Director of the Edmund Rice Centre and President of the Refugee Council of Australia, Phil Glendenning, has welcomed Liberal MP Russell Broadbent’s call for refugees on Manus Island and Nauru to be brought to Australia once the US resettlement deal has run its course.

Listening to the news, it would seem that religion is more often used as a pretext for violence than peace. But, the Scriptures and our faith traditions contain a strong mandate for compassion and peace. Together they offer a radical reshaping of human relations if we accept them.

The impact of the Howard Liberal/National Government's decision to privatise operational control of Australian Immigration Detention facilities was becoming startinglingly obvious by the late 1990's. An American company – Wackenhut Corporation – through its Australian subsidary ACM was taking $100m a year as conditions for those in mandatory detention deteriorated. An ABC News report from Port Hedland showed the pitiful plight of very young detained children in the heat haze peering through razor wire.Trish, an early childhood professional, was appalled. Her inquiries to Government agencies led nowhere. Contact with social activist groups gave a better yield – she was guided to Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney. There, Trish met traumatised children and their parents who had almost no contact from outside. Invited to a meeting at the Centre for Refugee Research at UNSW, she contributed to the roundtable discussion. Some good nuns passed on her observations to Sr Aileen Crowe and Zena Elton. Thus our association with the wonderful work of the ERC began.