Inquiry
On 9 February 2005, the Minister for Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs, Senator Hon. Amanda Vanstone, announced that former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer would be conducting an inquiry into the circumstances around the detention of Rau. This would become known as the Palmer Inquiry. On 2 May, the terms of reference were expanded to allow Palmer to investigate the wrongful deportation of Vivian Solon to the Philippines in 2001.
The report of the Palmer Inquiry was released on 14 July 2005. Senator Vanstone tabled the report in Parliament and held a press conference along with Prime Minister John Howard, in which they apologised to Rau and Solon. Labor Immigration spokesperson Tony Burke criticised the Inquiry, saying that only a Royal Commission would have the necessary powers to investigate the situation properly. Cornelia Rau herself said that she wanted Senator Vanstone to be replaced as Immigration Minister by someone from an ethnic background. In July 2005, and again later in the year, the government promised that Rau would be compensated. In February 2008, lawyers for Rau accepted an increased offer of compensation on her behalf later confirmed at A$2.6 million.
Read more about this topic: Cornelia Rau
Famous quotes containing the word inquiry:
“The philosophic spirit of inquiry may be traced to brute curiosity, and that to the habit of examining all things in search of food.”
—W. Winwood Reade (1838–1875)
“For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“An inquiry about the attitude towards the release of so-called political prisoners. I should be very sorry to see the United States holding anyone in confinement on account of any opinion that that person might hold. It is a fundamental tenet of our institutions that people have a right to believe what they want to believe and hold such opinions as they want to hold without having to answer to anyone for their private opinion.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)