Australia is sending dubious messages to Indonesian fishing communities.

Now that the acute phase of boat arrivals appears over, this paper urges all parties to use this opportunity to construct an overarching national asylum and refugee policy for the long term.

How do Australian institutions and political leaders draw on history to tell us who we are? How do they make sense of Australia’s past as a country of immigration and a nation that has accommodated hundreds of thousands of refugees? In federal parliament, Teresa Gambaro recently said:

This article tries to test the assumption that asylum seeker policy is guided by public opinion. It analyses events in November and December 1977 during the final stages of the federal election campaign.

Introduction: This Research paper provides a snap-shot of significant developments in refugee law and policy during the period 2012 to August 2013 when the 43rd Parliament was prorogued and the House of Representatives dissolved for a general election. The commencement of 2012 saw the Government and Coalition remain at an impasse on offshore processing following...