Where to for immigration detention?

GetUp is in the middle of a campaign for major reform of the immigration detention system - a campaign that hopes to ensure, at a minimum, that the positive changes outlined by the Minister are legislated.

In order to survive the parliamentary process, the proposed changes are going to need as strong a community mandate as we can muster. We have gathered more than 28,000 signatures on our online petition (on our way to the target of 50,000) and many thousands of comments that will be used in our formal submission to the Inquiry.

The Minister’s announcement was important because, after many years under this shameful policy that offered only despair to the desperate people who sought our help, “the current model of immigration detention is fundamentally overturned”. It is a huge first step.

And the speech was striking, above all, for its dignity and humanity. In giving a statement not only of policy, but also of values, the Minister demonstrated a huge shift in the national approach to immigration detention.