AAP News journalist Belinda Merhab covered CPD’s report on refugees and asylum seekers, featuring prominent Australian Tuong Quang Luu’s story of fleeing Vietnam.

“It was an extremely hazardous and horrible experience,” he said.

“It’s very difficult for people living in ordinary society, a peaceful society like Australia, to understand because asylum seekers and refugees do not have choices. You have to take risks to survive.”

The report – A New Approach: Breaking the Stalemate on Refugees and Asylum Seekers – has been endorsed by 34 prominent Australians including former Liberal Party leader John Hewson, author Thomas Keneally and former immigration minister Ian Macphee.

Mr Hewson said this was an issue that should be above politics, “not one to be exploited in a mindless, short-term political race to the bottom, the `winner’ being the toughest and most inhumane to those who are predominately desperate people fleeing war and persecution”.

Read full story at in The Sydney Morning Herald here.

Read the full CPD report, A New Approach: Breaking the Stalemate of Refugee & Asylum Seekers here.

A New Approach comprehensively critiques Australia’s refugee and asylum policies and finds they are inhumane, ineffective and expensive.