Inside Australia's Immigration Detention

I was told this morning that the Immigration will fly me tomorrow with no wallet, no credit card, no money, no mobile, no computer, no key to the home, no nothing.   I seriously considered whether I should apply to the court for a variation of the order which the judge made on his return from holidays on Monday.  The order the judge made is that the Respondent produce the Applicant to the Court for the judgment in Brisbane.  What can I do if I get the order I am seeking, namely, the Applicant be released from detention forthwith?  I will be thrown out to the street with no money, no card, no mobile, not even the key to my home!  Contacting here and there and try to prepare for all the possibilities, my day has gone.   Then in the evening, I received an eye-popping email from the lawyers for the Respondent.  I am copying the first three paragraphs. 'We refer to the above matter and the Orders made Xday February 2018, requiring ...

Last night, I had a headache and could not sleep.  So I went to the guards' station and asked for paracetamol.  The guard telephoned a nurse who was on a break and would not return for another five minutes.  So I waited.  The guard called the nurse again but this time, the nurse was on the phone with someone.   According to the guard, one nurse is receiving all calls from all detention centres in this country so that it could take long for her to get a permission to give me paracetamol.  The guard put the phone on hold and waited for five minutes.  No signs of the nurse picking up the guard's call.  So I decided to fill in a complaint form.   I wrote the first complaint form without using my glasses.  I could not see anything well but usually, my writing is still legible.  But since it was very uncomfortable to write anything without actually seeing it, I took the case of my reading glasses out of my bag, opened the c...

Yesterday, I telephoned the Registry of the Federal Court to ask about something other than the judgment in my migration case and accidentally discovered that the Associate to my judge had sent an email to the Registry directing it to list my migration case for the judgment on Friday.  Woohoo!  I was told that I would receive a notice of listing in the afternoon.  Bravo! Guess what.  The notice did not arrive yesterday.  I don't know whose fault is that.  But my case does not seem to follow the plan in each and every step. Eventually this afternoon, actually after 5pm (!), I received a notice of listing with the orders of the court made in chambers yesterday.  His Honour is requiring the Minister to produce me to the court for the judgment.  Unusual.   Strictly saying, because I did not put the costs argument in my submissions, I should be in court for the costs argument.  But since I am not represented, there...

Yesterday was a disaster.   After I sent you my email, put my medical request form and complaint forms in and whinged to a manager who was unluckily wandering around, I went back to bed.  After a while, a guard came to get my signature.  It was another issue which I may tell you some day.  Anyway, the guard noticed that my face was swollen!  I thought that's bad.  I didn't want half of my face paralysed.  So I went to the guards' station.  One of the guards jumped up when she saw my face (which I did not think that bad...) and persuaded a nurse to see me, thank goodness.  I went to see a nurse in the Medical Centre.  At first glance, she told me that she could tell my face swollen.  She gave me Neurofene and paracetamol and put a request for a dentist in.  She said that it was not her who decided an appointment and detainees were waiting for a dentist for years.  I thought that might be the case.  ...

As you must have noticed, I was really cranky yesterday.  The culmination was at night when a guard came to tell me that she had put a new girl in my room.  Of course, I said 'No'.   The guard asked me whether I wanted to speak to a manager.  I thought I would get the one whom I always speak to first thing in the morning next day rather than speaking to an unfamiliar one at night.  But I changed my mind when I was filling in a complaint form.  So I grabbed the manager of the day.  I told him that I was unhappy and gave him an unhappy stare.  He was mumbling one thing or another but soon agreed to do something in the morning.  Since I am not unreasonable (even though I may not be reasonable), I agreed to put up with a roommate for a night.  But when I came back to my room, the roommate came with her friends and collected her belongings and left.  I could not understand why the supposedly new girl had friends here and a...

I got some documents from the Immigration through FOI.  It seems my litigation is looked after by a senior legal officer in the legal section.  The senior legal officer is taking instructions from the Directors of cancellation branch etc.  Obviously, I was severely demoted from 2006 when the Director of the legal section was taking instructions from the First Assistant Secretary who reported to the Deputy Secretary who had a meeting with the Minister regularly.  I am very happy with my rapid demotion in the last 11 years.  Hopefully, I will be demoted even further in the next week or two. Today, I tried an activity entitled 'Music'.  In that activity, a lecturer (the same one as knitting and ESL) distributed a sheet of paper which the lyric of one of Adele's songs was printed with some words were deleted.  Then while we listened to the song, we were required to fill in the missing words.  That's not music.  That's dictation!   ...

My friend whom I call a 'problem child' here finally got a visa today and got out of here.  Thank goodness.  One less worry now.  Another friend eventually received a long-awaited notice today to be sent back to his country where some money he recently had got unexpectedly as inheritance or whatever is waiting.  Yesterday, another friend who is an overstaying tourist successfully negotiated with the Immigration about a visa to go back home.  Last week, my stateless asylum seeker friend got a visa and went out.  So people here are going one after the other.   But my judge is still on holiday... Grrrr! Decades ago, my Parter often ridiculed me by saying 'When Villawood Survivor is not happy, the entire world will know.'  That was not true at all but today, I decided to lodge a few complaints to let someone know that I was not happy.  So I went to the website of the Australian Human Rights Commission to make a complaint by an online co...

This morning, people were upset because three very peaceful pleasant guys had been taken to Christmas Island at 4 am this morning. One of them is a young black overseas student from an African country.  He was here at one time with her sister.  His sister got a bridging visa, I think, last year.  His application was knocked back.  He went to the court yesterday and was told that he would get a decision within 24 hours.  Before that time comes, he was taken to a remote island where no one can contact him.  Isn't that great?  Someone told me that if he wins, the Immigration will bring him back.  But I am not sure.  We will not be notified by the court whether he wins or not and he is not contactable (at least at this moment).  So no one will know anything from now on until and unless he gets back on the Internet from some place in the world.  I do not like the sneaky way of treating a very young overseas student.  Student...

It was an extremely busy day.  The problem was that I attended four activities without giving up my normal routine of having coffee and reading newspapers.  Every activity starts at half past and finishes at quarter past.  So during these fifteen minutes break, I rushed back to my compound to work on emails.  I served my final submissions on the other side, knocked off the last assessment of the online course and so on. Other than ESL and circuit training at the Gym, I tried one science(-like) course and the movie club today.   The lecturer of the science(-like) course showed us a TV program which was concerned with scientific research of the illicit drug use and its effect.  The real drug users participated in the experiment.  I learned the kinds of commonly used illicit drugs, how to use them and the effect of them....  For an ignorant person from a country where the drug control is almost flawless, all the information was new....

Last few days, I have been going through my old emails concerning my FOI requests to the Immigration and chasing the outstanding requests.  The Immigration's FOI officers have never been reasonable for the last 14 years but the recent ones are exceptionally bad!   My FOI requests always go to the person whose position number is XXX who is lying all the time.  In one of my requests, I asked for the emails held by the Director of some centre.  The position number 851 replied that those were previously released and pointed out one of my previous request asking for the emails held by the Director of one of the units under the centre.  Not only that, when I asked whether those two different positions were held by the same person, the position number XXX replied that that was the case.  I had to find out the names of these office holders and made a complaint.  Then XXX replied that those two persons shared the file.  They don't ...

This morning, I collected from a guard my final submission to the Court which I had asked her to print out last night.  Then I immediately asked her to scan it.  She might have thought that I was bullying her.  But the Federal Court online document lodgment system does not accept a PDF file made by Google Docs.  So I have to print out a PDF file of my submission first and then scan it again to make another PDF file.  I was not bullying, really. Anyway, I filed my final submission this morning.  The remaining job for this migration case is to wait for the Registry to send me a service copy and serve on the other side.  It will probably happen on Monday.  After that, I will just wait for the judge to come back from holidays.  Since the court will resume on 5 February, he will start working from that week.  Given my case is seriously simple, it should not take so long to deliver the judgment.  But who knows. I finished st...

One of my friends received a notice of intention to consider the refusal of a  bridging visa under s 501.  I cannot understand why he can hold such a strong belief that the Immigration will grant him a visa soon when the notice he received clearly states 'intention to consider refusal', not the intention to consider the grant of a visa.  Just in case he may listen to me, I explained the situation.   As anticipated, he told me that I was wrong.  He knew better.   Actually, most people in Villawood are like him.  My other friend did not believe me when I explained to him that 'setting aside the decision' and 'quashing the decision' are the same.  According to him, setting aside a decision is good for an applicant while quashing a decision is bad.  He knew it because he read it and I was wrong. I stopped trying to figure out long time ago why those people got such misunderstanding.  None of them are psychotic but they are...

The Chinese girl who does not speak a word of English and whom I tried to communicate with by writing Chinese characters (and dismally failed) turned to be a chatterbox!  She is very talkative and speaks to everyone.  Everyone listened to her with big smile and nods!  It looks as if everyone understood what the girls said.  But they came to me after the girl had left and told me that they could not understand what she said at all.  Sooo-oh funny! I went to the induction to the Gym today.  Every year, they require users to sign a medical consent afresh.  There were two Asian older men in the session.  Both look to me Chinese but it seems that they came from different countries since they did not speak each other.  The medical consent form does not have a translation.  Those two men do not speak English at all.  So the trainer started trying to translate it into kind of a sign language (?!).  I should not have laughed but I ...

It's Thursday.  My plan to finish off all the work on this litigation in this week means that I need to write up the draft of my final submission today.  This paper will not make any difference to the fate of my case so I have a little difficulty in keeping up my motivation.  But since I may want a job in future from the big law firm which the Immigration hired, I have to perfect my job to impress them. So I was ready to be in a full throttle this morning.  Then, I received a call from a sister who would visit this detention centre shortly reminding me of it.  Ooooops.  I forgot that.  But I thought it was the only task for the day and I would focus on my work after the visit.   Then, I went to the visit and met some asylum seekers who were with the sister at the visit.  Ughhhh.  I ended up agreeing to read his papers after the visit.  But his case was so simple and the judgment he got was very short.  So it did n...

For the last two weeks, I was told by a few people that there will be a new policy on visitors.  First thing I heard was that there will be a criminal history check when applying for a visit.  Then, I was told that 100 point IDs will be required.  Then, a visitor has to apply for a visit at least five days prior to the planned visit.  Yesterday, someone told me that the success or otherwise of an application for a visit will only be told when a visitor arrives at the planned visit.  I have not had any confirmation of all these information.  So I don't know whether it is true.  But the detainees here are in a panic.   A refugee girl is worried whether her husband has 100 points of IDs.  An interstate girl is worried if her husband flies from interstate and is refused entry into the centre.  My friends here are worried whether their criminal records prevent them from keeping their promise with each other to visit each othe...

I think I should send a bill to the Minister, really. This morning when I was working on the computer designated for my exclusive use in the computer room, a guard came to me with two new arrivals.  The guard asked me how they can log in to the computer.  I asked the guard whether they had a password.  The guard asked me how they can get a password.  I told the guard that she had to request it to the IT.  Then the guard said,  'Oh, I have to request it to IT?  OK.  Thank you.'   What the hell was that?!!  Why do I have to teach the guard what her job is?!!!  Not only that, the guard who is obviously new since I have never seen her before, knew my name and came to me straight away to ask the question!  I am not your supervisor, thank you.  I think this centre's management has some serious problems. The Minister's lawyers apparently have equally serious problems, too.  In their supplementary s...

Monday!  The start of a brand new week, thank goodness.  Last week was not really nice.   First, one of my friends went to the Tribunal for her appeal from the Immigration's decision to refuse to grant her a bridging visa.  I knew the prospect was not good since her case was heard by a notable(?!) member of the Tribunal, who is a former adviser to Tony Abbott.  He said all sorts of nice things to her at the hearing so my poor friend who is very young heightened her hope.  Then he decided against her.  I thought he would do. Another friend got a disappointing notice, too.  In his case, from the lawyer acting for the Immigration.  He was asked for a consent to an extension of time to file some documents for the reason the Immigration was reviewing his matter.  I told him that the normal way was to not give them a consent and drafted a standard two-line letter for him.  But he strongly believed that the Immigrat...

I am getting more and more tired every day.  I had a headache and sore neck this afternoon probably because of too much computer.  I went to the medical centre and asked for paracetamol.  A nurse gave me dissolvable one in a water-filled cup.  It tastes awful, made me sick. I will go to bed early...

My compound has a few flower beds or vegetable patches in the internal garden.  Currently, parsley, coriander, pak choy, celery, corn, sunflowers are growing.  The other day, some corns were pulled out and some sunflower's stalk was broken into two.  That made me feel sad.  I thought some of the stupid girls here must have done.  But that might have been an unsubstantiated allegation.  I saw this morning, a young cockatoo perching on a broken stalk of one of the sunflowers and happily munching on seeds!!  So cute!   This is the first time I saw a cockatoo in Villawood although I see galahs, a gang of thirty, visiting the Oval every day.  A family of five masked wrap wings (a kind of plover) lives in the Oval and they are my favourite to watch even though masked wrap wing is not one of my favourite species of bird.  The Oval also accommodates Indian mynah while my compound is a territory of an Australian native, noisy myn...

Since I spent half a day reading cases thanks to a bitchy nurse of IHMS, the progress of my preparation for the litigation was very good.  huh!  The Acting Health Services Manager of IHMS responded to my complaint and told me that she had booked me in for an eye test today.  So I went to the medical centre at the time.  I waited for more than an hour before a nurse came to me and asked me why I came.  Great...  I told her that I had been informed by the Acting Health Services Manager of an eye test booked for me.  The nurse replied to me that there was no such an appointment.  Then five minutes later, she came back to me and told me to wait for an eye test.  I thought this sort of problem would occur.  So I had plenty of cases printed out and brought them with me to the medical centre.  The result is the good progress of my preparation for the litigation. Anyway, the nurse confirmed that there was no appointment for me with...