My following investigation appears in today’s edition of Crikey: Three security guards working at Sydney’s Villawood detention centre have exposed occupational health and safety breaches at their workplace, in exclusive interviews with Crikey. The three employees of MSS Security, one of the companies contracted by British multinational Serco in its management of asylum seekers, have…
Showing all posts tagged privatisation
“Winning” colonial wars the privatised way
There’s something morally and legally sick that in post 2003 Iraq (and to this day) privatised mercenaries are the way the Western states maintain their power in the country: A former British soldier potentially facing the death penalty in Iraq insisted that he remained anxious but hopeful as his case was adjourned last night. Danny…
Murdoch press likes race-baiting over asylum seekers
This is the front page story of today’s Sydney Daily Telegraph (surprised the lead isn’t about Lady Gaga or welfare mothers on crack robbing homeless men): Dozens of asylum seekers are on the run, with fears they are being supported by underground networks. Of the 47 people to have escaped last year, 12 had been…
So, finally, acknowledgement that Serco simply can’t manage the problems in Australia
Here’s a rare a piece in the Australian mainstream media that actually discusses the role of British multinational Serco, its dysfunctional relationship with the Immigration Department and neither being able to handle the influx of a few thousand refugees: The case of nine-year-old Iranian orphan Seena’s return to Christmas Island highlights just how dysfunctional our…
Next thing to privatise: the air that we breathe
Are there any limits to what neo-liberal governments won’t sell to private interests? The highly contentious plans for a …£250m sale of England’s forests will be abandoned because of the furious backlash that has hit the Government. David Cameron humiliated his Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman in the House yesterday, and shocked MPs, when he disowned…
Who says Abu Ghraib is bad for business?
Private contractor CACI provided some of the torturers at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. So it therefore makes sense, following the rules of crony capitalism, that a rebounding economy is suiting CACI just fine: CACI, an Arlington County-based defense contractor, hired 3,500 people in its last fiscal year and plans 4,000 hires this year. It has…
Saluting Green Left Weekly’s 20th anniversary
Such alternative press is vital in an age where the mainstream media largely speaks for corporate interests: One of the despairs of our time is a corporate media that speaks for authority and power, rarely for its readers and viewers. One of the excitements of our time is the means by which we can now…
The Serco rot jumps to yet another country
The following statement was released on 9th February by the New Zealand Green Party: It has been revealed that a Serco prison has the worst record of self-harm in Scotland, said the Green Party today. Serco’s contract to run Auckland remand prison is due to be tabled in Parliament shortly. It has been reported in…
Australia has no idea how to handle a few thousand refugees
We are led by cowards and fools, governments and oppositions afraid to treat asylum seekers as human beings. Instead of processing the relatively few people quickly and carefully, they are housed away in privatised prisons run by a British multinational, Serco, with no accountability. This feature in today’s Melbourne Age shows the disgrace: Today over…
What does it take to teach officials lives aren’t to be privatised?
The healthy response to an investigation of uncontrolled power towards refugees would be to stop the outsourcing of such tasks but rest assured the British government will simply find another multinational to do the job. The sick religion of privatisation over people’s lives: The multinational security company hired by the government to deport refused asylum…