The BBC is reporting on the current immigration fiasco over the wrongful detention of people – so it now appears that in addition to the almost 30 Australian citizens affected:
Two hundred foreigners were also wrongfully detained by the immigration department in the same period and the cases are now being investigated.
In February this year I wrote:
Once is a mistake (a severe & tragic one at that), twice is carelessness, but three?
How many more cases like this are there ?
Well it seems we finally have the answer.
26
That’s right – the Australian Government hasn’t just managed to lock up one of its own nationals as an illegal immigrant by mistake once, twice or three times (not to mention wrongfully deporting someone), it’s actually managed to do it an extra 26 times in the last 10 years.
Mr Georganas says the reply last week from the Attorney-General and former immigration minister Philip Ruddock confirmed most cases have been settled out of court.
“They have told us they’ve paid in excess of $800,000 for out of court settlements,” he said.
Government nuclear agency says nuclear power is good – film at 11..
Google have a nice new toy called Google Trends – here’s some searches that I’ve come up with that are amusing..
Fun for all the family!
Just in on the ABC news:
Federal Human Services Minister Joe Hockey has signalled that private sector companies like banks and supermarkets may be given access to information stored on the Government’s “smart card”.
Joe Hockey says:
So a blanket policy saying that the private sector can have no access to the card, or a blanket policy saying that only certain government agencies can have access, or a blanket policy saying that individuals can or cannot change the information, I think is crazy at this particular point of time
No, Mr. Hockey, I think you’re crazy for considering letting private companies get access to this data!
My good friend Rich Boakes has blogged a powerful story about a man in Suffolk who is selling gallows to foreign states for a cool 12,000 GBP a pop – including such pillars of human rights as Zimbabwe.
Too many crims needing to be dealt with ? Well he can help you out, as the BBC says:
The execution equipment he says he sells ranges from single gallows, at about £12,000 each, to “Multi-hanging Execution Systems” mounted on lorry trailers, costing about £100,000.
As Rich puts it so succinctly:
This month Mr. Lucas is going to make a killing. Next month killing will continue, but Mr. Lucas will just have his regular customers; if they still want to do business with him.
Rich’s article has the details if, like me, you’d like to avoid doing any business with Mr David Lucas (below).
For those who are watching what’s going on in Iraq at the moment, this article from the BBC History Department on British relations with Iraq will give you a very necessary historical background on the history and creation of what is actually a very young country.
How many people realise that Iraq was created in the dividing up of the Austro-Hungarian empire between the victorious allied powers of the First World War ?
By gluing three separate provinces (Mosul, Baghdad and Basra) of the Ottoman empire together under the Arabic name for part of the region Iraq was created and then handed over to the British under a mandate from the League of Nations. Much the same happened to the area that then became Palestine.
The British made some bad mistakes in Iraq during their mandate, quoting the BBC:
There was immediate resentment amongst Iraq’s inhabitants at what they saw as a charade, and in 1920 a strong revolt spread through the country – a revolt that was put down only with great difficulty and by methods that do not bear close scrutiny. The situation was so bad that the British commander, General Sir Aylmer Haldane, at one time called for supplies of poisonous gas.
Indiscriminate air power was used to quell the revolt of the region’s tribesmen, methods the British admitted did not win them friends and, as one of them said, implanted undying hatred of the British among the people of the area, and a desire for revenge.
There is also a good Wikipedia article on the British Mandate of Iraq which is well worth a read.
Strewth cobber, it’s time to fake that fair dinkum Aussie accent to avoid getting locked up in Baxter or some other detention center for illegal immigrants!
This report on the detention of an Australian citizen (apparently) with schizophrenia for 10 months as an illegal immigrant has the whole story in a nutshell, but the short form is..
There is a very telling comment from her sister:
“The two groups who were kind to Cornelia in all this time were the two most downtrodden groups in society — the Aborigines in Cairns and the refugees in Baxter — there’s an irony in that,”
For more information see the media reports and the various blog entries about this.