A former senior official in the Immigration Department says she resigned in 2001 because of a "culture of fear" and blatant political interference. Diana Goldrick was one of the longest-serving New South Wales managers dealing with refugee applications from detention centres.
Ms Goldrick was in that role when thousands of boat people began arriving in the late 1990s. "The New South Wales office was run by a culture of fear, that people were very afraid of doing the right things," she said.
Ms Goldrick says that departmental secretary Bill Farmer addressed her staff in Sydney in 2000. "He told the case officers to be very careful when dealing with the applications from the boat people because, he said, 'we don't know who these people are'," she said. "If a case officer was hearing a very strong message from the most senior people in the department that we have to be wary of these people, they could be influenced to make an adverse decision on a protection visa application."
She says Mr Farmer addressed her staff again later that year. "This time he told them that because we had so many people in detention, the head of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet had told him that unless people were let out of detention very quickly - that is, issued with protection visas - that the department would go bankrupt," she said. "If we didn't do this, he would lose his job as secretary. So he'd come to Sydney to appeal to the case officers to do their utmost to issue the detainees with temporary protection visas as quickly as possible. "It was so inconsistent, it was laughable."
Ms Goldrick resigned early in 2001. "I resigned because I was sick and tired of the hypocrisy, of the inconsistency and of the mistreatment of people I considered to be bona fide refugees," she said. ------------------------------------------------
Sounds exactly like the way Governments and Public Servants operate to me. Sort of makes a joke of the whole matter eh and the tightly held opinions and support or lack of support for the government/opposition by many on here laughable.
