This is what Australia is doing to refugees in its care

The reality of life in Australia for asylum seekers is too rarely heard. So when Perth-based refugee activist Victoria Martin-Iverson wrote to me yesterday with the story below I asked if I could publish it here exclusively. This is the reality of privatised refugees, mostly ignored in a country that doesn’t seem too interested in…

Britain’s public cuts serve Serco wonderfully

Multinationals making money from the public purse – in prisons, detention centres, hopsitals and the like – are the perfect example of the modern age; firms that talk about rights and care but are all about only one thing. Serco is one of those companies, getting huge profits in the process. Governments love them; much…

Fighting privatised prisons is a noble act

Multinational G4S manages prisons the world over and its human rights record is troubling; the company makes money from misery. These workers are right to protest the company in Britain: The military has been put on standby as the prison service braces itself for a day of industrial disruption over the first privatisation of an…

Serco’s trick; reward failure with a pay rise

Australia’s immigration detention centres, woefully mismanaged by Serco and the Federal government, is in chaos. But not to worry. Serco head honcho clearly deserves more money for causing misery to countless thousands: Serco Group Plc (SRP), a U.K. outsourcing company that derived about half its revenue from public-sector contracts last year, raised the pay of…

Canberra should ditch Serco and offer support for people not firms

This is what Australia has created. A militarised and privatised system to house asylum seekers. Christmas Island remains in a state of heightened tension. The Australian offers a little more information about the state of dysfunction between the federal government and British multinational Serco: While private security firm Serco has come under scrutiny for understaffing…

Memo to reporters in Australia; refugees are already being smeared and abused

Here’s how the Australian media sometimes report on asylum seekers. There’s no doubt that the country’s refugee policy is out of control, privatised forces (namely Serco) run the system with few checks or balances and journalists often simply ignore the bigger picture but can sensitivity towards vulnerable people not be ignored? Asylum seekers awaiting processing…

Will Serco be continually rewarded for failure?

The ongoing chaos at Christmas Island – with refugees, guards and citizens all being led astray by the Australian government and Serco – is a blight on our conscience. We treat asylum seekers like animals, lock them up indefinitely, and wonder why their resist? As they should. Last night Immigration Minister Chris Bowen appeared on…

Australian media finally starts to examine Serco

Well, it’s only taken a few years to seriously wonder how a British multinational, paid hundreds of millions annually, is so incompetently mismanaging immigration detention centres around Australia and Canberra is now paying them to build more facilities in remote locations. The glories of privatisation. Can we now have a discussion about placing these semi-prisons…

Media finally waking to Serco’s daily failures

Australia’s Christmas Island detention centre is in turmoil and controller of the place Serco is woefully incapable of running it. Might we finally see some questions about the privatisation of asylum seekers? Interesting information from yesterday’s Crikey: I’m currently on Christmas Island. I have just been speaking with a photojournalist who has been staking out…

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