Wonderful news today: all detention debts are to be scrapped, except for people smugglers (there’s that word again!) and illegal fishermen.
As Andrew Bartlett says ‘congratulations must go to Minister Evans’ for this long awaited and humane decision: The Migration Amendment (Abolishing Detention Debt) Bill 2009. Detention debt regime to be scrapped
Not only did asylum seekers suffer, sometimes for many years, in immigration detention, but if they were determined not to have acceptable claims to asylum they were deported with massive debts – paying for prison, in effect.
These debts were truly massive – many hundreds of thousands of dollars in most cases. A more appropriate use of the word, I think, than its use in the Australian.
In reporting the arrival of a boatload of asylum seekers yesterday, the Australian says:
“New figures from the Immigration Department show a massive spike in the number of asylum seekers arriving in Australian waters.
The Federal Government opened the Christmas Island Detention Centre last September and the Immigration Department says that since then, more than 180 people have passed through its doors.”
Massive? How soon will we drown in the ‘flood’?
