You are currently browsing the monthly archive for September 2010.
The Australian Red Cross is a neutral, independent, non-political, humanitarian movement that works closely with asylum seekers, people who are trafficked, immigration detainees and people who have lost contact with their family overseas because of war or a natural disaster. They do much more than collect blood and respond to disasters.
They have just released their policy on migration – which is a big deal considering the current political climate and the role Red Cross plays within the sector. So much so that I have decided to reproduce it here for you to read. Enjoy
“Australian Red Cross assists people who are made vulnerable through the process of migration and whose survival, dignity, physical or mental health is under threat, irrespective of their legal status. While recognising the rights of different categories of migrants under international law, Red Cross works with vulnerable people including, but not limited to, migrants, asylum seekers, refugees, immigration detainees, stateless persons, people who are trafficked and irregular migrants, according to their needs.
Australian Red Cross works to prevent and reduce the vulnerability of migrants and to protect them against abuses, exploitation and denial of their rights. Australian Red Cross supports and assists vulnerable people who have been impacted by migration, to gain opportunities and to access sustainable solutions for themselves and their families.
1: Restoration of family links
2: Humanitarian support while immigration status is being resolved
Australian Red Cross believes that people who are made vulnerable through the process of migration, whose survival, dignity, physical or mental health is under threat, should receive the humanitarian supports they need while their immigration status is being resolved. Assistance should be based on need regardless of their mode of arrival or their stage in visa determination processes. In no circumstances should vulnerable people be left destitute. Australian Red Cross believes that the provision of appropriate humanitarian support at the earliest possible point and throughout the process assists in resolving the immigration status of vulnerable people.
(AAP: Mick Tsikas)
While governments may determine that immigration detention is necessary for initial health and security checks, Australian Red Cross believes that it should otherwise only be used as a last resort and always for the shortest practicable time. All people in immigration detention are entitled to the maintenance of good health and wellbeing and to be treated with dignity and respect, regardless of the reason for their detention. All efforts must be made to avoid and mitigate the negative impacts of immigration detention.
4. Upholding Red Cross Principles
While Red Cross may provide humanitarian support for people in immigration detention (including community detention) and other vulnerable migrants in the community, it will not take responsibility for security monitoring, surveillance or other immigration compliance related activities in order to fully preserve its Principles and capacity to monitor the treatment of people in detention.
5: Protection Visa Processing and Independent Legal Advice
Australian Red Cross recognises the right of people seeking asylum in Australia to access independent legal advice and have their claims for protection properly processed, regardless of the means by which they arrive in Australia.
6: Support and capacity building for migrants
Despite the many hardships and barriers they have experienced Australian Red Cross believes that individuals and communities made vulnerable through the process of migration generally retain the strength, skills and capacity they need to re-establish their lives so long as they are provided with support and are given access to the services and programs they need. Australian Red Cross works to support individuals and communities to shape their own futures.
7: Advocating for people made vulnerable through the process of migration
Australian Red Cross believes that advocacy is required in order to persuade and remind decision makers and opinion leaders of the need to ensure and maintain a humanitarian approach to people made vulnerable by the process of migration, to protect them from abuses, exploitation and denial of rights, to reduce discrimination against them, and to increase awareness, sensitivity and understanding of their situation and backgrounds with the general population.”
Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mwillms/
Ride my bike to work, have a shower and be at my desk before 9am.
Check SMH.com for 10 minutes. Read an article that says chubby children are less loved by their parents (link)
Power through some admin work for an hour while I am still fresh.
10am case share meeting at the local cafe with Fair Trade Coffee and a light breakfast (toast with tomato, avocado and ricotta with a boiled egg on the side).
I find it hard to believe that there is a better way to start the week than this.
There are 100 days left of 2010.
How are you going to spend them? How have you been going with your new years resolutions? What are 100 things that you could do before the end of the year?
Here are mine:
1/Run in a fun-run
2/Have a long, hot bath
3/Start watching ‘The Wire’
4/Build something
5/Buy a fish
6/Fly a kite
7/Read my Gough Whitlam biography
8/Invent a new pizza topping
9/Sell something on eBay
10/Eat something that I have grown
11/Finish the World Cup on Wii on the hardest setting - playing as Vanuatu
12/Drink 12 Litres of water in one day
13/Upgrade to a Smart Phone
14/Play 18 holes of golf
15/Eat a vegemite and cheese sandwich
16/Go hiking with my wife
17/Convince my wife to go hiking
18/Buy a cushy queen sized air mattress to go hiking with so that my wife will go hiking with me
19/Finish a jigsaw puzzle
20/Finish the other 80
So that is a start, any suggestions for me? Have I inspired you to do something?
Step 1: Go to www.google.com
Step 2: Type in “Find Chuck Norris”
Step 3: Press the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button
Some quick facts about Chuck Norris:
Chuck Norris Counted to Infinity – Twice
Chuck Norris is the reason Wally is hiding
Chuck Norris doesn’t have twitter – he is already following you
Chuck Norris can touch MC Hammer
Churck Norris knows the last digit of Pi
Chuck Norris destroyed the periodic table because he only believes in the element of surprise!
After several long weeks we are now starting to see what our next government will be like. The PMs Announcement of her new cabinet has been interesting to say the least and I would recommend Peter Hartcher’s take on it in today’s Herald. Here is a small excerpt:
“The stark and inescapable conclusion is that Gillard holds just one person to blame for the fact that a “good government” “lost its way.”… By holding all the other ministers blameless, she has also limited any recriminations in her ministry… By giving Rudd all blame, she has exonerated everyone else.”
One of the big changes has come in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship – the department responsible for mandatory detention, Christmas Island, ‘boat people’, processing asylum seeker claims, the proposed East Timor processing centre, TPVs, settling refugees and a few other highly political issues that dominated the election. The previous minister, Chris Evans, has been promoted to employment and industrial relations and has been replaced by Chris Bowen.
But who is Chris Bowen?
Chris Bowen: Minister for Immigration and Citizenship
I mean, it is a pretty important question when you consider that the Minister has a very unique role in that he personally decides hundreds of refugee applications as well as applications for community detention. Moreover he will be the person that helps cultivate a culture and tone within immigration; will it be suspicion or compassion? He will also advise the government on key immigration policies such as mandatory detention and the East Timor processing centre.
So… who is Chris Bowen?
To behonest, I don’t really know, but to remedy that I have started following him on twitter. Solved!
But more seriously he has written a few good opinion pieces including:
“Neo-liberalism is dead as people realise markets need regulation”
“The pennies we give for foreign aid are far too few”
Anyway, this is an excerpt from the transcript of his first parliamentary speech, note the interesting language and quotes he uses as you read it and if you pick the quote at the end of the excerpt and are the first to comment on it you will win a special prize!
"A breach of human rights anywhere is an attack on human rights everywhere."
As to being a voice for those without a voice, I believe a particular obligation falls on me—along with my friend the honourable member for Fowler—as the representative of the most culturally diverse area in Australia. Members of various cultural groups who have settled in the seat of Prospect have taught me more than any textbook ever could about the preciousness of human rights. To talk to someone who has had all three of his daughters executed gives you a very keen appreciation of the need to take a robust approach to human rights. A breach of human rights anywhere is an attack on human rights everywhere. To paraphrase Elie Wiesel: when human rights are under attack we must interfere. As an opposition backbencher, I do not have any illusions that I will be able to make a great material difference in this regard. However, I do want to make this one pledge: I will never be silent. Quiet and diplomatic representations in the corridors of the House will sometimes be the most appropriate way of dealing with a matter. At other times, perhaps, a louder approach will be necessary. Either way, I will not be silent.
Members of all religions or philosophies should be able to practise their beliefs in freedom. I include in this a group like Falun Gong, which has as its creed truth, forbearance and tolerance. They do not deserve to be tortured for espousing such basic beliefs as these. I will not be silent on the unspeakable suffering and heartache that is occurring in the Darfur region of Sudan. This suffering receives almost no attention in the Australian media but it is the biggest humanitarian crisis of the last 10 years. In an area as large as France, 70,000 human beings have lost their lives to a combination of hunger, disease and murder. If an event even 10 per cent as horrendous as this occurred in a Western country we would see massive coverage and massive action from the governments of the world.
Recently in Prospect we have received our latest round of migration refugees from the Sudan. It gives me an enormous sense of pride as I walk around Fairfield to see small Sudanese children in the uniforms of Fairfield Primary School. These children have endured far more in their little lives than most of us will have to endure if we live to old age. Yet, they are relatively lucky; hundreds of thousands of others are not. I will not be silent on human rights in places like Vietnam or Myanmar or anywhere else in the world. To have somebody imprisoned for a crime of `disrespecting democratic freedoms’ for expressing their democratic view is something I can never be silent about. I believe Australia and individual members of this House need to keep open the lines of communication with the governments of all nations. But we must have human rights as our highest priority in these discussions. As a nation we must say: `Here we stand; we can do no other.’
Yesterday I was at a lunchtime bible forum and we looked at Jonah chapter4. The plan is to do the book backwards, starting at chapter 4 and finishing with chapter 1.
Jonah, caring more about a vine than a city.
The reason? Jonah is not about a whale and the point of the story comes in chapter 4.
Fair enough.
It really struck me looking at the 4th chapter how much hatred Jonah harbours. See I have always thought of Jonah like Peter, foolish, bumbling, mis-directed but not malicious. Just a clumsy hero who learns as he goes.
But that is not Jonah.
This realisation came to me as I read chapter 4 verses 2-3 where Jonah states that the reason he didn’t want to go to Nineveh was because God may have compassion on them that they may be saved from calamity (!!) ; it is therefore not because he was afraid, an interesting point. His message was to tell them that calamity would come if they didn’t repent; maybe he thought that if he went to Tarshish they wouldn’t get the message, therefore they couldn’t repent, therefore God couldn’t be compassionate.
Like the beginning of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy books when alien representatives give Earth notice they are destroying it to build a new highway… but they put that notice in a locked cabinet in the basement of a council office on an obscure planet in the galaxy.
But that may be reading too much into it. Great books though, really enjoyed reading them in school, I should read them again.
But I digress.
Anyway Justin had included some great quotes, one of which I thought I would share here:
“You can safely assume that you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do”
Anne Lamont
Makes me wonder who I hate.. Thats a thought thats gonna fester.
Thanks go to Ryan for showing me this video
This is amazing! I think my favourite is the 3pm bells.
Enjoy…
A friend of mine at work introduced me to the guardian.co.uk website’s “24 hours in photos” page. It is great.
I would like to share some of my recent favourites:
- Zakopane, Poland: Restaurant staff throw snowballs at Kasprowy Wierch Peak. The weather changed rapidly in the mountains with more than 10cm of fresh snow falling recently. Photograph: Marek Podmokly/Agencja Gazeta/Reuters
Beijing: A boy looks at sculptures of skulls in German-born sculptor Christian Lemmerz's art installation Hypnosis. Photograph: How Hwee Young/EPA
Adam, West Bank: Jewish children throw material into a cement mixer during a symbolic ceremony to renew construction in the West Bank. Photograph: Bernat Armangue/AP
Muzaffargarh, Pakistan: A Pakistani crosses a flooded area using a motorcycle-driven vehicle in Shah Ghar village. Photograph: Aaron Favila/AP
Tokyo, Japan: A seal jumps over a hurdle at the Sunshine international aquarium. Photograph: Franck Robichon/EPA
Thanks heaps to Matt who posted this on his blog. That is where I first saw it.
If you haven’t seen this then you really must. You might want to share whether you thought it was accurate or not after you have seen it – especially in regards to Julia Gillard’s maniacal laughter
Enjoy!
Three quick things I want to say today:
First things first. You should check out the new blog of a good friend of mine. His name is Blake and he is the manliest dude I know. We went camping once and he chopped down trees with axes and while cooking round the fire said that we should have bought a live calf to kill, skin and eat! He also goes spear fishing on his days off and recently went head to head with a reef shark over a potential kill. Blake won. He is like a real life version of Man vs Wild
Blake is also working at a Church in the inner west of Sydney and is thinkng of studying theology full time next year. His blog is called Voyage of the Dawn Treader
Secondly, yesterday afternoon I found myself accidentally reading MX on the train ride home from work. I was reading a short article that stated that drinking alcohol in moderation was good for your health. It then stated (quite outrageously) that people who do not drink alcohol had a higher chance of dying!
A higher chance of dying! I confess that I read it a few times to make sure that I hadn’t misread it because that is a big claim. I thought everyone had the same chances of dying regardless of their beverage behaviours!
Made me question whether MX was the quality, hard-hitting journalism that it seems to be!
Finally, I read this in today’s Herald, which made me chuckle audibly on the train. It is a quote from our spunky red-headed caretaker PM who was being accused of using focussed groups to come up with policy. She was defending the use of focus groups by saying that all politicians use them and then she came out with this gold nugget:
(AAP: Alan Porritt)
”Do people really imagine that Tony Abbott read every conservative thinker in the globe, consulted long and hard with experts, sat with his team agonising night after night, looked into the depths of his soul and came out with ‘stop the boats’?”
*SWISH* Nice one Julia. You can read the full article here
At the start of the year I read a biography of Julia Gillard while she was still deputy PM to Kevin Rudd. in it the author recounts a story where Julia is campaigning outside a supermarket in her electorate. An older gentleman approaches her, looks at her poster, looks at Julia, looks at he poster, looks back to Julia and then says: “Guess that was taken on a good day eh love?” To which Julia responds: “And who the heck are you? Robert Redford?!”
The woman has spunk!
