Background To The Creation of The Facility
- Main article: Mandatory detention in Australia
During the early 1990s the Keating ALP government enforced a policy of mandatory detention of unauthorised arrivals. All non-citizens arriving by boat without a valid visa were detained until they were either granted a visa, or deported.
Towards the end of the 1990s, a large increase in the number of unauthorised arrivals exceeded the capacity of the existing Immigration Reception and Processing Centres at Port Hedland and Curtin. The former, and at that time unused, 'Woomera West Construction Camp' was converted into an immigration detention facility in 1999 and the Woomera IRPC was opened to accommodate this increase.
Read more about this topic: Woomera Immigration Reception And Processing Centre
Famous quotes containing the words background, creation and/or facility:
“In the true sense one’s native land, with its background of tradition, early impressions, reminiscences and other things dear to one, is not enough to make sensitive human beings feel at home.”
—Emma Goldman (1869–1940)
“Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights. The shadows of poverty and meanness gather around us, “and lo! creation widens to our view.””
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In progress of time, when my mind was, as it were, strongly impregnated with the Johnsonian æther, I could, with much more facility and exactness, carry in my memory and commit to paper the exuberant variety of his wit and wisdom.”
—James Boswell (1740–1795)