“The arrival of 43 West Papuans seeking asylum in Australia is a test
for the Australian Government to live up to the claims of a cultural
change for the Department of Immigration,” A Just Australia, the
national refugee policy reform group said in a media release yesterday.

So what have they done? Labor’s immigration spokesman Tony Burke put it simply and succinctly on the ABC this morning – they’ve gone for the most “expensive and awkward option.”

That has got to be one of the central objections to the Howard
Government’s refugee policies. A pig headed minister and her bungling
bureaucrats are wasting our money. This isn’t the only case.

Project SafeCom had a fantastic story yesterday about “DIMIA’s half a million dollar deportation”:

Lawyers for a Turkish man from Kurdistan yesterday
successfully obtained an injunction against the forcible deportation
plans for the man by the Minister for Immigration…

“In the court it was revealed that the Department of Immigration’s
Deportation section had booked ONE HUNDRED and FORTY seats on the
flight to deport just one single person to minimise the risk of
disturbance to other flight passengers,” spokesman Jack H Smit said…

So much for the DIMIA culture change, hey Sandi?

Time to start again from the top, PM. Now’s the perfect opportunity to axe Amanda.