The Australian Government sees boat people seeking refugee status as exactly that; queue jumpers who try to defeat the official system of applications made from crowded overseas refugee camps.

Last year, nearly 2,000 boat people from the Middle East arrived in Australia. Most had come via Indonesia from Iranian refugee camps, which Iran has been threatening to close.

In global terms, Australia has no real refugee problem. Last year it had a target of accepting 10,000 refugees. In 1998 the government processed 8,000 asylum seekers. Compare that with: The UK (50,000 applicants), Germany (100,000 applicants), and The US and Canada (420,000 applicants).

If an asylum seeker is successful, he or she receives a temporary visa for three years. During that time, they cannot leave Australia or bring in family members, and have access to only limited welfare benefits. If they are unsuccessful, they are deported to an unsympathetic third country or if they are really unlucky, to their country of origin.

Immigration authorities have been accused of slow processing of the boat people's applications for refugee status and nearly a year after many of them arrive, frustrations reach boiling point.

Illegal immigrants are imprisoned in detention centres like Port Hedland and Curtin in the isolated north of Western Australia, or in the controversial Woomera centre in South Australia. The Woomera detention centre was the site of riots on 28th August 2000, when a group of up to 100 men, facing deportation after being denied refugee status, set buildings on fire and attacked guards and police. Woomera is a converted army base in the remote South Australian desert - a place which freezes in winter and swelters in summer.

Overcrowding, restricted contact with family left behind, isolation from the community and lack of access to the media are the norm for detainees. Despite the obvious connection between detention in appalling conditions and outbreaks of violence among detainees, the Federal Government is set to use the Woomera riots as ammunition for an even harsher regime of detention centres .

When about 1000 Woomera detainees, including entire families with young children, broke down the perimeter fence to protest against conditions in June this year, the centre housed 1400 people. Numbers have since been halved but the August riots demonstrate that the frustration remains.

Under the newly passed Border Protection Bill, refugee status will be denied to people who pass through a country in which they could make a refugee claim and travel on to Australia.

Immigration Minister Phillip Ruddock is currently lobbying the United Nations for a ruling that will allow Australia to reject up to half of all applications from boat people.

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