The reach of private company Serco is global and its human rights record remains abysmal. Yet it continues receiving lucrative contracts. That should stop: Prison campaigners last night called for a review of a North-East secure unit after revelations that 21 children had suffered injuries while being restrained. The injuries were sustained by children at…
Showing all posts tagged privatisation
How is life at Villawood detention centre?
The effect of Australia’s immigration detention centres on human lives is often ignored. Villawood in outer Sydney has seen years of privatised prison time. Here are two moving stories: The Stories Project: Villawood Mums from CuriousWorks on Vimeo.
Privatising wars is cosy for all concerned (except dead civilians)
The sickness of relying on private contractors to fight our wars is only getting worse. Western governments can’t get enough of companies operating without direct responsibility to them. What’s a few recorded murders discussed during the annual shareholder meeting? Pratap Chatterjee writes in the Guardian that the Wikileaks Iraq logs show how out of control…
If Washington doesn’t pursue Blackwater, somebody has to
Let’s get this straight. The US government has smeared the latest Wikileaks Iraq information dump and apparently has no interest in investigating anything. The Iraqi government, undeniably corrupt and broken, has a rather different attitude: The Iraqi government says that it will investigate whether employees of the Blackwater security company were involved in hitherto undisclosed…
Serco and G4S are peas from the same pod
In Australian political life, only the Greens are hammering away against the privatisation of detention centres: Australia’s immigration detention system is failing, and this makes the need for transparency greater than ever, according to Senator Sarah Hanson-Young. Senator Hanson-Young, Greens spokesperson on Immigration, says she is concerned at reports that immigration service provider SERCO may…
Thank you for outsourcing and protecting our imperial wars
Private mercenaries have been integral to the “war on terror”, so much so that Western aid groups are warning the Afghan government that without them the country will miss billions of dollars in aid: More than a billion dollars worth of aid projects in Afghanistan will have to be cancelled by the end of the…
Serco discovers that detention centres are so yesterday’s market
That’s right, Serco now sees the health sector as a new area in which to profit. Clearly increased public funding on health is a controversial idea in the 21st century: The [Western Australian] State Government has named private company Serco Australia as its preferred option to provide non-clinical support services to the $2 billion Fiona…
Not allowing private firms to run our brutal wars
Who can blame the Afghan government, as corrupt as it is, resisting the onslaught of unaccountable private military contractors, teams increasingly relied upon by Western states in their futile battle against an indigenous “enemy”? The Afghan president on Wednesday rejected pleas from the international community to reverse his order to disband all private security companies,…
Oz journalists dare to mention Serco (just a little)
All praise this rarity. A story in the Australian media (yesterday’s Australian) on Serco. Short but oh so sweet: A security company contracted by Serco is being investigated over claims it used unlicensed guards at police detention centres. Serco is responsible for running Australia’s rapidly expanding network of immigration detention centres. Northern Territory Licensing, Regulation…