En Passant

We demand an end to mandatory detention of refugees and asylum seekers, and the closure of Manus Island and Nauru. We urge the Australian government to allow for the rapid processing of asylum applications in transit countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia and to increase our humanitarian intake significantly.

The Australian government’s attacks on refugees have operated as a distraction while union rights, jobs and hard-won conditions and wages are under attack. Unions have always been at the forefront of campaigns for social justice, and they play a vital role in the fight for refugee rights. Please join us for the launch of Unionists for Refugees at a public meeting with ACTU President Ged Kearney from 6.30pm, Tuesday 3 March at the Belconnen Labor Club (Fred Daly Room), Chandler St, Belconnen.

ACTU President Ged Kearney will launch Unionists for Refugees at a public meeting at 6.30pm, on Tuesday 3 March at the Belconnen Labor Club (Fred Daly Room), Chandler St, Belconnen. Publicise this meeting as widely as possible.

This Wednesday Jon Stanhope is speaking out against Australia’s refugee disgrace at 6:30pm in the Manning Clark Centre at the ANU. Stanhope, the former Labor Chief Minister of the ACT, recently called on Labor politicians to repudiate their party’s support for punitive refugee policies, saying: “I challenge any senior members of Shadow Cabinet such as Tanya Plibersek, Anthony Albanese and Andrew Leigh to look me in the eye and tell me that these policies reflect what the Labor Party stands for.”

As Labor politician Andrew Leigh says, each of us can be a Peter Norman in our own lives. That is why the Canberra Refugee Action Committee has called a rally in defence of asylum seekers and against Julia Gillard’s Pacific ‘Solution’ for this Saturday 25 August at 12.30 in Garema Place.

The Refugee Action Committee has called a demonstration in support of refugees and against the Pacific Solution for Saturday 25 August at 12.30pm, Garema Place in Canberra. Be there to support asylum seekers and to oppose locking them up in mental illness factories indefinitely offshore.