CATHOLICS have cautiously welcomed sweeping changes to Australia’s immigration detention laws which were announced by Prime Minister John Howard on June 17.
While seen as a move in the right direction, the changes are also seen as nowhere near enough to overcoming the current crisis over the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers.
Chairman of the Bishops’ Committee for Migrants and Refugees, Bishop Joseph Grech of Sandhurst, welcomed the Prime Minister’s announcement as a step towards a more humane treatment of asylum seekers.
Bishop Grech said it should be remembered however that asylum seekers were not being released but just transferred to community based detention.
Assistant director of the Mary MacKillop Institute of East Timorese Studies in Sydney, Josephite Sister Susan Connolly, agrees.
She said it was difficult to understand why different groups were treated differently.
ChilOut, a non-denominational, non-political group committed to keeping children out of detention said in other Western countries, necessary identity and health checks were carried out in 72 hours.
ChilOut spokeswoman Dianne Hiles said although the current changes were welcome, Australia was still breaching the Convention for the Rights of the Child.
Marist Father Jim Carty from the House of Welcome in Carramar, Sydney, which is run by the NSW Ecumenical Council and supports people on Temporary Protection Visas, said the devil was in the detail.
Legal representatives of 50 residents at the Baxter Detention Centre in South Australia who were offered the Government’s ‘new’ visas on June 20 are studying the documents.
The Baxter asylum seekers had seven days to either accept or reject them.
