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October 15th, 2011 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda 
Rough conditions … Detainee asylum-seekers having their refugee status to enter Australia processed off-shore at the Detention Centre on island nation of Nauru, shortly before camp was closed down. Picture: Tv ABC
Source: The Daily Telegraph
ONE bureaucrat is asking tough questions about mandatory detention, writes Samantha Maiden.
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THERE was little fanfare when Immigration Department secretary Andrew Metcalfe first publicly questioned Australia’s detention centre regime for asylum seekers.
That was in August. On Thursday, the issue exploded in the wake of the failure of the Gillard Government to secure Parliament’s support for offshore processing under the Malaysian solution.
By accident rather than design, Australia is hurtling towards a new era for mandatory detention.
After promising a range of policy solutions deemed inhumane or unworkable by Tony Abbott – offshore processing in Malaysia and East Timor – the Gillard Government has lurched left with a dramatic expansion of community release programs.
Suggestions within Cabinet to eat humble pie and embrace Nauru were rejected.
Detainees will be released into the community with work rights, welfare payments and bridging visas until their claims are determined.
It won’t save the Prime Minister from a brawl at the ALP national conference over a permanent ban on offshore processing. But it has delighted rank-and-file members in inner-city branches, and left-wing MPs.
Back in August, Mr Metcalfe asked an important question. A thoughtful public servant later unfairly maligned by Greens senator Bob Brown as a “turkey” over his prediction that boat arrivals would increase without an offshore processing regime, he asked: “Does mandatory detention work?”
It’s expensive – around $1 billion a year according to the Budget. It remains an article of faith for both sides of politics.
It remains popular with many voters but does it work?
“Is immigration detention a deterrent?,” Mr Metcalfe asked his political masters.
“Does immigration detention facilitate case resolution? For how long is an immigration arrival and status determination process in a detention centre environment required?”
Mr Metcalfe noted with great understatement that immigration detention had for many years been a sensitive area of public policy and administration.
“In managing this issue, the department does not engage in any philosophical debate. We are professional public servants who are working hard to serve the government of the day, doing the best we can in, at times, very challenging environments,” he said.
Successive governments had devised various policy solutions.
“But many people who travel to Australia in an irregular way are very determined,” he said. “They have, or they acquire, the thousands of dollars charged by people smugglers. They want to live in a developed country. They want a better life for themselves and for their children.
“Sadly, mistakes have sometimes occurred. Some have had a profound impact on people’s lives, such as the tragic cases several years ago involving Cornelia Rau, Vivian Alvarez Solon and others,” he said.
Indeed, answers to a question on notice revealed this last week that taxpayers have spent $10 million to compensate people unlawfully detained in the detention centre regime for years, in some cases mentally ill people who were in fact Australian citizens.
The Prime Minister has argued that last week’s decision to move to offshore processing is driven by simple mathematics: If the boats arrive in the numbers her own bureaucrats have forecast we can expect far more asylum seekers than the Budget has forecast.
It could climb as high as 600 a month.
There’s no more room left at the detention centre inn. And while two further centres are in the works the Gillard Government does not intend to build more.
The surprising result of the political stand-off between two political parties who fervently agree over mandatory detention has been an outcome much closer to the Greens than the major parties.
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