Crikey Media Wrap: Yesterday the Gillard administration did the seemingly unthinkable: they outlined — gasp! — a slightly different policy direction on refugee and asylum seeker processing.
Detention centres
Immigration detention: 27 dead and (not) counting…
Up to 27 people have died in immigration custody since 2000 yet none of these deaths are recorded by the national deaths-in-custody monitoring program, despite clearly meeting the legal definition, writes Crikey intern Inga Ting.
Your Say: Daily Mail readers' feedback: Of detention centres and detainees
Crikey readers have their say on detention centres, detainees and who’ll be our next speaker of parliament.
Next stop, the Darwin Airport Motel: home to 150 asylum seeker teens
There are around 150 boys aged 14 to 17 currently locked up in the Darwin Airport Motel who have not left the building since April. Pamela Curr went to visit them.
Inside the motel rooms asylum seeker kids call home
The Australian government maintains that it does not detain children in immigration detention centres. Instead, children are detained in motels or mining camps, writes Pamela Curr.
Border security gets a billion
The government has put its money where its mouth is when it comes to backing its increasingly hardline rhetoric on border security, flagging $1.2 billion Australia’s borders.
Why did the Merak asylum seekers get off their boat?
Yesterday saw an end to the stand-off between Indonesian immigration officials and over a hundred Sri Lankan asylum seekers who have been on a boat at the port of Merak since October. So how were they convinced to leave? asks Crikey intern Elizabeth Redman.
The UK locks up its traumatised asylum seekers, too
The UK’s policy of not putting asylum seekers who have been victims of torture into detention centres is being routinely ignored, the Guardian’s Observer has found.
must read 
The secret war in Afghanistan
An extraordinary piece of investigative journalism by Anand Gopal on the US’s “secret war” in Afghanistan: night raids, hidden detention centers, disappearances and the “Black Jail” of Bagram.
Your Say: Daily Mail readers' feedback: Keane on Telstra
Some Crikey readers don’t agree with Bernard Keane that small investors aren’t concerned about what’s happening with Telstra. Plus, an update on visiting detention centres.
Tough new restrictions on visits to detention centres
Serco — the company behind troubled UK immigration detention centres and prisons and now the contractor in Australia — has introduced a tough new regime to inhibit visitors to Australian detention centres, writes Trish and John Highfield.
We’re still locking kids up
Last week, Immigration Minister Chris Evans said: “It is Rudd Government policy that no child be held in an immigration detention centre”. But on Christmas Island, 84 kids are still being held in what the government calls “temporary detention”, reports David Marr.
Rundle: Libs try to put on a humane, human face; fail
The Liberal Party has now cottoned on to the fact that Australians don’t like seeing asylum seekers brutsalised on their watch, and has tried to make it a campaigning point. But it’s like Martians trying to work out how the humans think, says Guy Rundle.
Inside Indonesia’s brutal prisons
The Oz looks at the brutal conditions inside the Indonesian detention centres where the Sri Lankan asylum-seekers rejected by the Australian government are headed, which makes the Christmas Island facility look like a holiday resort.
A tour of Indonesia’s detention centres
First hand experiences of Indonesia’s detention centres, where asylum seekers are treated like animals, beating are frequent, and there’s no access to medical care, education, or adequate food.
No room for refugees in Greg Rudd’s Port Hedland facility
Christmas Island is filling up, but Port Hedland won’t be an option for housing any asylum seeker overflow — unless authorities can do a deal with Kevin Rudd’s brother.
Your Say: Daily Mail readers' feedback: A clarification on children in detention
Lobbyists … Detention centres … that Grech guy … First Dog on christianity … Walkmans and Helen Razer … MJ jokes. It’s all on Crikey readers’ minds today.
