Border Force Act – The Government’s wall to hide the truth on refugee detention
Date/Time
Date(s) - Thu 20 Aug 2015
18:30 - 20:00
Location
Manning Clarke Lecture Theatre
Categories
The Border Force Act, which came into effect on July 1, makes it a crime for whistle-blowers to speak publicly about conditions in refugee detention centres, including those on Manus Island and Nauru – a crime punishable by two years in jail. This Act will muzzle doctors, nurses and other staff in these places and keep the truth from the Australian people.
More than 40 current and former workers on Nauru and Manus Island have challenged Tony Abbott and Peter Dutton to prosecute them under these new secrecy laws for revealing the terrible state of human rights there. These are people who have seen sub-standard and harmful care and gross violations of human rights including child abuse.
This Act is a severe restriction on freedom of speech and another attempt to hide the terrible things that are happening to asylum seekers in places controlled by Australia and paid for by Australian taxpayers.
This public meeting outlines the implications of the new secrecy laws for democratic rights, Australia’s international reputation and for the treatment of asylum seekers.
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Jack Waterford AM is the recently retired Editor-at-Large of The Canberra Times. He began at the paper in 1972, becoming Editor in 1995 and Editor-in-Chief in 2001. He was the 1985 Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year in 1985, and in 2007 was named a Member of the Order of Australia and Canberra Citizen of the Year. He has spoken out on many questions of democratic rights, including press freedoms.
Matthew Zagor is Associate Professor in Law at the ANU. He has worked at the International Secretariat of Amnesty International, as the refugee coordinator at their Australian Section and in the Migration Review Tribunal. As a solicitor he has worked primarily with migrants and asylum-seekers. Most recently his research has been on political and legal responses to irregular migration.
