Journalists wrong again

Letter to the Editor - The Australian
22 July 2003

Dear Sir/Madam

Natalie O'Brien and Elisabeth Wynhausen continue to get it wrong when it comes to the Department's compliance activity ('If this is a raid, it must be Thursday', 19 July).

In previous articles The Australian has accused the Department of being too focused on locating and removing illegals. Now it seems The Australian is unhappy because no unlawfuls were located in one compliance operation last week even though it resulted in valuable information being collected on the organisers.

What's more if Ms O'Brien and her colleagues turned up at the Department's offices on a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday or Sunday, they would "witness" compliance teams leaving on those days too.

It is also interesting that Ms O'Brien ignores her own work given that she inquired about and then reported on a brothel operation just over two weeks ago that was conducted on a Saturday night at 10pm.

The last time reporters from The Australian claimed to have followed compliance staff, it was determined via building security records at the Lee Street office, that no vehicles left the building at the time claimed by the paper. Furthermore the office it was claimed the vehicles travelled to had been closed for over 12-months.

The facts can talk a lot louder than innuendo. In the eleven months to the end of May 2003, the Department had located 19,070 unlawful non citizens and others in breach of visa conditions. That is a significant increase over the 17,307 found in 2001-02, which itself was higher than the previous year by almost five per cent.

Locations of people working illegally in the sex industry have also dramatically increased - since 1996-97 the number of people located has risen by over 250 per cent.

Stewart Foster
Director
Public Affairs
DIMIA