Monday, February 16, 2015

Triggs sounding reasonable

Oh look - Gillian Triggs is in Fairfax sounding reasonable and making the point about numbers of children in detention that I always said would be relevant:
The year 2013 saw a peak in the number of asylum seekers globally – largely as a result of the unrest of the Arab Spring. This impacted on Australia, with asylum seeker numbers rising to a record high in July 2013. There were 1992 children in detention in that month. By October 2013, efforts to move children into the community had reduced this number to 1045.

In stark contrast, over the six months after the new government took office, it became clear that children were being held for significant periods and were not being released. While the boats were stopping, the children were being detained for lengthening periods of time. When the inquiry was announced in February, 2014 children had been held on average for seven months and 1006 remained in closed indefinite detention.
Of course, amongst her fiercest critics are pea-brained climate change "skpetics" who have never been able to get their head around understanding how changes in intensity in the water cycle can mean both bigger precipitation events and worse droughts. 

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