Ben’s Blog

The Immigration Minister has announced the Government’s intention to end the policy of indefinite and unreviewable detention of asylum-seekers. Currently, anyone without a valid visa, but who is making an asylum claim, is held in “immigration detention” until their claim is heard in full, including the reviews and appeals which are essential safeguards in a process on which people’s lives hang.

I have visited Villawood many times, and there is no doubt that long-term detention has a terrible impact on the people who have been held there for long-term. I have one friend – a gifted painter – held there more than two years now. He has gone through anger and depression. He has struggled to occupy his time and his mind when the art room has been open only a few hours a day, two days a week and he, of course, is not allowed any art materials in his room. He has been without friends and family. Because Government policy up until now is that until his asylum claim is heard in full (and he has a prima facie case to be found a refugee) he must be locked up. No appeal, no review.

Long-term, indefinite and unreviewable detention has been inhumane policy (first established by Labor in 1992) that has damaged people’s lives.  Men, women and children have been detained – in some cases for years – in prison-like conditions when they never posed the slightest danger to the Australian community. Thank God this national shame is being brought to an end.

Under the new policy, to justify the ongoing detention of anyone, the onus of proof is going to on the Department of Immigration to demonstrate that someone poses a risk to the community or has repeatedly breached their visa condition. They will have to review detention every 3 months. The policy proposed by the Minister also establishes that a minimal period of detention for people arriving by boat will be used to conduct health, identity and security checks. Advocates have long argued that this is a legitimate function for detention.

It will also overturn the previous Government’s policy of applying second-class status determination procedures to anyone picked up in the “excised offshore places” like Christmas Island or Ashmore Reef – ie. pretty much any part of Australia that is not part of the mainland or Tasmania. People arriving by boat will now have access to free legal advice and full reviews of their cases.

Read the Minister’s speech. Reflect on the damage our Government has done to so many people. And speak out so that this policy can be turned into legislation, making the new policy permanent and certain. The Opposition is trying to run the line that these changes are “weak on border protection” which is vicious rubbish, so we may all need to pray for some changes of heart too.

Just checking in. I’m in Delhi for two days, and this is the first chance I’ve had to get online for a little while.

It was an amazing, heartbreaking, encouraging, informative and challenging twelve days in Bangladesh. I travelled for about a week with AJ and Susan from Room 3, who will produce the TEAR video on the risks and impacts of climate change on communities in Bangladesh.

I’ve met families forced to move five or more times because of increasing river erosion, losing land, homes and possessions each time. I visited areas affected by Cyclone Sidr (November 2007), still suffering the after-effects of lost lives, lost homes, lost livelihoods, salinated groundwater… We definitely got some remarkable and tragic insights into the nature of climate and environmental risks in Bangladesh, and the way climate change is already making hard lives harder.

Don’t have time to upload any photos or stories yet, but will do that as soon as I can.

It’s been revealed that an unpublished World Bank report suggests that 75% of recent global food price rises is the result of crop substitution and land conversion in favour of biofuels.This blows out of the water the US’ very sanguine take that biofuels were responsible for only around 3% of price rises, and even the far more realistic estimate of 30% provided by the International Food Policy Research Institute (pdf).So, while the longer-term supply and demand factors (lack of investment and support for small-farm productivity and rising demand in, for example, India and China) clearly play a part in rising world food prices, it looks like it’s mostly the fault of the world’s wealthiest filling their tanks at the cost of the poorest being able to fill their stomachs.It’s f-ed up. I just can’t think of another way to say it.ActionAid have just released a great report, Cereal Offenders (pdf), providing recommendations for the G8 to cut biofuel subsidies, support small-scale farmers, and tackle climate change.

The Global Call to Action is staging a noisy, creative, and hopeful demonstration at the G8 in Japan.

10,000 people, 200 bamboo trees with wishes from all round the world addressed to the G8 – basically asking them to keep their promises.

Which, according to a leaked draft of the communiqué reported in the Financial Times, they are having some trouble doing. Backtracking on their 2005 commitments of an additional $25 billion in aid to Africa and universal access to HIV prevention, treatment and care by 2010.

You can send an online wish to G8 leaders, putting a bit more public pressure on them to come up with something more substantial during the summit this weekend.

On the weekend the Treasurer said:

There will be revenue raised from an emissions trading system and every cent of that revenue will certainly be used to assist either households or the business community with the impacts of this scheme.

I’ve got no problem with assisting low-income households particularly to deal with rising costs associated with the ETS. But I think the money needs to do more than just get recycled to businesses and/or households. Some of the revenue should be used to help further reduce Australia’s own emissions, through technology development and deployment for example.

And some of it should certainly be used to fund the efforts of poor countries as they struggle to adapt to the impacts of climate change. We actually have treaty obligations under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change to support adaptation, particularly in Least Developed Countries and countries particularly vulnerable to climate change impacts, such as small island states. Using some of the ETS revenue for this purpose would start to provide an adequate and reliable source of funding for critical adaptation needs in poor countries. Something that has been shamefully lacking in the global response to climate change so far.

It’s a crazy time to be doing it (with all our preparations for a longer-term move), but I’m leaving for Bangladesh tonight, to see the work of one of our partners HEED responding to climate change impacts and help make a DVD for TEAR on the topic. Then I’ll be going to India to see the advocacy work of one of our partners who are doing some really effective community development and advocacy work.

Good to see The Australian is still mostly carrying on its anti-ALP and anti-climate change campaigns. There are occasional bright spots where commentary is insightful and well-informed. (That is, it hasn’t been through the Australian’s sausage factory of dominant narrative conformity – “responding to climate change will destroy the economy”, “the Rudd Government is all spin and no substance”, or whatever.)

Here’s a good example of why, in general, George Megalogenis is a commentator worth reading and Dennis Shanahan is not. Same day, same issue – the newspoll on the environment that showed that:

• 61% of voters think an emissions trading scheme could slow global warming
• 56% of voters are prepared to pay more for energy and transport
• More voters want petrol included in an emissions trading scheme (46%) than want it excluded (42%)

Dennis says that this shows that the more people understand about emissions trading, and the higher costs it will bring, the less they support it. It’s only in George’s article, though, that you get all three results. On the inclusion of petrol, Dennis just says that voters are “almost evenly divided”.

It’s a 4% difference, Dennis! Your whole article is built around the 5% difference between those who think an emissions trading scheme might have some impact on greenhouse gas emissions and those who are prepared to pay more in responding to climate change. So, how can a 4% difference in the poll numbers mean nothing?

Dennis also would like to give the Opposition some more ammunition for their “populist campaign” with the almost unbearably dumb line:

But cabinet is wrestling with issues that range further, and could send up power bills and the grocery bill. How do you measure a cow fart and should that push up the price of beef?

Look out, you’ll pay more for everything! (By the way, the methane mostly comes out the front, not the back, end of the cow.)

Dennis reckons the polls show that voters basically don’t support anything that means they might have to pay more. However, given that a clear majority support the idea of an ETS, and are prepared to pay more, and that the larger minority favour including petrol in such a scheme, George is on stronger grounds when he says:

The public are much smarter than that: they know more important decisions need to be made.

That’s why voters ignored the false promises at the bowser, and said instead that they are prepared to accept the inclusion of petrol in an emissions scheme.

If global warming is the threat Rudd and Nelson say it is, and the electorate believes it to be, why would either leader risk arguing the opposite – that doing next-to-nothing is a serious option?

Voters clearly don’t believe an ETS should be nobbled at birth.