The rights of asylum seekers on Christmas Island
mrty | July 19, 2009
Who is the Government trying to kid? They have excised the external territories from the country’s migration zone and located asylum seekers arriving by boat on Christmas Island. Why do that? To prevent the real asylum seekers from gaining access to legal assistance and rights of review. Those rights are reserved for the fake asylum seekers who arrive in their thousands legally by air.
So what is the Government’s answer to this fiasco? Why it is to send a former member of the Refugee Review Tribunal to Christmas Island to engage in a fake review of decisions of course. What a brilliant idea! And because it is fake review rather than real review they can maintain the pretence that there is no right of access to the courts.
Well folks the game is up. DIAC cannot hide behind the shelf structure they are using to try to hide what they are doing. The decisions of the "reviewer" will be reviewable in the courts because it is being done on behalf of the Commonwealth government.
Get real people and end this fiasco.
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