Advice on legislation or legal policy issues contained in this paper is provided for use in parliamentary debate and for related parliamentary purposes. This paper is not professional legal opinion.
Briefing Paper No. 13/2008 by Kathryn Simon
Page Content
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This Briefing Paper considers the issue of asylum seekers in Australia.
The paper commences with a summary of the current Federal Government’s
policy with respect to asylum seekers, in particular immigration detention. It
also considers the Federal Joint Standing Committee on Migration’s
Inquiry into Immigration Detention in Australia, which is considering a number
of key issues that will shape the future of Australia’s policy towards
asylum seekers [pp 1-4].
The second section considers the change in the Federal Government’s
policy towards asylum seekers in context. It considers the Refugee Convention
and Protocol and provides a brief overview of the development of domestic law
and policy, examining the policy of mandatory detention, the Tampa incident and
the Pacific Solution. It also briefly considers the issue of children in
immigration detention, the inquiries into the immigration detention of Cornelia
Rau and the deportation of Vivian Alvarez Solon [pp 5-16].
The next section of the Briefing Paper considers the issue of asylum
seekers from a statistical perspective. It provides the latest statistics of
the number of asylum seekers in immigration detention as well as statistics
regarding global and domestic trends. The vast majority of those people in
immigration detention originally arrived in Australia with a valid visa [pp
17-23].
The fourth section of the paper examines the change in the Federal
Government’s policy towards asylum seekers. The section briefly
considers seven new values with respect to immigration detention. It also
considers a number of important issues that have received media attention
recently for example, the arrival of two boats of asylum seekers at Christmas
Island [pp 24-31].
The final section of the paper raises the challenge of the implementation of
the policy and the provision of services to asylum seekers, which is relevant
to both State and Federal Governments [p 32].