Tampa Revisited?
5 October 2007
In the lead up to the Federal election, it appears that the Government has again played the race card. This time, the scapegoat is the Sudanese refugee community of Australia.
The Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, has stated that the refugee intake numbers from Africa will be reduced, in response to a claim that Sudanese have a 'failure to integrate into the Australian community.' This statement was released after a young Sudanese man was involved in a fatal assault. However this man was the victim, not the perpetrator.
"It beggars belief that the Minister would view being violently attacked as evidence that a person has not been integrated into the Australian community." National Coordinator, Kate Gauthier said. "Surely this should be seen as a sad indictment of the wider Australian community and not of Sudanese refugees. Is this really an issue of a lack of integration or a cheap pre-election way of playing the race card?"
On August 18, 2007 the Minister Kevin Andrews announced that Australia was reducing its refugee and humanitarian intake from Africa from 70% of overall numbers in 2004 to 30%. Mr. Andrews stated that the new intake numbers took into account input from UNHCR and was in response to the numbers and needs of refugees around the world.
Yet he has now claimed the reduction is out of concern for the Sudanese community's lack of integration into Australian society, citing gang-based violence and fights. The Minister has been silent on the matter of releasing any evidence that supports this claim, while the Vistorian Police Commissioner has contradicted him by stating Sudanese are not over-represented in crime statstics.
"We call on the Minister to be open and accountable to the Australian people by releasing the evidence he bases his decisions on. The fact is he can't, because it doesn't exist." Ms Gauthier said.
A Just Australia has released a 10 point plan to 'Clean Up' Australia's refugee and asylum seeker policy problems. This policy would result in an orderly system with transparent decision-making.
"For too long the Government has been writing immigration policy on the run, creating more problems than they fix. There is too much Ministerial discretion, resulting in a lack of transparency and illogical decisions made on the whim of the Minister. It's time the Government put its money where its mouth is on values and acted with traditional Australian compassion and decency."
For more policy details, please see http://www.ajustaustralia.com/resource.php?id=207
For media comment:
Kate Gauthier 0414 876 139
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