Vanstone delight on deportation is a devil's dance

Vanstone's delight over High Court deportation is a devil's dance

"The Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone's "welcoming" of the High Court decision that clears the way for deportation of Mr Stefan Nystrom, the Swedish-born man who lived in Australia since he was one month old, and her announcement that others now will be re-detained to prepare for deportations, is a sign of the "goddamned cruelty" of the Howard government, and it seems like a devil's dance in a nightmare from a horror movie," WA Rights group Project SafeCom said this morning.

"It seems that the only person who has pointed to the failure of Section 501 of Australia's Migration Act in the context of Mr Nystrom's and many other similar cases was the Commonwealth Ombudsman in his report, but Vanstone has conveniently shuffled him off to the background of the mix - because it's not useful in her devil's dance," spokesman Jack H Smit said.

"Minister Vanstone's delight is a shocking indictment on herself and the whole rabble of the Howard gang of Ministers, who, regardless of the shocking revelations during the Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez episode, seek to maintain their inhumane and cruel immigration regime, rather than acknowledging the failure of the system and the Migration Act, which they could short-circuit in one pen-stroke by changing it and acknowledge that people like Mr Nystrom are indeed, as the Ombudsman and the Federal Court have already said, truly 'absorbed persons' ," Mr Smit continued.

"While this administration stays in power, the notion of what constitutes 'a true Australian' remains a notion seriously undermined, both in terms of who the Minister regards as "Australian" and how she acts, as evidenced this week in relation to Mr Nystrom: she remains as un-Australian as you can become under Howard., Mr Smit concluded.

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