Australian PM defends appointment

[dArKeR]

Australia's immigration chief was named as Canberra's next ambassador to Indonesia yesterday, just days before the official release of a scathing report examining his department's role in a series of blunders stemming from the government's tough asylum policies.

Prime Minister John Howard said Immigration Department secretary Bill Farmer had asked to leave to allow a new person to oversee reforms recommended in the report, written by former federal police chief Mick Palmer.

The government commissioned the Palmer report earlier this year to find out how a German-born Australian resident Cornelia Rau spent 10 months behind bars as an illegal immigrant when she should have been receiving treatment for a psychiatric condition. Since then, the government admitted Farmer's department has wrongfully detained another 33 people, including one citizen who was mistakenly deported to the Philippines.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/07/11/2003263071

[dArKeR]

1. Immigration head resigns amid scandal

The head of Australia's embattled immigration department Bill Farmer resigned yesterday, telling Prime Minister John Howard that a new person was needed to drive change within an organization censured in a recent report for breaching its own rules on the detention of suspected illegal immigrants.

But despite a welter of criticism over allowing Australians to be wrongfully held in the country's bleak immigration detention centers and one being unlawfully deported to the Philippines, Farmer was named as the new ambassador to Indonesia.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2005/07/11/2003263072