FEDERAL POLITICIANS TO FACE INTEGRITY TEST ON 'VALUES'

4 September 2007

All federal politicians and political candidates will be asked to sign an 'Australian Values' guarantee in the lead up to the next Federal election.

The 'Values Guarantee' is part of A Just Australia's campaign to 'Clean Up' Australia's Migration Act.

"There has been a lot said by Australian politicians about 'Australian values' over the past few years but little has been done to put them into practice, particularly when it comes to the way we treat refugees and asylum seekers," National Co-ordinator, Kate Gauthier said.

"In 2005 the Australian Government released 'Values for Australian Schooling' listing values such as care and compassion, doing your best, responsibility and a fair-go and said that these are the values they want us to live by.

"What some politicians have failed to grasp in the continuing debate is that the values politicians want Australians to live by are the very same values that Australians want their politicians to live by," she said.

"We believe that current asylum seeker policies break fundamental Australian values such as a fair-go and compassion towards those in need.

"So we are putting Australian politicians to an integrity test to see whether they are willing to commit to putting these fundamental Australian values into practice as a politician," she said.

The 'Values Guarantee' will be distributed this week along with a questionnaire and AJA's 10-point plan to 'Clean Up Our (Migration) Act.' The results will be made publicly available through the AJA website.

The 10-point plan follows the release last week of the AJA/Oxfam report into offshore processing of asylum seekers titled "A Price Too High: the cost of Australia's approach to asylum seekers."

This report found that $1 billion has been spent so far on this policy to process fewer than 1700 asylum seekers, a cost of over $500,000 per person. The report found other significant costs, such as the human impact on asylum seekers themselves, as well as negative impacts to the broader Australian public.

The 'Values Guarantee' and the 10-point plan is available at the AJA homepage at www.ajustaustralia.com