Category Archives: Writing

Writing

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"

Here’s something that doesn’t happen everyday..

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There I was, looking through my HTTP referrer stats, grieving over the dumb referrer spams that no-one else than I will see, when I noticed a referral from andrewbartlettonline.blogspot.com and I thought, nah, it can’t be, so I clicked, and it was! 🙂

Oh, for those who don’t know, Senator Andrew Bartlett is deputy leader of the Australian Democrats Party here down under.

The referral was one of a bunch of many links to other bloggers commenting on the whole sorry Cornelia Rau situation.

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.

RIP Ivan Noble, 1967-2005

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Ivan Noble, the BBC journalist who documented his courageous struggle from beginning to end has died at the age of 37 (more on Google News UK.

His poigniant, moving and humourous diary has been inspirational. His closing words, written in 2004 in case he became to ill to continue, were:


I will end with a plea. I still have no idea why I ended up with a cancer, but plenty of other cancer patients know what made them ill.




If two or three people stop smoking as a result of anything I have ever written then the one of them who would have got cancer will live and all my scribblings will have been worthwhile.

Farewell Ivan, go in peace.

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.. 🙂