Immigration Department.

Family considers legal action against Immigration Dept.


"Relatives of a Syrian woman are considering legal action against the Immigration Department after her death.

Aziza Agha, 79, died two days after she was forced to travel to central Melbourne for a consultation with a departmental doctor earlier this month."

Inspite of how it may appear, most of our government departments are realistic, approachable, straight forward (in a government way!) and adept at connecting with their public. They often seek to make changes to benefit their communication with us. Centerlink, for instance, even though it can take the phone off the hook or whatever when it feel swamped, has created so many ways to try and help people get it right and achieve and attain the services they require and has revamped the Net access and site so they work better. I have always had friendly and helpful service from any government department I have contacted. My ownly stumbling block was the superannuation board but after 5 years of persistence I managed to resolve the matter quite easily!! The Immigration Department, however, has demonstrably been intractable, inept, unkind, uncaring and intransigent. It has consistently treated people abominably and it needs to be restructured so that it serves its purpose because currently its purpose seems to be to cause people misery and great pain. As a system it is too unwieldy and too incapable of showing any humanity. As a representative of us as a nation it is too destructive to our image. We are not that unkind, not that uncaring and not that incapable of managing crisis.Nor are we that bungling. Until the Immigration Department stopped listening to the commonsense practices we have had in Australia we managed any number of situations and people because communication and co ordination have always been our strengths as a nation. THe ID needs to communicate better, more efficiently, caseworkers need to have all the information and medical practicioners and psychiatrists need to be listened to. No one else ignores them.