By Mel O’Brien
I wanted to take an opportunity to give kudos to the current Australian government, led by Prime Minister Rudd. I was lucky enough to be in Australia when the elections were held in November, so I got to go to the polls and vote, and attend an election party with friends. We sat at the party, drinks in hand, hoping and wishing for a change that was so desperately needed. For far too long we were ruled by John Howard, a little man with internationally embarrassing policies. As an international lawyer, there have been many moments when I was mortified by the policies of the Howard government. For example, I remember taking refugee law for my LLM, and having an entire 2-hr lecture devoted to the Australian ‘Pacific Solution’ refugee policy (that being where refugees are shipped to a Pacific island and detained in an ‘off-shore detention centre’). The Howard government had so many people believing refugees were bad people- ‘queue jumpers’, who didn’t wait their turn to immigrate like all good people should. Howard refused to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, refused to apologise to the indigenous people of Australia, and sent troops to Iraq and Afghanistan like the good little obedient US-servant he was. Happily, the change that we were all hoping so much for at that election party has happened! How the champagne flowed as we watched Rudd emerge to give his victory speech. Let’s just take a look at what the Rudd government has done in just over 6 months in power: Continue reading