Category Archives: Australia

Australia

The French Tourists Story, in his own words, and a Third Case of Mistaken Detention!

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The ABC News Investigative Unit have published the transcript of their background story and interview with Mahamadou Sacko, the French tourist who was wrongly detained after immigration services thought (wrongly) that he was travelling on a forged passport and didn’t bother to check with the French embassy. Some of it reads like a Monty Python sketch, the quote in the previous story mentions that they told him they wouldn’t call the French Embassy, that it was his job to phone them. But it then gets worse..

ANDREW FOWLER: Did you have money to do that?

MAHAMADOU SACKO: No, because they keep all my money.

It gets even more surreal when, rather than contact the French embassy..

ANDREW FOWLER: In their attempts to establish Sacko’s nationality, immigration officials resorted to unusual tactics. They asked him to name the French president, the tallest mountain in France and to sing the French national anthem.

With questions like that I’m suprised they didn’t go on to ask him why he wasn’t wearing a stripy shirt and riding a bicycle with a string of onions around his neck..

To round things off Kerry Nettle, a Greens Senator for NSW, has said that her office was told of a South Korean woman who was wrongly locked up in Baxter detention center for one or two weeks in the mistaken belief she was an illegal immigrant caught in an immigration raid.

Aussie Govt Locks up French Tourist by Mistake

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Not content with locking up its own citizens as illegal immigrants the Australian Government has now managed to win friends and influence people by locking up a French tourist who they (mistakenly) thought had a false passport in a detention centre and then forgetting to tell the French embassy about him.


It took Mr Sacko two days to get in touch with the French embassy and he remained locked up in Villawood for four days.



“They’re asking me if I want they call French embassy, I say ‘ok, yes’ [but] they didn’t do,” Mr Sacko told the ABC’s Investigative Unit.


“Why not? They say is not their job for do that, if I want I must do by myself.”

The Australian government has paid AU$25,000 in compensation and the French Government has sent an official protest through their consul in Australia to DFAT.

Monotremes Diverged from Marsupials Earlier than Thought

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An interesting piece of news from the ABC if you’re into Australia’s wierd wildlife, apparently marsupials (kangaroos, wallabies, koalas, etc) and monotremes (egg laying mammals, the platypus and the echidna) diverged much earlier than previously thought. This is based on a fossil of a 115-million-year-old relative of the platypus found in Victoria.

There’s more at Google News.

Enquiry into Cornelia Rau’s Mistaken Detention to be Held in Private (updated)

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It appears that the government has decided that the enquiry into why Cornelia Rau was mistakenly put into detention for 10 months will be held in private by former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer.

Apparently this is to protect her privacy, which whilst being a nice ideal given some of what she has gone through that has appeared in the press, is also fairly convenient for the government and the officials involved.

Update: Cornelia Rau’s family have called for a public enquiry, saying:


"We would have preferred an open inquiry which could hear Cornelia’s psychiatric history in camera"

Australian Govt Mistakenly Locks Up Aussie as Illegal Immigrant for 10 Months

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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..

  • Cornelia Rau goes missing from Manly Hospital in Sydney, reportedly with schizophrenia.
  • She makes her way from NSW to northern Queensland, where she is found by Aborigines.
  • In NSW the police list her as a missing person and the media is alerted.
  • The Aborigines became concerned for her safety and wellbeing, and took her to the local police for help.
  • The police find out she speaks German, and apparently says she’s a German called Anna in Australia on a temporary visa (she’s actually lived here since she was 18 months old, and is Australian).
  • QLD police detain her, and she is passed over to DIMIA and detained as a suspected illegal immigrant.
  • At some point the police and/or DIMIA contact the German embassy, who (unsuprisingly) have great problems identifying her as a citizen.
  • The QLD police (or DIMIA) fail to contact the NSW police to check their missing persons list.
  • In detention she is sent for psychiatric care to a hospital in Brisbane, but they fail to spot any problems and label her as having “behavioural problems”.
  • Six months into her detention she is moved to the Baxter detention center, where she comes to the attention of BaxterWatch activists as “Anna”.
  • Eventually Cornelias family eventually see pictures of “Anna” in detention, provided by activists, and identify her.
  • Cornelia is released to them, and is now being treated at Adelaides Glenside psychiatric hospital.

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.

Australian Army Short of Bullets

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Oops… The ABC is reporting that:


The Australian Army has overstated its capabilities and cannot provide enough bullets or shells to train its soldiers, according to a report by the Commonwealth auditor-general.

I guess it’s time to cross our fingers and hope nobody invades whilst they try and get some more.. 🙂