A filmed message intended for asylum seekers has emerged, featuring immigration minister Scott Morrison. In the film, which was originally intended to be shown to asylum seekers in detention centres run by Australia, Morrison urges detainees to return home or face a 'very, very long time' in detention Continue reading.....

http://left.gotnewswire.com/news/scott-morrison-asylum-seekers-must-go-home-or-face-a-very-very-long-time-in-detention-video

A video message recorded by the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, telling asylum seekers to return home or face a “very very long time” in detention was screened and continues to be shown to detainees in Australia’s offshore detention centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

Guardian Australia revealed that the minister had recorded the video but it remained unclear whether it had been shown to asylum seekers. The minister’s office had refused to answer detailed questions about the circumstances of the video’s recording and its intended use.

Morrison subsequently told Fairfax Media that the video was an “orientation message” shown to new asylum seeker arrivals detained offshore for processing and resettlement.

The film shows Morrison staring into a camera and saying: “There are new rules in place under this government so I urge you to think carefully about your next decision and to make a decision to get on with the rest of your life and to not remain here and take the option to go back to the country from which you’ve originally come.”

Morrison told Fairfax on Thursday: “I make no apologies for being upfront about the reality of the situation that transferees were now faced with.”

On Friday the immigration minister did not respond to a request for comment from Guardian Australia.

The video has been widely condemned both in Australia and abroad, with many arguing it is a direct threat to asylum seekers to make them return home, which flies in the face of international law.

“This footage has confirmed that is the intention of the Abbott government to let refugees languish in the gulags of Manus Island and Nauru indefinitely,” said the Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/27/morrison-film-telling-asylum-seekers-to-go-home-screened-in-detention-centres

The minister and his entire office should be sacked.

The immigration minister, Scott Morrison, has refused to confirm claims by refugee activists that a boat carrying Tamil asylum seekers is in trouble off Australia.

On Friday, refugee activists said that a 21-metre boat carrying 153 asylum seekers, which had left from India, had sprung an oil leak and was 300km west of Christmas Island.

Morrison said there were no significant incidents at sea to report. “I am advised that I have no such report to provide to you today,” he said on Saturday. He would not confirm if there was a boat, if it was in Australian waters, or if the government had taken any action.

On Friday, a spokesman for the Refugee Action Coalition, Ian Rintoul, said there were concerns the boat would run out of oil before it reached Christmas Island and that the government would try to divert the asylum seekers, or not help until it was too late.

Morrison said the government’s border protection policies had not changed and the government did not comment on reports relating to Operation Sovereign Borders unless there was a significant event. "There is no significant event for me to report at sea," the minister said.

Rintoul said the boat was carrying 153 asylum seekers, including 32 women and 37 children.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/28/scott-morrison-tight-lipped-on-claim-of-asylum-seekers-off-coastline

The minister and his entire office should be sacked. And where is the army side-kick?...

Tony Abbott has said the government will not be blackmailed by reports that several mothers have been placed on suicide watch on Christmas Island.

Guardian Australia was told the mothers believed that if they sacrificed themselves, their children would have a better chance of being resettled in Australia.

“The conditions women are having to survive are so grotesque that they obviously can’t bear it any more,” the Christmas Island shire president, Gordon Thomson, said.

But Abbott said his government would not be “held over a moral barrel”when it came to asylum seeker policy.

“If true it is a harrowing tale, but I also have to make the point that we are going to stop the boats, that we are going to maintain our policies,” he told the Nine Network on Wednesday morning.

"This is not going to be a government which has our policy driven by people who are attempting to hold us over a moral barrel – we won't be driven by that.

"No Australian government should be subjected to the spectacle of people saying, ‘Unless you accept us, I am going to commit self-harm.'

"I don't believe any Australian – any thinking Australian – would want us to capitulate to moral blackmail."

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said he was “not sure why Tony Abbott said these words”.

“What I’ll also say to Tony Abbott is these people are human beings in the care of Australia and the care of the Australian government.

“It is not enough for the government to wash its hands of people in their care.”

read more: http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/09/tony-abbott-on-the-asylum-mothers-on-suicide-watch-we-wont-given-in-to-moral-blackmail

Senior correspondent Barry Everingham has penned an open letter to Australia's unhinged Immigration Minister Scott 'the Christian' Morrison.

Minister Morrison,

I have been active in reporting and commenting on politics in Australia and overseas for almost 60 years and I have seen and heard politicians of all political persuasions state their cases — some articulating them well, others in a style best suited to themselves or their constituencies.

I must admit, I have been taking notice of you with more than just a passing interest and never have I seen a man so ill-suited to handle a task as sensitive as immigration as you.

Do you realise that, as well as being a minister and member of Parliament, you are nothing more or nothing less than a public servant on the public payroll, which is funded by Australian taxpayers.

As such, your performance, I think last Thursday, at your media conference was an absolute disgrace.

Your rudeness hit a new low, even for you, and that’s saying something; your arrogance and your patronising manner was sickening.

A few weeks ago, when answering an Opposition question regarding the Asylum seekers (not illegal immigrants) imprisoned on a Customs vessel at sea, you sneered at the questioner and you attempted to smear him by implying he was blaming the vessels crew for keeping men women and children locked up in windowless cabins and allowed fresh air for only 3 hours a day.

You know full well the crew was under instructions from you to follow those inhumane orders and for them to refuse would amount to a mutiny.

I understand that, like Tony Abbott and Kevin Andrews, you claim to be a practising Christian. If what you three men do to helpless, hapless and desperate men women and children, well, it’s a different form of Christianity that most people accept.

You know Minister, if the Parliament was not under the control of a biased outrageous Speaker whose orders come from the likes of Christopher Pyne, most of your answers would be ruled out of order. You give the impression you are suffering from a psychotic condition, which under normal circumstances would require medical attention of a psychiatric nature.

Members of the public want to know who murdered that young Iranian man held by you in custody. Where is that inquiry going?

How many men women and children are self-harming while under your care?

What financial arrangements have you come to with the Government of India to provide a consular contingent to interview those now on land after their ordeal at your hands at sea?

And even you would know the Indian public service is known as one of the world’s most inefficient and corrupt groups of men and women found anywhere. How long will those interviews take?

Your mishandling of your portfolio is disgraceful and so are you.

I look forward to your reply.

In the meantime rest assured this will be distributed widely.

Yours sincerely,

Barry Everingham

Kari, for his part, was over the moon. He said he knew it was a good lift and was proud as punch to become Papua New Guinea's first man to win a weightlifting gold at the Commonwealth Games.

"I have to do it to win, I promised my country to win a gold medal, for my family and for everyone back home. I'm the first man to win gold for weightlifting for Papua New Guinea," he said.

"I was confident. I have no problem. I said there is nothing wrong with it."

For Ribouem, heartache at the Games is just one issue. A native of Cameroon, the 31-year-old stayed in Australia after the 2006 Commonwealth Games in Melbourne.

But despite winning gold and silver medals for his adopted nation at consecutive Commonwealth Games, he said the Australian government continued to refuse visas for his sister and his sick mother, who is still in Cameroon and has never met her two grandchildren.

The national inquiry into children in immigration detention has heard evidence of attempts by the Federal Government to cover up the extent of mental health problems.

Psychiatrist Dr Peter Young was the director of mental health services at International Health and Medical Services (IHMS) until earlier this month.

He still works at IHMS as a consultant and has been compelled to give evidence at the inquiry by the Australian Human Rights Commission.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-31/detention-centre-inquiry-hears-claims-of-immigration-cover-up/5637654

Three Sri Lankan delegates have been denied entry to Australia for not having enough personal wealth. AM has obtained the Immigration Department's Decision Records, which say the delegates failed to demonstrate sufficient personal, family or financial 'incentives' to return to Sri Lanka. Australian trade unions paid for their return trips and say the decision was made for political reasons.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-08-26/abbott-government-denies-visa-to-sri-lankan/5696218