Human Rights

As Christmas fast approaches for hundreds of the people we help at the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre there is no joy to be had.  For mums or dads who have been found to be refugees but granted a Temporary Protection Visa (TPV) its a time of great sadness and despair.  There are 1405 people nationally in Australia on TPV’s.  A TPV lasts for 3 years and during this time a person must apply again for permanent asylum and go through years of trauma to prove they are still a refugee. 

The worst aspect of a TPV apart from the insecurity and limbo that comes from only temporary freedom is not being allowed to sponsor their spouse and kids to reunite with them in Australia. It is immoral and inhumane to keep families apart, especially when we are a country that is meant to value the importance of family, something John Howard speaks of constantly.  Apparently we have a different set of rights for people seeking asylum.

We ask the Federal Government to end TPV’s, there is no justification for having them.  We have so few people on them, it has been demonstrated that TPV’s cause great mental and physical harm to the health of people on them and they are simply punitive and unjust and must be done away with now!

Kon Karapanagiotidis
CEO
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre  

DIMA at the beginning of the year launched a Community Care Pilot.  The initiative was a good one with it’s goal to provide financial grants to the Red Cross to care for people (mainly asylum seekers) who were deemed to be high risk.  In particular people at risk of homelessness, people with serious health or mental health issues and people at risk of self – harm.

The Minister announced this as a multi million dollar initiative, in response to what happend with Alvarez and Rau.  In it’s first 6 month only 2 people were deemed to be at risk by DIMA (the Minister must personally approve people being accepted in the program)! 

In the last few months they have been accepting some people into the program with approximately 30 people now recieving assistance which includes financial aid, housing, health care and a Red Cross caseworker. The program had its flaws including DIMA refusing to tell anyone what the eligibility criteria was! But at least it was a step in the right direction.

However, we have just been told by DIMA that they will not be accepting any more referrals from any asylum seeker agency and will not be accepting further community based asylum seekers into this program as they apparently do not have the resources!

They are assessing all people left in detention to see if they should be referred to this program which is something they should be doing but to say they don’t have the resources to deal with asylum seekers in the community (who are 95% of all asylum seekers) is offensive and absolute rubbish.

With 300 million to burn on funding private detention centres for 4 years, 300 million over 4 years to fight asylum seekers claims in the courts and 240 million to build a new detention centre in Christmas Island! How can we possibly take DIMA seriously.  

Yet again this shows that DIMA is not serious about changing it’s culture, their ‘people are our business’ slogan is clearly just for show and this latest decision is yet again DIMA showing that it does not really care about the welfare and human rights of people seeking asylum. Enough is Enough!

Kon Karapanagiotidis
CEO
Asylum Seeker Resource Centre