Refuge Australia: Australia's Humanitarian Record (Book Review‪)‬

Refuge Australia: Australia's Humanitarian Record Klaus Neumann University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, 2004, 128 pp. It is rare these to read the words "Australia" and humanitarian in the same sentence. Outside of government documents (where Australia's refugee program is by title and definition "humanitarian"), on the rare occasion when they are read together, the following quote is typical: "Bit by bit, Australia is detaching itself from or is increasingly willing to reject elements of human rights and humanitarian law that it no longer considers useful" (1) Klaus Neumann's new book addresses the current detachment of Australia from humanitarianism while questioning whether there was any time when this was not the case. In an account that is as intriguing as it is unsettling, he shows that the current detachment of Australian refugee policy from humanitarianism has a wholly ambiguous past.