Accessibility Tools

  • Content scaling 100%
  • Font size 100%
  • Line height 100%
  • Letter spacing 100%

Klaus Neumann

Klaus Neumann

Klaus Neumann has written widely on issues of human rights and forced migration. His latest book, Across the Seas: Australia’s Response to Refugees: A history (2015), recently won the CHASS Australia Prize.

Commentary | National Security and the 'Disturbed State of Public Mind' by Klaus Neumann

April 2006, no. 280 01 April 2006
On December 7, the Australian parliament passed the Anti-Terrorism Bill (No. 2) 2005. According to Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, the new legislation places ‘Australia in a strong position to prevent new and emerging threats and to stop terrorists carrying out their intended acts’.1 Most controversially, the law introduces new sedition offences. But it also grants additional powers to the se ... (read more)

Klaus Neumann reviews 'Asylum By Boat: Origins of Australia’s refugee policy' by Claire Higgins

November 2017, no. 396 25 October 2017
In early October 2017, Thomas Albrecht, the Canberra-based Regional Representative of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), took to The Guardian to register his dismay about the Australian government’s response to asylum seekers. ‘The current policy has been an abject failure,’ he wrote. ‘A proper approach by Australia must include, at a minimum, solutions for all refu ... (read more)

Klaus Neumann reviews 'What Is a Refugee?' by William Maley, 'Violent Borders: Refugees and the right to move' by Reece Jones, and 'Borderlands: Towards an anthropology of the cosmopolitan condition' by Michel Agier

January–February 2017, no. 388 19 December 2016
Three years ago, Australia was supposedly being overrun by asylum seekers arriving by boat. The situation was considered grave and dominated public debate and the government’s agenda for months. An alternative government was elected on the promise to ‘stop the boats’. In 2015, Europe was said to be in the grip of a refugee crisis. ‘We are witnessing a paradigm change,’ said the then UN H ... (read more)