Section 256 of the Migration Act 1958 requires the detention centres to provide reasonable facilities to take legal proceedings against the Minister. As long as I am aware, this section has never worked. It certainly is not working in Villawood now.
The Federal Court provides the forms in the Word format. The computers here do not have Word. There is a free software called Apache Open Office and I suspect that the Department will say it is equivalent to Microsoft Office. However, even though the name is similar, we cannot edit Word documents with Open Office. It is just a text editor. The only way I discovered to deal with a Word doc is to use Google docs online. But what Google docs can do is limited and particularly so with the outdated Internet browser. Furthermore, I often cannot access Google docs, either.
The detention centre's outdated Internet browser does not allow me to attach more than one file to an email. The Internet is cut off automatically every sixty minutes. Apart from that, the computers here shut down automatically at a random time without any alert in advance. Then everything you were working will disappear and you have to start all over again. While I write these emails, I click 'Save Draft' every 15 seconds. If the computers shut down while sending or uploading documents with the slow Internet, best of luck.
In this digital age when the Court uses the Internet and digital documents, these facilities are not reasonable facilities in my view. So yesterday, I lodged a complaint to the Commonwealth Ombudsman as the Immigration Ombudsman. It was a big job to lodge a complaint online with these unreasonable facilities because the computer shut down while I was writing a complaint in an online form.
I suspect that the Ombudsman (a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration) will do nothing for a couple of months and then will write to me that all the facilities are reasonable in his view. But how can it be reasonable? When I tried to see the Department's website, the following message was displayed.
---
Update your browser
You have reached this resource page because you are using an insecure
non-supported Internet Browser to access Department of Immigration and
Border Protection online services. Use the browser links below to
update your browser to a supported version. Until your browser is
using a supported Internet Browser version you will not be able to
access departmental online services.
---
I got used to dealing with the Immigration so this message does not annoy me anymore. But it must be sufficient to drive most people up the wall.
The Federal Court provides the forms in the Word format. The computers here do not have Word. There is a free software called Apache Open Office and I suspect that the Department will say it is equivalent to Microsoft Office. However, even though the name is similar, we cannot edit Word documents with Open Office. It is just a text editor. The only way I discovered to deal with a Word doc is to use Google docs online. But what Google docs can do is limited and particularly so with the outdated Internet browser. Furthermore, I often cannot access Google docs, either.
The detention centre's outdated Internet browser does not allow me to attach more than one file to an email. The Internet is cut off automatically every sixty minutes. Apart from that, the computers here shut down automatically at a random time without any alert in advance. Then everything you were working will disappear and you have to start all over again. While I write these emails, I click 'Save Draft' every 15 seconds. If the computers shut down while sending or uploading documents with the slow Internet, best of luck.
In this digital age when the Court uses the Internet and digital documents, these facilities are not reasonable facilities in my view. So yesterday, I lodged a complaint to the Commonwealth Ombudsman as the Immigration Ombudsman. It was a big job to lodge a complaint online with these unreasonable facilities because the computer shut down while I was writing a complaint in an online form.
I suspect that the Ombudsman (a former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration) will do nothing for a couple of months and then will write to me that all the facilities are reasonable in his view. But how can it be reasonable? When I tried to see the Department's website, the following message was displayed.
---
Update your browser
You have reached this resource page because you are using an insecure
non-supported Internet Browser to access Department of Immigration and
Border Protection online services. Use the browser links below to
update your browser to a supported version. Until your browser is
using a supported Internet Browser version you will not be able to
access departmental online services.
---
I got used to dealing with the Immigration so this message does not annoy me anymore. But it must be sufficient to drive most people up the wall.