Lobby the Labour Party now

On the weekend of 9-10 February, the leader of the opposition, Simon Crean made a significant departure from the bipartisan approach to interning refugees seeking asylum.  He said:

"We should all be able to agree on at least one thing: that is just plain wrong to hold innocent children behind razor wire....

Children should be out in the community where they can live more normal lives, get an educating, and be protected from some of the horrors to many have them have witnessed.  Where children seeking asylum are unaccompanied by family members, they should be fostered out in the community, as quickly as possible.

Where children are accompanied, we should allow them and their mothers to be released from the centres into ordinary style housing under appropriate supervision.  In any case where for some reason a more formal detention setting is required for a child's family, then those families should be separated from the other asylum seekers and housed in more appropriate circumstances."

This statement is welcome, but this new position is not assured within the ALP at this point.  Mark Latham and Martin Ferguson and others strongly oppose this policy change.

The Human Rights Alliance of Australia requests that you contact your nearest ALP member by phone, fax.  email or visit and welcome Mr Crean's statement and show that the public supports the ALP begining to modify its stance and looks forward to even stronger statements in favour of the human rights of refugees seeking asylum in the future.

Please urge them to get 'whole' families out - fathers included.  You might want to add that it would be useful if the ALP dropped the use of pejorative or unhelpful language such as 'illegals", "queue jumpers" etc.

Secondly, there is considerable disquiet in the Coaltion about the situation in Woomera, now is the time to contact the nearest Coalition MP and urge them to get families out of detention centres.

Lobbying is crucial now.

Please circulate this email through your networks for one month from 29/1/02 and then ignore.

Simon Crean: S.Crean.MP@aph.gov.au

Deputy Opposition Leader Jenny Macklin:  Jenny.Macklin.MP@aph.gov.au

Leader of the Opposition in the Senate and Shadow Minister for Public Administration and Home Affairs Senator John Faulkner senator.faulkner@aph.gov.au

Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate, Senator Stephen Conroy: senator.conroy@aph.gov.au

Shadow Attorney General Robert McClelland: R.McClelland.MP@aph.gov.au

The ALP's website feedback form http://www.alp.org.au/action/feedback.html