The Minister for Immigration, Chris Evans, has announced a comprehensive set of reforms to Australia's system of accepting asylum seekers. Central to these reforms is the limitation of mandatory detention to the management of health, identity and security checks, people who have not complied with visa conditions and those who represent a risk to the community. Jesuit Refugee Service Australia welcomes this fundamental change to Australia's policy on protection of refugees and asylum seekers. JRS Director David Holdcroft says: "As late as last week JRS was petitioning the government on just these aspects of immigration policy. Those seeking asylum must be treated with the respect their situation demands. For many years now we have seen the immense harm done to people detained without charge and for an unlimited duration. These changes, if properly implemented, will amount to a seminal reform of a policy initially introduced by Labor. We have gone the full circle. Fr Holdcroft stresses that there remains a large amount of work to be done on ensuring that asylum seekers are appropriately supported within the community. "The passage to asylum is never simple, and asylum seekers have massive adjustments to make. They need to be supported through this, without prejudicing the outcome of their cases. Likewise, the small group of refugees detained under Section 501 Character Cancellation still demands much work." Fr Holdcroft says that one of the outcomes of the reforms announced this morning will be to take a significant amount of decision-making power out of the minister's office. "In the last decade, mandatory detention for certain classes of asylum seeker has been the normative position. Henceforth, after health, identify and security checks, asylum seekers will live in the community while their cases are being processed. This is consistent with Australia's human rights obligations, our system of rule of law, and reasoned practice."

End in sight for 'cruel' asylum seeker policy http://www.eurekastreet.com.au/article.aspx?aeid=8307