After 25 years of advocacy, what can the health care community learn from recent reforms of Australian immigration detention?
In February 2019, the Australian Government announced that it had removed all refugee and asylum seeker children from offshore detention in Nauru.1 Soon after, the Australian Parliament passed the Migration Amendment (Urgent Medical Treatment) Bill 2018.2 This legislation strengthens the position of doctors to recommend a transfer of an ill person to Australia for treatment from offshore detention centres in Manus Island (Papua New Guinea) and Nauru. While this has been welcome news, these developments are tempered by the fact that the government is seeking to repeal this legislation and has maintained an increasingly combative stance on these issues.
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