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It’s been revealed that the Howard Government is breaching Caretaker Government protocols. These protocols allow opposition parties equal access to bureaucrats and state information during election campaigns and they’ve been properly extended to every department this election apart from – you guessed it – Immigration and Citizenship.

Labor’s Immigration spokesman, Tony Burke, has told Lateline he’s been denied access to the file on Tony Tran, the man at the centre of Australia’s latest Immigration scandal who was wrongfully locked up in an immigration detention centre for five years and denied access to his son.

Labor was slow to react to the story after it broke but Mr Burke now says Mr Tran seems worthy of an apology and is likely to be entitled to compensation. However, he says he can’t make any definitive comments on the case because he’s been denied access to files on the matter despite formal requests for briefings from the Minister, Kevin Andrews, the department and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. The Departmental Secretary has advised the Labor Party that they must direct their inquiries through the minister. According to Tony Burke, “Kevin Andrews, through his use of or abuse of what everyone else regards as standard protocols during an election campaign, has shut us down.”

Meantime, the Commonwealth Ombudsman, Professor John McMillan, has told Lateline Mr Tran’s case is just one of more than 200 he’s reviewed involving wrongful detention or deportation since the Rao and Solon scandals erupted in 2005. So, there are at least 200 reasons why the Minister would want to block the Federal Opposition’s access to Immigration Department files. But Mr Burke says he’ll take immediate action to deal appropriately with the cases if he’s in the minister’s chair in a fortnight and he’s still entertaining the idea of a Royal Commission into the multitude of cases of Departmental bungling which have destroyed the lives of innocent, unlawfully detained and deported people – some of them Australian citizens like Cornelia Rao and Vivian Solon. He highlights the systemic, politically driven problems within the Department under the Howard Government: “Where the nature of the leadership that was given by successive ministers for that department drove a particular culture which resulted in a culture of assumption, a culture of denial - finally - a culture of cover-up, all of which has been reported in the Palmer and Comrie reports of a couple of years ago.”

The Australian Democrats – a party of conscience facing political annihilation at this election – have gone further. Democrats leader, Senator Andrew Bartlett, has reiterated his call for the abolition of mandatory detention laws saying that’s the only way to end the bungling. He told Lateline “it is not just wrongfully getting a speeding ticket and being able to get it repealed down the track. You can't un-jail someone. You can't undo the damage which is done. That is why mandatory detention is such an abomination and that is why whoever forms government after the election, the Democrats will continue to pressure through the Senate to get that reform to the Migration Act.”

And, what’s the Federal Government itself had to say about this story? Nothing. A spokesperson for Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, says a brief on the matter should be on the Minister’s desk by early next week. That would be just a few days out from the election. How convenient. With a little more procrastination once the file ‘officially’ reaches his desk he should be able to drag out his non-response 'till November 24th - the day the polls say he’ll lose his job.

Finally, coverage of the story itself is worthy of comment. Unfortunately, it’s been under-reported by the Australian media which is in pack-mode on the election campaign trail. It’s barely rated a mention amidst the economic analysis and set-piece policy launches. But ABC TV's Lateline, in typical strident, authoritative, investigative fashion is continuing the campaign for ground breaking, values-conscious journalism. And, as always, Bill Leak, the Australian’s brilliant cartoonist with a sharp wit and a social conscience has summed the story up beautifully. He depicts the recognizable victims of the Howard Government’s immigration scandals – members of the ‘Department of Immigration Survivor’s Club’ - being interviewed by a journalist about the economy.You can see his handiwork here    [read more]