Senator the Hon. Arthur
Sinodinos AO
Liberal Senator for New South Wales
Cabinet Secretary
It is a privilege
to have been selected
to serve as Cabinet
Secretary in the
Turnbull Government.
October 2015
Volume 2
No. 10
NEWSLETTER
IN THIS ISSUE
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Since my swearing-in, there is one
important question which I have
been asked repeatedly: what does
a Cabinet Secretary do?
2
I’d like to take this opportunity to
explain briefly the key aspects of
my role.
The Role of Cabinet Secretary
RAAF Base Williamtown
3
Stone & Chalk Opening
Molecular Food Technology
Training Centre
4
Big Data and the
Australian Government
8
Speech to the 2015 GovHack
Red Carpet Awards
10
Senate Speech on
Immigration Detention
12
Let’s Go Greek Festival
Parramatta
Cypriot Commemoration
The Cabinet Secretary makes sure
that the processes of Cabinet are
being followed. Much of this is about
communication: I will ensure that
documents which come before Cabinet
ministers are appropriately researched
and consulted among departments;
I will encourage consultation with
stakeholder groups to be as broad
and representative as possible;
I will also ensure that Cabinet
confidentiality is followed, which
is vital for encouraging robust
discussion around the Cabinet table.
The Prime Minister expects that
we conduct Cabinet business in an
orderly and effective manner; and
it is important that we observe the
principle of Cabinet solidarity so that
the Government projects a clear and
consistent message about its
strategies and priorities.
Furthermore, I want to see Cabinet
government which also involves
appropriate consultation with the
Party Room and the community.
Address Level 28, 123 Pitt St, Sydney NSW, 2000
Email [email protected]
Website www.arthursinodinos.com.au
It is important that the Cabinet receive
regular feedback from the backbench
to ensure that it is well informed on
community expectations and issues.
I will make sure the backbench is
reporting regularly to Cabinet so
that we know we are in touch with
people’s real priorities, and so that
these priorities are being reflected
in the work of the Government.
Major reforms require appropriate
consultation with stakeholders. Their
views will need to be factored in to
the framework for the Government’s
policy development, and consulting
with them will be a priority of this
Government.
Without these mechanics in place, a
government cannot present the right
policies in the right way to the public.
But where they are working smoothly,
everyone in Government – and in the
community at large – can feel they
have ownership of the decisions the
Cabinet makes.
So, much of the work of the Cabinet
Secretary is with colleagues, hence
good process leads to good outcomes
that we can all own. Sturdy Cabinet
government will set a strong
strategic agenda and maintain
a clear view of our priorities and
their implementation.
Twitter @a_sinodinos
LinkedIn linkedin.com/in/senatorsinodinos
Phone 02 9223 4388
Senator the Hon. Arthur Sinodinos AO
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RAAF Base Williamtown
It is always a pleasure to go out
and about in Newcastle to meet
with locals. Most recently, RAAF
Base Williamtown’s commander Air
Commodore Steven Roberton gave
me a tour of the base and facilities.
The men and women at Williamtown
perform important work every day to
keep Australia safe with unparalleled
skill and professionalism. They are
directly contributing to the fight
against Da’esh in Iraq and Syria –
Air Commodore Roberton himself
was the first commanding officer of
the air task group which deployed
to the region last year.
Williamtown is soon to
become home to Air Force’s
new F-35A Lightning II Joint
Strike Fighters. These state-ofthe-art fighter aircraft will be
an essential component of
the Australian Defence Force
for a generation.
Senator Sinodinos visits
RAAF Base Williamtown
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Not only will the Newcastle community
be playing a key role in keeping our
nation well defended, the new F-35As
will deliver real economic growth
opportunities. $1 billion of construction
is already underway at Williamtown,
with work expected to last for
seven years. In addition, Newcastle
has the opportunity to become a
regional maintenance hub. This could
potentially generate hundreds of wellpaid local jobs for decades.
Thank you to Air Commodore Roberton
and his officers and crew for their time,
and to the fighter pilot trainers of
76 Squadron for showing me the ropes
in their Hawk 127 flight simulator!
Senator the Hon. Arthur Sinodinos AO
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Stone & Chalk Opening
I was honoured to help celebrate the
opening of Stone & Chalk, Sydney’s
new not-for-profit fintech hub.
Australian fintech (financial technology)
companies are among the very best in
the world, and Stone & Chalk will help
Sydney to flourish as a centre of fintech
in the Asia-Pacific region. The product
of collaboration between industry and
government, Stone & Chalk aims to
foster a fintech innovation ecosystem
by incubating the highest-quality
entrepreneurial start-ups.
It will bring them together with venture
capital and corporates to allow
Australia’s most brilliant fintech ideas
to come to fruition on our own shores.
Stone & Chalk is supported by the
established financial industry leaders
it seeks to disrupt, creating a cyclical
ecosystem that speeds up the process
of innovation development.
I am proud to support this extraordinary
initiative and wish the team at Stone &
Chalk all the best.
STONE & CHALK OPENING
Left to right:
Alex Scandurra
(CEO, Stone & Chalk)
Senator Sinodinos
The Hon. Paul Fletcher MP
Craig Dunn (Chairman,
Stone & Chalk)
Launch of the Molecular Food Technology Training Centre
The interface between food
manufacturing and scientific
research will be important
to lifting productivity and
creating new products in
agriculture. Australia has been
gifted with fertile lands and
intelligent minds, which we
must harness to realise our
full potential.
I was pleased to officially launch
the Australian Research Council’s
new Training Centre for Molecular
Technology in the Food Industry at
Macquarie University. This Centre
will use some of Australia’s leading
scientific minds to maintain our
competitive advantage in food
production.
Funded by the Australian Government,
Macquarie University and leading
agribusiness companies, the new
Centre will undertake world-leading
research into many of Australia’s most
productive food sources, from oysters
to sugar cane to barley.
Professor Paul Haynes and his cohort
of brilliant researchers and students
will be analysing proteins and
carbohydrates at the molecular
level to make Australian food
production increasingly diseaseresistant, healthy, nutritious, and
environmentally sustainable.
We find ourselves on the doorstep of
a booming Asia, where hundreds of
millions of people are now demanding
high quality food which we can provide.
This investment is about ensuring we
will continue to produce the best food
available on a large scale for many
years to come.
Senator Sinodinos officially
launches the Molecular Food
Technology Training Centre
at Macquarie University.
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Senator the Hon. Arthur Sinodinos AO
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Big Data and the Australian Government
Whether we realise it or not,
big data has a significant
presence in all our lives. It’s
time for Australia to catch up
and take full advantage of the
opportunities it presents.
‘Big data’ refers to the collection and
analysis of extremely large data sets –
often data that is collected incidentally
through day-to-day processes and is
subsequently ‘mined’ to identify
useful trends.
The growth of big data strategies in the
private sector has been unprecedented
in recent times; and I believe this can
be attributed to two main factors.
Firstly, as nearly all facets of daily
life have become digitised over the
last few decades, information that
had previously only been collected
en masse through costly exercises
like the census is now available in
databases. Data came to be collected
incidentally on anything from consumer
preferences (through digitising the
point of sale) to traffic flow (since
toll payments became electronic).
The sheer volume of information
stored through all manner of prosaic
processes is staggering: the amount
of data created annually more than
doubled every year of the last decade,
and this trend is predicted to continue
until at least 2020.
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Secondly, our capacity to store this
data has grown at an unparalleled
rate as technological innovation drives
costs down. This is Moore’s Law at
work, which essentially states that data
storage capacity will double every
year and a half – or, put another way,
the cost of data storage will effectively
halve. It’s amusing for us in 2015 to
think that, less than 20 years ago, the
price of storing information on paper
was lower than the price of digital
storage. The last two decades have
seen exponential growth in the ability
of firms to retain data collected – the
cost of database storage is barely
a consideration in most industries.
As a result, a huge volume of data
is available to most companies for
analysis.
The changes to private sector
processes as a result of big data have
revolutionised the way companies
make decisions in the modern day.
Large volumes of transaction data
allow retailers to alter dynamically the
supply of products to match seasonal
demand. Empirical evidence of
consumers’ willingness to pay allows
prices to be matched more closely to
the market equilibrium, maximising
revenue. Merchandise can be improved
more easily as consumer behaviour
and social media response identifies
areas of weaknesses in products.
Marketing is better targeted – often
eerily so – based on information
about consumers’ transaction or webbrowsing history: people love to tell the
story of the father who discovered his
daughter’s pregnancy upon maternityrelated catalogues being sent to their
address, as the local department store
identified her consumption patterns as
those of an expectant mother!
That story may well be an urban myth,
but the benefit big data brings to
companies certainly isn’t: the McKinsey
Global Institute’s Big Data report
estimated that a retailer using big data
in full has the potential to increase
its operating margin by more than
60%. And similar gains are available
right through the production process:
agribusiness can use environmental
data to optimise sustainability and
efficiency of farming practices; utilities
providers analyse usage data to identify
bottlenecks and areas of inefficient
supply; financial services providers use
data on markets and clients to give
better advice based on more
accurate modelling.
Governments can do more to take
advantage of data resources. In
Australia, public investment in data
analytics has been modest – even
though governments have access to
a vast and rich array of data across all
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‘In Australia, public investment in data analytics has
been modest – even though governments have access
to a vast and rich array of data across all policy areas.’
policy areas. Information is collected on
the socio-economic distribution of the
population, healthcare requirements,
education, use of transport systems
– the list goes on. Much of this data
is unused or used with very limited
scope; and more still is analysed
only in isolation, where combining it
with data collected by other areas of
Government would yield much
greater utility.
Part of the reason for this
underutilisation of big data is that
a high proportion of public sector
processes are conducted using
outdated or non-standardised
technology – or even by analogue
means. The Coalition Government has
sought to remedy this by establishing
the Digital Transformation Office,
overseen by the Prime Minister, the
Hon. Malcolm Turnbull MP. Much of the
work of this office focuses on digitising
services, as well as modernising ICT
systems and standardising them across
the Government sector. And big data
itself can be used to identify areas
of focus in this regard: performance
analysis of Government services
can identify areas where updated
ICT infrastructure would result in
productivity gains. The work of the
Digital Transformation Office is an
invaluable step forward in ensuring
Government services can be delivered
as effectively as possible.
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Senator the Hon. Arthur Sinodinos AO
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Big data in healthcare
Healthcare is an area of particular
interest to me when it comes to
public sector use of big data. The
potential in this field for benefit both
to Government and to patients is
very substantial. The Government
has access to data on admissions,
operations, outcomes, patient care,
drug prescription and much more,
mostly obtained through Medicare.
Much of this data is unused for any
purpose other than Medicare claims.
However, this is a treasure trove of data
that can benefit not only the way the
Government allocates resources, but
also the decisions made by doctors
– which flow on both to patients, by
providing better care, and to the
Government, by making expenditure
on care more efficient and effective.
‘This data is available
to the Government
through medical
claims information,
but doctors are
unable to access
it readily.’
Big data can be leveraged to
identify where Government
healthcare resources are stretched
or oversupplied. Hospital admissions
data provides a valuable insight into
the types of treatment required in
specific geographical areas at specific
times of year.
Claims data for hospital stays impart
information on success and recovery,
hospital-related infection and further
factors that affect the effectiveness of
particular institutions: overcrowding
or under-resourcing can be clearly
suggested by higher rates of morbidity.
Disease outbreaks can be better
managed thanks to more effective
management of resources – and they
can also be predicted in many cases
from dynamic monitoring of trends
in admissions for particular diseases,
allowing more time for resources to be
allocated to fight them.
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The decision-making of doctors
could also benefit from evidencebased healthcare. Currently, a very
large proportion of clinical decisions
– research suggests around 85% –
are made using little or no concrete
evidence as justification. Prescription
of medications is generally not
conducted on the basis of individual
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characteristics, with costly assessments
of precise levels of dosage a rare
occurrence. Consequently, dosages
are often over- or under-estimated, or
interact adversely with other drugs;
these two factors alone account for a
large proportion of hospitalisations,
especially among the elderly. Perhaps
more concerning is that the question
of whether a doctor proceeds with
many risky procedures, such as heart
or brain surgery, is often taken without
any statistical guide as to the likelihood
of success. This data is available to the
Government through medical claims
information, but doctors are unable to
access it readily.
The experience in Qatar, where
health records have been collected
in a standardised manner and made
available to doctors, has been
overwhelmingly positive. A Qatari
patient’s health record can be analysed
to assess the probability of particular
complications or diseases given their
current condition and medical history;
and doctors have access to risk profiles
that are personalised by collating
individuals’ data with those of previous
cases. Evidence-based healthcare
even provides benefits to patients
outside the hospital, with smartphone
apps able to track a patient’s recovery,
monitor for risk factors and check for
adherence to treatment plans. Britain’s
National Health Service is currently
introducing and developing a similar
scheme.
Not only is patient care improved
under this model, but there are
savings to Government from better
decision-making by doctors about
whether to proceed with the costliest
high-risk procedures. The benefits
of evidence-based medicine are by
no means limited to surgery: mental
health, dentistry, optometry, nutrition
and other specialisations can similarly
benefit from the increased availability
of data for clinical decisions.
Big data application in medicine is
an area where much more research is
required. The University of New South
Wales’ Centre for Big Data Research
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in Health was launched last month
by the NSW Minister for Health, the
Hon. Jillian Skinner MP. The Coalition
Government puts the highest priority
on medical research; this is reflected in
our significant investment commitment
through the establishment of the
Medical Research Future Fund.
Areas of concern
Big data is not a panacea for inefficient
processes or poor decision-making.
A tool is only as good as the hand
that guides it: strong leadership and
expert advice are as important as ever.
The difference made by big data is
that, now, decision-making can be
better informed and more grounded in
empirical evidence.
Big data is not perfect: it has statistical
limitations. Statisticians face significant
challenges in interpreting data sets
of such an unprecedented scale, in
large part because defining trends
as statistically significant can be very
difficult. The use of conventional
data analysis techniques is severely
limited. Since big data is generally
considered observational rather than
experimental, it is often challenging to
establish causation where correlation
is found. Ensuring that this need for
innovative data analysis can be met
within Australia is another reason for
the Federal Government to encourage
and incentivise students to pursue
higher education in STEM skills –
science, technology, engineering and
mathematics. The introduction of
computational thinking at the earliest
stages of the school curriculum is,
I believe, vital to achieving this: I
have spoken out in previous years
about doing so by mandating coding
education from primary school. The
Australian Bureau of Statistics has
recently developed a Big Data Strategy
to address these very issues, and
having a highly skilled workforce to
develop advanced analysis techniques
is among its highest priorities.
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‘The difference made by big data is that, now,
decision-making can be better informed and
more grounded in empirical evidence.’
Privacy laws must also be kept
up to date. The right to privacy is
fundamental. Parliament must be
stringent in overseeing the use of
any personal data, ensuring that
it is handled appropriately, stored
securely and properly de-identified
where necessary. Consultation with the
legal community will be essential to
ensuring that the boundaries of data
use by statutory authorities are clearly
defined – and, indeed, to examine
whether or not the Privacy Act 1988
requires amendment to bring it in line
with modern requirements. The Act is
in some ways limiting regarding the
way Government can use the data it
collects, and it is important to confirm
whether these limits are appropriate
– particularly given that the legislation
was created before big data use was
widespread. Similarly, it is also vital
to determine whether or not further
legislative protections against data
misuse are needed.
It’s time to act
Big data has transformed the way we
make decisions in the modern world.
The McKinsey Global Institute suggests
that the use of big data in Europe’s
developed economies could result in
more than US$149bn of operational
efficiency improvements alone; and the
gains of its adoption in the Australian
public sector would surely be equally
impressive. In the area of healthcare in
particular, the benefits to Australians
at large would be of the utmost
significance.
It is imperative for our public sector to
catch up to the private sector when it
comes to investment in data analysis.
Big data is central to policymaking in
the twenty-first century.
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Senator the Hon. Arthur Sinodinos AO
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Speech at the GovHack 2015
Red Carpet Awards
I had the pleasure of representing the Australian Government at the GovHack
2015 Red Carpet Awards. I spoke about the importance of collaborative
innovation to the future of work, and congratulated this year’s winners for
the range of extraordinary solutions they produced.
Supported by both the Federal Government and the private sector, GovHack
encourages young Australians to work collaboratively to find innovative uses
for open Government data.
Each year, the Government makes available a variety of data sets to competitors,
who aim to utilise them to find inventive solutions to any number of problems
faced by modern society. The work of the 2015 competitors was impressive
indeed.
My address is reproduced here.
I won’t keep you very long, because
it’s been such a warm atmosphere in
this room. When I was first asked about
coming along here, I thought, ‘What
the heck am I getting myself into?’
Anne-Marie Elias and Pia Waugh talked
me into it. But the minute I walked
into the room and I saw the passion
and commitment that people have for
what you are doing, it seemed to me
that this is an initiative that anybody –
in Government, in Opposition, on all
sides of politics – should be supporting
one hundred and ten per cent.
Now, someone before, I forget who
it was, made a very wise remark: not
all wisdom resides in government.
That is absolutely correct. You wonder
some days if any wisdom resides in
government!
My point is this: increasingly,
governments are recognising that
in this age – where IT, in particular,
has democratised the distribution of
knowledge and power – the wisdom
of crowds is what will give you the
solutions to intractable social and
economic problems.
This idea that top-down, commandand-control, working in silos, somehow
you can solve these things: that’s gone.
Now, what you do is: you get groups
of people together with diverse
experiences. You put them in a room.
You get them thinking, kicking stuff
around. And that’s how you get
things done.
‘The wisdom of crowds is what will
give you the solutions to intractable
social and economic problems.’
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Senator the Hon. Arthur Sinodinos AO
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The other thing that excites me about
what you’re doing is that, too often
in government, I’ve watched us try
and build everything from scratch. It
might be a whole new electronic health
system, for argument’s sake. And what
do we do? We spend half a billion
dollars on it, or a billion dollars!
but we don’t necessarily commercialise
them or scale them up here. Now, not
every idea has to be commercialised
here – the world is our oyster. But my
point is: we need to do better in that
space because innovation – across
industry, across all sectors of industry –
is the way of the future for this country.
And yet, if you got a group of creative
people together at the start and said,
‘Hey, how do we do this, and what’s
happening out there? And what are
some of the models, almost off the
shelf, of how we can do this, and how
can we scale it up?’ – how much more
effective would that be! How much
more quickly would things happen!
‘It’s interactive. It’s democratic.
It’s the way of the future.’
That’s what this is about. Ultimately,
it’s about getting a result. I’ve worked
in corporates, and I’ve worked
in government. Too often, in big
corporates and in government, having
meetings and having a plan is an
achievement in itself. No! You want the
outcome; you want the result.
The other thing that I want you to
do within the government sphere
is to make it clear that people have
permission to fail. It’s not about always
‘covering your butt’ and being riskaverse. Yes, it’s government money;
but unless we do new things, unless
we try things, how will we know what
works and doesn’t work?
That’s what excites me about what
you’re doing here. It’s interactive. It’s
democratic. It’s the way of the future.
The workplace of the future will
be a collaborative place – not too
hierarchical – where you judge people
not by their qualifications or what they
look like, but what they bring to the
table in terms of ideas.
That’s the sort of collaborative
workplace we want. That’s what
strategic partnerships are – and in a
diverse society like ours, with all the
talent we have, we’ve got a huge
amount to bring to the table.
One of the beefs I have is that we
develop a lot of ideas in Australia,
So tonight, for me, is a fantastic
opportunity to meet so many people
who are at the leading edge of ideas
and of collaboration to promote
innovation.
So, you are insurgents. You are
changing the culture in which
government operates. And the role of
politicians like me, and Malcolm, and
others, is to do what we can at our level
to promote that insurgency, and make
sure it spreads through as much of the
Government as possible.
It’s a privilege to be here tonight.
It’s a privilege to see what you do.
All strength to your arm; and I hope,
in the future, we can say that the
hack-a-thons are becoming bigger than
Ben Hur and that they’re covering the
whole world, not just Australia and
New Zealand!
Thanks very much for having me.
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Senator the Hon. Arthur Sinodinos AO
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Senate Speech on Immigration Detention
On 19 August this year, I spoke in the Senate in support of the Migration
Amendment (Maintaining the Good Order of Immigration Detention Facilities)
Bill 2015 – amendments which caused some controversy in the media at the time.
I spoke about our responsibility as a government towards detainees and other
people in our immigration detention facilities to ensure that they are free from
harm; and our equal responsibility to provide those working in our detention
facilities with the tools they need to protect the life, the health and the safety
of any person and to maintain the good order, peace and security of an
immigration facility.
I also shared my experiences visiting the Villawood Immigration Detention
Centre earlier in the month.
An extract of my speech is reproduced here.
The amendments in this bill provide
a legislative framework for the use of
reasonable force within immigration
detention facilities in Australia. It
provides clear authority for use of
reasonable force in immigration
detention in Australia to protect
a person’s life, health or safety or
maintain the good order, the peace or
the security of the facility. Its provision
of a legislative framework for the use
of reasonable force will provide the
immigration detention service provider
with the tools needed to provide
the first line of response and ensure
the operation of the immigration
detention network remains viable
against a backdrop of a change in
the demography of immigration
detention facilities.
This was something that was brought
home to me a few weeks ago when I
visited the Villawood detention centre
in Sydney as part of my responsibilities
as a senator for New South Wales.
I visited there on 6 August. I was
taken around along with a number of
members of my staff by Tim Fitzgerald,
the commander in New South Wales
and the ACT, and Brett Totten, the
superintendent of the Villawood
Immigration Detention Centre. I want
to thank both Mr Fitzgerald and
Mr Totten for that visit. It lasted a
couple of hours. They were both very
professional in the way they undertook
the tour of facilities.
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What struck me first and foremost
is the change in the demography of
these facilities. The network now holds
an increasing number of detainees
who present behavioural challenges,
including an increasing number of
people subject to adverse security
assessments; people who have been
convicted of violent crime, drug or
other serious criminal offences; and
others deemed to be of a high-security
risk such as members of outlawed
motorcycle gangs.
The presence of high-risk detainees
with behavioural challenges has the
potential to jeopardise the peace,
good order and security of our
immigration detention facilities and
the safety of all people within those
facilities, including staff and visitors.
You would sometimes think, from the
way the public debate on these matters
is conducted, that we are talking about
facilities that are housing, essentially,
large numbers of people who may have
come here seeking asylum. But, as I
mentioned, the demography of these
facilities is changing.
The other point I should stress and
which was brought home to me, as I
said, on my visit to Villawood is that
these facilities are actually divided into
high, medium and low risk. Families,
for example, have their own part of the
facility. There are some people who are
in medium security and others in high
security, and often the high-security
ones are the ones who are a particular
risk not only to themselves but to
other people.
There is a lot of care and a lot of
thought that goes into the layout,
Senator the Hon. Arthur Sinodinos AO
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the design and the construction
of these sorts of facilities. This is
something we must remember when
we look at why the government is
seeking to clarify the powers that
should be available to those providing
detention services in these facilities.
…
I have met and spoken to some of
the security officers who work there.
These people are articulate and
credible and are dedicated to looking
after the people in their care and
recognise that they have a duty of
care. There is nothing wrong with a
government spelling out in legislation
the obligations and responsibilities of
the people who must work in these
facilities and giving them protection
and guidance about the circumstances
in which reasonable force can be used.
Provided the reasonable force is
exercised in good faith, the bill
bars court proceedings against
the Commonwealth, including an
authorised officer. This provision
provides the appropriate balance
between protecting authorised officers
in the exercise of the power to use
reasonable force and ensuring that the
power is exercised in good faith. The
provisions in this bill send a very clear
message to authorised officers that
force is not to be exercised capriciously
or inappropriately.
The bill inserts provisions that
specifically limit the exercise of the
power to use reasonable force by
authorised officers, preventing them
from doing any of the following:
using reasonable force to give
nourishment or fluids to a detainee
in an immigration detention facility;
subjecting a person to greater indignity
than the officer reasonably believes is
necessary in the circumstances; and
doing anything likely to cause a person
grievous bodily harm, unless the officer
reasonably believes that doing so is
necessary to protect the life of, or
to prevent serious injury to, another
person, including the authorised officer.
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To further ensure that the use of
force will not be abused, the bill will
provide for a statutory complaints
mechanism. This mechanism will allow
persons to complain to the secretary
about the exercise of the power to use
reasonable force. These amendments
will require the secretary to provide
appropriate assistance to any
complainant.
This complaints mechanism, I stress,
does not restrict a person from making
a complaint directly to another source
such as the state or territory police
services, the Australian Federal Police
or the Ombudsman. An appropriate
complaints mechanism is an important
accountability measure in relation
to the exercise of the power to use
reasonable force. The government
considers that safe and effective
immigration detention policies and
strong border protection measures
are not incompatible. We seek to
strike an appropriate balance between
maintaining the good order of a facility
and the safety of the people within it
and the need to ensure that the use
of force is reasonable, proportionate
and appropriate. The government is
maintaining strong border security
measures but is ensuring that all
people in immigration detention
facilities – including the detainees
themselves – are safe from harm.
…
There are many countries which are
grappling with these issues. Australia
has done its best to provide the
appropriate balance. An immigration
detention facility is not the nicest place
in Australia to be, but the Australian
government and the officers who I
have met in places like Villawood strive
to exercise their responsibilities in as
humane a way as possible. There are
plenty of mechanisms in this legislation
to seek to balance the need for
appropriate use of force with humane
treatment of people in these facilities.
It is a free and democratic country.
There are plenty of avenues of scrutiny,
and I believe that this balance is struck
by this legislation.
11
Senator the Hon. Arthur Sinodinos AO
|
Newsletter
|
October 2015
|
Vol. 2
|
No. 10
Let’s Go Greek Festival Parramatta
I very much enjoyed speaking at the
Let’s Go Greek Festival in Parramatta.
It’s always great to immerse myself
in the good food, entertainment
and warm hospitality of the GreekAustralian community. I’m proud to
celebrate the incredible diversity
that makes Western Sydney such
an extraordinary and unique part
of the world.
Cypriot Commemoration
It was an honour to attend a wreath
laying ceremony at the Martin Place
Cenotaph with the New South Wales
Cyprus Community to commemorate
fallen Australian and Cypriot soldiers.
The Mediterranean island of Cyprus
has been an independent nation
since 1960 yet has found itself caught
between conflicts for most of its history.
the Commonwealth and the migration
of many Cypriots to Australia,
especially since World War II.
Australia continues to support United
Nations efforts to reunify Cyprus, which
include an Australian Federal Police
contingent engaged in peacekeeping
work on the island since 1964.
Australia shares deep and enduring
links with Cyprus, dating back decades,
including our common membership of
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Read more online at www.arthursinodinos.com.au