When a Minister dislikes playing God

If you are waiting with breath-not-quite-bated for my next episode, I think I should make you wait a little longer :). Anyway, despite what I said about my lack of interest in the world around me, I came across this article this week in which the Minister for Immigration states that he dislikes “playing God” in his power to decide individual immigration cases and wants the “industry” of people appealing to the Minister to be reviewed. I’m glad. There are good reasons for the reform, as given in the article and, personally, one of the products I edit at work is the Federal Law Reports, which reports judgments from the Federal Magistrates Court of Australia, and I am increasingly swamped with such immigration appeals. Some of them are interesting, like this one I noted previously, but many of them are just tediously similar. Much as I sympathise with refugees and with the situation they face when they arrive in this country, I also sympathise with those people here whose task it is to attempt to determine if each refugee’s claim for protection or residency is legitimate.