The Senate Campaign – Brenda Kellaway

The World Socialist Web has written a good analysis of how the racist mandatory detention policies of the Rudd/Gillard government contributed to the death of an Afghan detainee on August 22nd at the recently re-opened Curtin Detention Centre in remote WA. read the article at the WSWS or the text below

Australia: Detained refugee dies in Perth hospital
By Leticia Marshall
31 August 2010

The 21 August, 2010 Federal election in Australia ended in a limbo with no outright winner. As a result of the unprecedented number of informal or protest vote casted by our frustrated voters, our unique Preferential Voting Systems failed to prevent the outcome of a hung parliament. The Age (23 Aug 2010) is right to title the situation as a ’sign of disillusion’ by the voters.

In scenes familiar from the Howard years, victims of the Rudd/Gillard's government asylum seeker policies protested today in Darwin by burning property and climbing to the roof of the immigration prison. The protesters were apparently Indonesian crew of asylum seeker boats unhappy about how long there cases were taking to get to court. Under Australian law they face a mandatory minimum five year jail term. Many of the crews of these boats are poor Indonesian fisherman who are just another group of people victimised by our racist hysterical policies on asylum seekers.