By comparing regulations for Australian detention camps for those issued for Dachau Tranter wildly oversells any point she may have been making. I doubt whether the detainees are as neglected as imagines or supposes, but I'm sure that if there were not strict clamps on communication then they would scream as loudly as they could, irrespective of the conditions. they would have nothing to loose and a lot to gain, and people like Tranter, who has proven immune to reason in this area, would encourage them as hard as they could. We do need some oversight of conditions in the camp but it has to be independent. People like Tranter cannot be trusted with that task. Their reports would owe much more to politics or ideology than to facts.

Tell us love, how did you get off that duct tape they were using across your mouth to censor you.

For someone who is being censored, you sure manage to do a lot of bleating.

Through "propaganda tool of terror" "Dachau" and "Napalm girl" the author has used oddly sensationalist language which is unprofessional in a lawyer. Maybe appropriate for an 18yo uni Trot though...

Kellie's better-life refugees who can each afford the $10,000 seafare are clearly more "deserving" than the 100,000s refugees in Northeast African camps (not). The most needy refugees are in the legitimate queue for Australia and frequently are in a state of starvation. They are lucky to have $10 rather than $10,000.

Hear hear Cumugeon.

Perhaps if Kellie were exposing some of the things people smugglers do to rip off the poorest of the poor, some of her so called concerns could be linked to genuine humanity, rather than to paid activism and or, the refugee dollar?

We have over 100,000 homeless people here and now in this country, with many doing it far tougher than so called refugees.

Or put another way, undocumented economic migrants.

In any event, all we are obliged to do, is offer safe secure sanctuary, and resettlement!

And given we are doing both and at considerable expense to the inevitably non-consulted taxpayer, Kellie has no case to make!

I've lived in far harsher conditions; and there are now over 60 million displaced persons living in camps, many in vastly worse conditions.

We provide health care for all and education for kids.

They get three squares a day, all of which is far and away, better than most of the other 60 million have access to.

Yes there's censorship; and necessarily so!

The folks who engage in people smuggling need to this information in order to somehow circumvent our border controls, and therefore shouldn't have it.

And not only have illegal undocumented migrants coming to Australia in rotting hulks dried up, but many that used to come from the middle east using Indonesia as a transit point, have also!

As has a formerly lucrative business model; and not just for people smugglers Kellie!
That's all we really need to know!
Rhrosty.

She calls herself a human rights 'activist', but her activities seem restricted to badmouthing Australia where she knows she can say what she wishes without censorship, and legal or physical punishment, which is what she would get if she opened her gob around human rights abuses that actally happen in places she isn't brave enough to mention.

"Kellie Tranter is a lawyer and human rights activist. You can follow her on Twitter".... that pretty much sums it all up.

Her article is nothing more than unsubstantiated cheap shots at the Government and really not worth reading.

Dear OLO Commentariat

In our thoroughly justified condemnation of this wasted article have we stopped to ponder two questions:

1. Perhaps the pressures of an overpaid lawyer's life, amid the Sydney chattering classes, have finally warped her brain? and

2. Perhaps the RSPCA may be of service?

But Kellie, you think rights are whatever the government says they are, remember?

Indeed, with the public evidence from members of the medical fraternity of little children banging their heads against the walls and all of the rest of the inhumanities, it is clear to me that the best place to put the scum of the ALP, the Coalition and their supporters is in a "pain amplifier," and it is sad to think that perhaps the only way to deal with these criminals is civil disobedience and perhaps even a civil war.

But considering the abhorrent history of this country, it should come as no surprise to us.

As I am oft fond to say:

" The Crown is a genocidal institution, and its knowing and obliging servants are filth. "

We ought rather say,
"This a child, and entitled to the same rights and protections as any other Australian child."

and not:

"Nay, they are other and we will discriminate, neglect and abuse them for no fault of their own."

For verily "mandatory detention" is a dehumanising activity.

Dear Jardine,

Kellie indeed does the refugees a stupid disservice by speaking of their "rights" and such nonsense.

Yet the government has kidnapped them on the high seas, took their liberty away and engages in acts of cruelty against them (with our own tax money).

Release them, give them back their stolen boats and allow them to drown if that's what they want. However, by now they also deserve a hefty compensation for their imprisonment, while those who ordered their capture deserve to be hanged (and their private assets to go towards this compensation).

Garbage Yuyutsu. They are free to leave any time they like, & stupid us will pay to repatriate them.

What they have had is a great tropical holiday, in a tropical paradise many pay a huge amount to visit.

It is about time we gave them the bill for their holiday, or made them work building their future homes. They must never be let near Oz.

Dear Hasbeen,

How can they leave if their boats were taken away? At the moment they were forcibly placed on an island where they are not even allowed to get to a beach from where they can swim, or build themselves a new boat.

Are they truly free to have their boats back, from which they were snatched, then sail wherever they like?

Yuyutsu, once again you haven't thought through your comments.

The boat people in detention paid a smuggler to share transport on various boats, some containing 50+ people. So each individual detainee not only never owned a boat, they are not entitled to sail wherever they like as a boat owner

I truly doubt if any the detainees would be capable of building a boat from scratch, if as you suggest, they could be dropped on a beach.

The detainees that choose to go home are offered tax payer funded flights home.

Dear Hippie,

<<The detainees that choose to go home are offered tax payer funded flights home.>>

Their home was at sea when they were snatched.
This is where they were found and snatched from against their will and this is where they should be returned to, after being compensated for their brutal arrest, not to some other place which they left for good and no longer have an association with, likely because they would be executed there.

If they technically cannot be provided with exactly the same conditions as they had when taken away, then they should only be provided with better ones as being hijacked by the Australian pirates was none of their fault.

I remember one person saying that if you have no rational argument, compare the person's actions to Hitler.

Labor/greens left about 30 000 (>2000 children0 detainees, this has shrunk under the coalition to about 3300 (160 children). And is likely to drop far further before the next election.

While this has happened the refugee activists were trying their hardest to stop the turnbacks and close the detention centers, by rubbing the Indonesians' noses in the turnarounds and broadcasting every rumour or innuendo about the detention centers as fact. So I am not surprised that the most successful part of operation sovereign borders is cutting the activist journalists off at the knees.

Dear SM,

What kind of excuse is "It's not me - it's the guy with the patch on the other eye who did it"?

Both belong to the same pirate gang who call themselves "the state", "the government", "the commonwealth" or "Australia". I do not care in the least how they divide the blame among them. The least they could do is to break the locks so the poor people and children they captured can go free.

What stops them?

Ah, another excuse, that silly piece of paper they signed along with other pirate gangs (but never actually meant to follow without cheating), through the United-Pirates organisation which compels them to "process" their captives. Just burn that paper and let them go!

The people who were sent to Dachau actually were criminals for the most part and even if Kellie had used other examples, such as Auschwitz it's still a stupid analogy because asylum seekers don't have to work in the detention centres, they sit around all day watching porn, smoking dope and grooming little girls on Facebook.