Dear Friends, just posting below the latest update from Parliament about the repeal. It's so important to keep the pressure so that people's lives are protected by the Medevac Bill, with the wish that this illegal detention of refugees will stop altogether.
From the Guardian this morning:
The medevac repeal bill is low-key simmering away in the background. It won’t reach the Senate for a debate until it has been through a committee, which is not due to report back until October – and then the Senate will consider it in November.
Jacqui Lambie is the key vote there. And she is not saying what she plans on doing.
Andrew Giles spoke in the House late last night on the medevac repeal bill:
I want to briefly share with the House the human story I think best illustrates what a difference this regime has made and how dangerous it would be to go back. The story concerns a two-year-old girl known as DIZ18. Her parents fled Iran to Australia, arriving in 2013 without a visa.
They were taken by the Australian government to Nauru and recognised as refugees under the refugee convention in 2014. DIZ18 was born in Nauru on 5 June 2016. This little girl became ill in June 2018 and her illness rapidly got worse over the next few days.
On 12 June the treating doctors, with the International Health and Medical Services – the medical service contracted to provide healthcare to refugees on Nauru – diagnosed her with severe sepsis. In short, IHMS recommended that the little girl be urgently medically evacuated, to a tertiary-level hospital, to Australia or a third country.
A senior officer of the Australian Border Force involved in the decision inquired whether it was possible for the applicant to, instead, be evacuated to a hospital in Papua New Guinea or Taiwan.
Each doctor and specialist who recommended her medical evacuation recommended that she be taken to a tertiary hospital in Australia or another first-world country; however, the sick little girl was treated at the hospital in Papua New Guinea. It rapidly became clear that the standard of care required, including MRI brain scans and other scans, were not available at this hospital.