Well now. I am at a loss to understand how it is considered OK in Australia to imprison people for eight years for arriving in the country without the right paperwork, when serious sex offenders can get two and a half years for abusing children. A few months ago I wrote a letter to the (then) new Immigration Minister, Alex Hawke, asking him to give his attention to freeing the detainees who are being imprisoned in immigration detention in the Mantra Hotel at Kangaroo Point, at the inappropriately named Brisbane Immigration Transit Centre and elsewhere. Strictly speaking I should have written to the Home Affairs Minister but since that was Peter Dutton I thought I would try Hawke. A couple of weeks ago I got a much-delayed reply from an official of the Home Affairs Department. It was predictably appalling. I was angry, and wrote a detailed response. As fate would have it, we now have a new Home Affairs Minister, Karen Andrews, so I sent it to her asking her to do better than her
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson