Declan Murphy <declan_murphy@hotmail.com> dixit:

>I was reading John Menadue's autobiography a few years back (my mother
>sends me copies of the autobiographies of just about anyone who
>converts to Catholicism) 

Interesting criterion.

>and recall him mentioning how he was still
>uncovering fossilised procedures & policy when he was running
>Immigration & Ethnic Affairs during the Fraser years. Wonder when (or
>even if?) it actually ended.

Never ended. Haven't you heard of the Cornelia Rau affair or the 
Vivian Alvarez Solon affair?

(For non-Ozzies, these were two people who fell into the clutches
of the goons in Australia's Immigration service. Rau was a 
schizophrenic on the run, who pretended she was an overstaying
tourist from Germany (she actually had been in Oz since childhood
and only spoke broken German.) The goons tossed her into detention
without medical treatment while they pestered the German government
to accept her as a deportee. Finally someone noticed that this person
on the police missing persons list was actually locked up in 
Immigration's gulag.

Solon's case was worse. She is a citizen, with a medical problem
that has left her partly paralyzed. Somehow Immigration thought she
was a Phillipina sex slave, and pressured the Phillipines government
into accepting her as deportee. She spent about two years in a hospice
in Manila while Immigration staff, who knew they'd stuffed up, tried
to cover their tracks. Law suits are pending, and the Federal govt
may have to pay megabucks in compensation.)

All quite disgusting and shameful.

-- 
Jim Breen        http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/~jwb/
Clayton School of Information Technology,
Monash University, VIC 3800, Australia 
ジム・ブリーン@モナシュ大学