Since retiring from politics in 2012, former Greens leader Bob Brown has continued to offer sharp perspectives on issues of national debate.
Governments directly and indirectly control who is allowed to tell the refugees’ stories of how they are treated in offshore detention.
AAP/Eoin Blackwell
Successive Australian governments have dehumanised refugees and kept Australians in the dark about what really goes on in the offshore detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island.
The heightened scrutiny of Australia’s immigration policies in recent weeks has shone a light on the long-term problems of indefinite detention of asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru.
Peter Dutton remains adamant that no refugees from Manus Island will be allowed to come to Australia.
Dan Peled/AAP
It has taken more than three months for the Australian and PNG governments to jointly announce the Manus Island detention centre will close. But the detainees’ fate is now even more uncertain.
Agnes Prest from the Whistleblowers Activists and Citizens Alliance interrupts Malcolm Turnbull’s economic address.
Tracey Nearmy/AAP
An angry Malcolm Turnbull has asked CEDA for a ‘please explain’ and the Australian Federal Police for a full incident report about the protest over Nauru and Manus Island.
Peter Dutton dismissed many of the ‘Nauru files’, including those documenting sexual assault, as ‘false allegations in an attempt to get to Australia’.
AAP/Dan Peled
Reports of abuse on Nauru should provide a flashpoint for the Turnbull government to reassess its asylum-seeker policies before more serious harm is inflicted on Australia’s international standing.
Nauru’s parliament would have been rebuilt in Queensland, but with less power.
CdaMVvWgS/Wikimedia Commons
In the 1960s, with the phosphate boom over and Nauru’s economy in ruins, Australia offered to move the entire nation to Queensland’s Curtis Island. But with no sovereignty on offer, the deal collapsed.
Tony Abbott initially aspired as prime minister not to get sucked into the 24-hour media round, but he quickly did.
AAP/Jason Edwards
The Sunday Telegraph reported at the weekend that Malcolm Turnbull had visited only seven electorates since the July 2 poll, and contrasted his “hermit-style approach” with Bill Shorten’s “never-ending…
Peter Dutton suggested asylum seekers in detention on Nauru have self-harmed in order to get to Australia.
AAP/Dan Peled
Leaked incident reports from the Nauru detention centre affirm what has been known for a long time: detention is no place for children, and we need alternatives to offshore processing.
Thousands rally at Sydney Town Hall to protest against the High Court’s decision regarding 267 refugees facing deportation in February.
Richard Ashen/Newzulu
Refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru routinely face neglect by Australian-hired health workers and frequent unpunished assaults by local Nauruans, according to an investigation.
Photos of beaming young asylum-seekers with their families aboard HMAS Adelaide in October 2001 told a completely different story to the government’s spurious ‘children overboard’ claims.
Courtesy Project SafeCom, Jack H Smit.
Images move us to act – as last week’s episode of Four Corners has shown. Our government has gone to great lengths to suppress photos that humanise asylum seekers – but when they seep out, empathy is aroused.
The government’s first priority should be to improve conditions in offshore detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
AAP/Eoin Blackwell
The key challenge for the returned Turnbull government is to formulate policies that present Australia as a good global citizen willing to take its fair share of refugees.
Does Nauru now face a sunnier outlook?
Saleem H. Ali
Nauruans used to be some of the richest people in the world, before their mining industry imploded. Now, as the island aims to develop sustainably, there are signs of the green shoots of recovery.