The Democrats have launched their refugee policy in Adelaide, pledging to scrap mandatory indefinite detention and temporary protection visas and to review the Migration Act.
Leader Senator Andrew Bartlett says the Democrats will not let the issue of detention be forgotten during the election campaign.
"Three years ago these people were the centre of a firestorm in the middle of an election campaign," he said. Three years on both of the major parties are happy to talk about anything else but refugees, but the refugees themselves, the asylum seekers are still suffering. The Democrats' simple goal is for that suffering to end."
By Just Us 29 September 04
AUSTRALIA: VOTING PREFERENCES
Our preferences are voting preferences and NOT party loyalties or allegiances. Greens Senator Kerry Nettel's reasoning: A vote for Labor or the Democrats in the Senate is now potentially a vote for right-wing Christian candidates is beyond rhetoric.
Related:
Children overboard continues to haunt PM like the plague...
John Howard's lack of integrity and morality will be under question "again" today after Labor seized on claims that a Liberal Senator called Scumbo Howard a 'lying rodent'.
Apologise to children abused in care: report
A Senate report on children placed in institutional care has called for the Federal Government to apologise to those who were harmed by their experience.
Australian Govt human rights record 'worsening'
Community groups have given the Federal Government five out of ten for its record on human rights this year. Mr Purcell said the Government was also marked down because of the policy of holding children in immigration detention centres.
Don't rock the Boat Howard!
PRIME Minister John Howard today denied the children overboard affair had swayed the 2001 election? Mr Howard has spent the week defending himself against claims he had been informed that nobody in Defence believed children had been thrown overboard by asylum seekers.
Australia an unfair nation, say young and all!
Young people and older people think Australia is undemocratic and unfair. Young people cite their teachers as having the greatest influence on their political thinking, according to a provocative new national survey funded by the Government. Older people cite "injustice" amongst other things as a "bent legal system" favouring hi profiled superstars, corporations and politicians.
Not happy, John
Valder's alarm whistle effort 'let love be thy weapon' indeed Prime Minister John Howard is also the subject of a stinging attack in a Sunday feature this week, from the man who first engineered his ascent to the Liberal leadership in the mid-1980s former party president John Valder.
Aide reveals children overboard advice
A former federal ministerial adviser has revealed that he told Prime Minister John Howard before the 2001 federal election that no children had been thrown overboard from a boat carrying asylum seekers in Australian waters.
Gillard stirs Liberal leadership pot
Mr Costello yesterday said that the Federal Government should aim to get all children out of immigration detention and he suggested there should be an increase in immigration levels.
Here is a new project
1. Do you believe it is right to imprison innocent children?
2. Do you believe it is right to imprison innocent women?
3. Do you believe it is right to imprison innocent people?
Compo claims could follow child detention, group warns
A refugee group has predicted a string of compensation claims, after the Human Rights Commission found numerous and repeated breaches of the UN convention on the rights of the child in immigration detention.
Child detention breaches UN convention: human rights report
A leaked final draft report by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) is calling for urgent changes to Australia's immigration detention laws.
Report recommends freeing child detainees
The Human Rights Commission has found that some children held in Australia's immigration detention centres have been exposed to cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment.
No more children for Baxter, pleads SA
The South Australian Government is urging the Commonwealth not to shift any more children into the Baxter detention centre in the state's north.
Nauru staff 'fear children are next'
Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone says women and children are sitting in on a hunger strike at the Nauru detention centre, but are not participating.
