The Refugee Advocacy Network

About the Palm Sunday Walk for Justice and Peace – Melbourne, 24 March 2024

Since 2014, the Refugee Advocacy Network, has brought together a wide range of groups to plan the Palm Sunday Walk for Justice for Refugees.

During the 1970s and 80s there was a tradition of holding Peace rallies on Palm Sunday. This dropped off sometime in the late 80s. In 2014, the Refugee Advocacy Network (RAN), working together with various groups in Melbourne, including Refugee Action Collective (RAC), established the Melbourne Palm Sunday Walk for Justice for Refugees. Since then, the Walk has been held each year on Palm Sunday, except for 2020, when an online event was held due to the Covid pandemic. Around 20 Palm Sunday events in support of refugee rights are now held each year in capital cities and regional towns right across Australia, with a level of co-ordination through the Australian Refugee Action Network (ARAN).

The Melbourne, the Walk for Justice for Refugees is planned each year with a Planning Committee with representatives from faith groups, RAC, other local advocacy and support groups for refugees. Refugee communities also contribute to planning for Palm Sunday. The main aim of the Walk for Justice is to reach out to groups and individuals who may not be routinely engaged advocacy activities, but who are none the less concerned about the way Australian policies have impacted refugees.

It is often claimed that Australia is generous in supporting refuges – and this is largely true in relation to the support provided to humanitarian refugees – people who are selected by Australia from refugee camps and offered refugee protection visas. However, as we have seen in the last 2 decades, Australia has developed a very punitive response to those who have the ‘audacity’ to travel to Australia undocumented (without official entry papers) to seek asylum. While most people who seek asylum in Australia arrive by air, those who arrive by boat are subjected to a very harsh regime, which is intended to deter people from taking boat journeys from Indonesia and similar places to seek asylum here. The domestic political debate about people who travel by boat to seek asylum has been consistently toxic, with the return of the Howard Government in late 2001 attributed largely to the fear of terrorism post September 11, and the rhetoric about strong borders, which was code for rejecting people who seek asylum here.

Our advocacy platform seeks to holds to account the punitive policy response of our Australian Government over those who seek asylum that problematises people and their means of arrival, rather than the circumstances causing their dispossession and forced migration.

The key issues which have been the focus of most Palm Sunday Walk events have been temporary visas which deny the permanent resettlement in Australia, indefinite detention, the establishment of offshore processing in PNG and Nauru, and the situation for refugees in Indonesia with no resettlement options. This year our main focus is on calling for permanent visas for around 10,000 people who have been living here for over 10 years on bridging visas and have been denied a fair process for through assessment of their claims for refugee status. The Walk for Justice is promoted on social media and through a wide network of around 100 supporting groups and organisations.

The program includes a select few speakers, including people with lived experience who have been impacted by the policies.

The program will commence at 10.30am with readings on peace and justice from several faith traditions. There will be a brief musical interlude between speakers. This will be followed by a young Palestinian who will sing ‘Change is a Comin’, followed by:

• Dr Tania Miletic, Assistant Director, Peacebuilding Initiative, University of Melbourne
• 3 refugee speakers, including a Palestinian refugee, and 2 people who are struggling in a visa limbo; one of the women did the walk to Canberra last year, alongside 21 other women from Melbourne.
• Other speakers are Sr Brigid (founder and coordinator, Brigidine Asylum Seeker Project – established in 2000 BASP has assisted thousands of families and individuals) and David Manne (long time Director of Refugee legal, and tireless advocate for Refugees and people seeking asylum.

In addition to the speaking program, we include music (often by refugees), this year including the TARAB Ensemble, a young Palestinian signer, a famous Ethiopian musician, and a Hazara asylum seeker.

This year we have been open to a change in format in response to the significance of, and public support for the Free Palestine Rally. We continue to be open to changes to the format of the Palm Sunday rally as many who attend may want to continue to the Free Palestine rally. Our common goal to support refugees in this country and outside of it.

In February 2023 the Albanese Government announced that all refugees who had been granted SHEV or TPV would be granted visas.

In late 2023 it was the immense frustration of living the last 10 years in limbo that motivated 22 women to make the gruelling trek on foot from Melbourne, 15 women from Sydney, and a young man to cycle from Brisbane to make their case – to tell politicians that it’s time to end the limbo and allow people to get on with building their lives in Australia.

More than 10 years after arriving here to find a safe future around 10,000 people still have no certainty. Many of these people have not seen their children, parents or spouses who remain in danger in places like Iran, Afghanistan and Myanmar. They cannot go back, and Australia has given them no certainty of a future here. All of these people have been subject to the so-called Fast Track assessment process – which is clearly not fast and is deeply flawed as it does not provide for thorough assessment of claims for refugee status.

These people are living on short term Bridging Visas, and some are refused the right to work. Without any income many families are totally reliant on charities, which are stretched to capacity. Many young people have completed their schooling here and are being blocked from continuing in higher education – some are denied the right to enrol, while those who can enrol are unable to pay international student fees.

Palm Sunday is a National Day of Action for Refugee Rights: “We call on the Albanese Government to establish a fair and just system for assessing refugee claims. All those who have been living here in limbo for more than 10 years should have the right to settle here with the security of a permanent visa.”