‘Let everything happen to you.
Beauty and terror.
Just keep going
No feeling is final.’
– Rilke.
Refugees are now being released from detention from hotels and Melbourne Immigration Detention Centre but not into community detention.
Sources say that some people who came from Manus or Nauru prior to the Medevac laws were put into community detention where they have relative freedom to come and go, no guards. They live in community accommodation paid for by immigration and utility bills are paid. On top of that, they receive a small allowance for living expenses (food etc).
They are not allowed to work or study or live anywhere else but it is unsupervised living.
When they are thrown out of community detention, they have the same cruel conditions as the people who came under the now defunct Medevac law.
People do not get community detention under the Medevac law.
They are being thrown out with no support except Medicare. They are not in ‘community detention’, they are now on “departure visas” officially known as Bridging visa E subclass 050. The immigration department claims that:
Bridging visa E (BVE) Subclass (050) is a visa “that lets you stay lawfully in Australia while you make arrangements to leave, finalise your immigration matter or wait for an immigration decision“.
The regulations state:
The following condition(s) might be attached to this visa:
https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/visas/already-have-a-visa/check-visa-details-and-conditions/see-your-visa-conditions?product=050#
8101 – No work
8104 – Work restriction: 40 hours a fortnight
8116 – Specified work only …
But nowhere is it clear that Medevac refugees will get the right to work.
According to refugee advocates: “They are given two (2) weeks accommodation in motels but then thrown out to find their way as best they can. No income. No housing. The only help they will receive will be from supporters who volunteer homes, money, assistance to settle in the community.”
“It’s cheaper for people to be in the community than it is to be at a hotel or for us to be paying for them to be in detention,” Minister for Immigration and Border Protection, Peter Dutton, said on 2 GB radio yesterday.
Well the Minister would say that, wouldn’t he. Let’s not forget the pressure brought to bear by refugee solidarity groups around the country particularly those at Kangaroo Point Central apartments and the ones that followed in Melbourne and Sydney, blockading extractions, providing succour to men living on the edge.
Kangaroo Point Central Apartments, Brisbane 2020
Ian Curr
21 Jan 2021
“It’s the cruelty which eats at our hearts. Men imprisoned for 7 years in brutal camps & motel rooms then called one by one-told-visa-release. Two hours later dumped in a miserable motel camp out on the edge of a highway.”
·Jan 24
@pamelacurr