Settling refugees in country towns is not the answer to dwindling regional populations unless support services are improved, according to Janet Taylor and Dayane Stanovic. In this report they look at the settlement experiences of two recent refugee groups (Iraqi and Sudanese) in the Victorian towns of Shepparton, Colac and Warrnambool.

The debate about the regional settlement of refugees takes place within a number of important and at times conflicting policy arenas: humanitarian goals and obligations, population strategy and economic development of regional areas. In a paper for the Australian Social Policy Conference 2005, Janet Taylor discusses a recent Brotherhood of St Laurence study to explore...

In this e-brief Janet Phillips and Adrienne Millbank summarise recent developments and key issues in the debate about mandatory detention in Australia. They provide links to web sites and material covering detention policy and practice in Australia, and detention and removal policies and practices in the UK and other comparable countries.

Although Australia’s migration policies have evolved, Klaus Neumann finds some important parallels in three high-profile cases.

There are currently between 8,000-10,000 asylum seekers living in the Australian community awaiting decisions at different stages of their applications for protection visas and appeals procedures. Many of these asylum seekers are BVE holders and as such are denied work-rights, income support, and access to Medicare services. Some 750-900 such asylum seekers are estimated to...