-of-year deadline may still be too long for some of the children left.

“This move is long overdue,” he said.

“It is proof that strategic legal action and effective advocacy can create change even in a difficult political environment.”

Newhouse said the men and women still on Nauru were “in a bad state” and third countries needed to be found urgently for resettlement.

PoPcornTG posted:

Tell me more about the things you don’t find funny.

quote:

Abbott open to police in remote schools Daniel McCullochAAP Wednesday, 31 October 2018 7:55PM

There have been mixed reactions to Tony Abbott's appointment as special envoy on indigenous affairs.

Tony Abbott is not ruling out putting police officers in schools as he looks for ways to improve attendance and performance in remote communities. Mr Abbott is spending the week touring South Australia in his new role as special envoy on indigenous affairs. His appointment to the position earlier this year was highly controversial, with many indigenous leaders cynical about the choice and angry about the lack of consultation. Mr Abbott concedes there are "very passionate" mixed opinions about his appointment but says he is getting a pretty good response from remote communities. "There's a degree of gratitude to get the ear of a senior* politician. The more remote someone one is, the keener they are to get someone out from Canberra to listen," he told ABC radio from Coober Pedy on Wednesday. Mr Abbott said he was not surprised Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion first learned about his new role through the media. "When I was a minister in the Howard government, I often discovered things in the newspaper. That's just the way government works," he said.

Mr Abbott is considering the possibility of stationing police in high schools.

"It's by no means unusual to have a very strong relationship between the police and some secondary schools and I think that can be a very valuable thing to have," he said. "Each school is unique. We need to try to find systems which can accommodate the uniqueness of schools and communities. But certainly if we're talking about secondary schools in troubled communities, I think some close linkage between the local police and the school is often good for the police and for the schools."

Mr Abbott said he had no doubt more funding was also part of the answer.

"I don't think it's the whole answer by any means but certainly more funding - particularity where communities want to step up and make more of an effort themselves - is going to be important." A remote school attendance strategy has been in place since 2014, when Mr Abbott was prime minister. He concedes attendance has not improved dramatically since but says there has been success in some places and he would like to see the program continue. As prime minister, Mr Abbott was heavily criticised for arguing taxpayers should not have to fund the "lifestyle choices" of people living in remote communities. He made the comments as 150 remote Western Australian indigenous communities were facing potential closure. He does not resile from his views, saying the extent to which government supports small communities is a very important question. "If people want to go and live in a place that's very remote and in company with just a few other people, that's obviously their choice," he told the ABC.

Lid posted:

The letter also delved into immigration policy, with Mr Clifford writing “young white Australians” were rebelling against the “hopeless Coalition leadership that has dragged down Australia since the 1970s”.
“They see a grim future for themselves and their children, of becoming a minority in their own country,” Mr Clifford wrote.
“Opening Australia to mass third-world immigration is not ‘moderate’. It is extremist.
“The fact that this policy has been followed by the Coalition parties for the last four decades does not make it moderate. It is treasonous.”

Cartoon posted:

Special envoy for nig nogs

Zenithe posted:

Do we know yet what is proposed to happen to the parents of these children we are bringing to Australia?

Cartoon posted:

Special envoy for nig nogs

MysticalMachineGun posted:

Dude, what the gently caress

You Am I posted:

He's from Queensland

thatbastardken posted:

what? no he isn't.

Granite Octopus posted:

Also why the gently caress doesn't every single reporter jump down their throats when they mention the term "illegally by boat". loving hell.

Count Chocula posted:

I just spent 3 months in a mental health hospital and now I see a counselor and psychiatrist for free, so everything’s working out for me even though i’m broke.

GoldStandardConure posted:

are the boats unlawful though?

quote:

Mr Turnbull attended an oceans conference in Indonesia with President Joko Widodo this week, at the request of Mr Morrison.
During that event, he said moving Australia's embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem would provoke a "very negative reaction" from Indonesia.
This morning, 2GB radio broadcaster Alan Jones asked Mr Morrison whether there would be "more missions for this man to be able to go and sprout his own, discredited views".
To that, the Prime Minister replied, "no."

MysticalMachineGun posted:

Dude, what the gently caress

JBP posted:

Cartoon posted:

It was my way of pointing out that the special envoy was in fact a rabid right wing racist clown for whom such a casually racist label would not cause the batting of even a second eyelid. Sorry it caused you to clutch your pearls and ignore context (etc.)

Cartoon posted:

It was my way of pointing out that the special envoy was in fact a rabid right wing racist clown for whom such a casually racist label would not cause the batting of even a second eyelid. Sorry it caused you to clutch your pearls and ignore context (etc.)

Cartoon posted:

It was my way of pointing out that the special envoy was in fact a rabid right wing racist clown for whom such a casually racist label would not cause the batting of even a second eyelid. Sorry it caused you to clutch your pearls and ignore context (etc.)

Cartoon posted:

Special envoy for nig nogs

quote:

[The cop] was initially named as a co-respondent but was removed from the complaint after he argued a breach of privacy action must be brought against an agency, not an individual.

Police admit the breach occurred but argue the agency cannot be held responsible for the actions of an individual.