A Bill To Take Mobile Phones Away From Asylum Seekers May Just Hinge On A Goddamn Online Poll

Yep, that’s right. The power to take mobile phones away from asylum seekers and refugees in immigration detention centres rests on an online poll created by Senator Jacqui Lambie.

The bill that Acting Immigration Minister Alan Tudge wants to pass would give the Australian Border Force (ABF) more power to confiscate mobile phones and perform strip searches in detention centres. It’s already passed through the lower house of Parliament, and now just needs to pass through the Senate.

Jacqui Lambie will have the balance of power in this decision and claims she wants to put the power into the hands of the people, with a poll on her website. She will use this poll to decide how to vote when the bill gets introduced to the Senate in the coming weeks.

The Government’s introduced a bill to give them the power to remove or ban phones from people in immigration detention….

Posted by Senator Jacqui Lambie on Thursday, September 10, 2020

According to Tudge, the reason the Australian government want to enforce the bill is to control the distribution of “child exploitation material, extremist content or drugs in immigration detention centres.”

However according to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, they already have sufficient powers to cease phones, if individuals in immigration are being suspected of possessing these materials.

This bill will give them unchecked powers to remove mobile phones for any reason. That means that the ABF will be able to exercise powers to strip search and remove mobile phones for no reason.

Behrouz Boochani a Kurdish-Iranian journalist who was held for 6 years on Manus Island, wrote the award-winning book  No Friend But The Mountains from the Manus Island detention centre, using only a mobile phone. For those in immigration detention, mobile phones are their lifeline and a chance to connect with the outside world.

Imagine how much harder lockdown would be without a mobile phone?

You can vote on the Mobile Phone Ban Bill here.

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