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Volunteers clean debris from a residential building damaged when a nearby police station was hit Friday in a U.S.-Israeli strike in Tehran, Iran, Sunday, March 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)

Time for government to lift its game on Iranian refugees

Of the many dark chapters in Australia’s recent migration policy history, two rare good moments can serve as a guide for the future.

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Some of the Iranians applying to stay in Australia.

Iranian soccer players got asylum overnight. These refugees reveal a very different story

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke’s intervention was swift and decisive. But it was bittersweet for other refugees trapped in a system described as cruel and unfair.

  • Bevan Shields
How a Trump post sparked a wave of misinformation about Australia

How a Trump post sparked a wave of misinformation about Australia

The twists and turns in the tale of the Iranian women’s team in Australia this week came with a deluge of social media misinformation amplified by the usual suspects.

  • Michael Koziol
The Iranian embassy in Canberra, where diplomat Mohammad Pournajaf worked.

Top Iranian diplomat defected, received asylum in secret escape

Iran’s second most senior diplomat in Australia defected from the hardline regime and received asylum in Australia three years ago, a fact that has stayed secret until now.

  • Brittany Busch and Matthew Knott

The Iranian soccer team is a feel-good story that perfectly suits Trump

The thought of turning those women away was, rightly, intolerable. Meanwhile, Trump has sent at least three planes of Iranians back to Iran, several who were pleading for their lives.

  • Waleed Aly
Australia and Palestine shake hands before a soccer match in Sydney, on July 31, 1939.

Eighty-six years before the Iranian women’s team, footballers from the Middle East sought asylum in Australia

War, as the Iranian women have had impressed upon them, brings desperately fraught times far from home for all manner of performers.

  • Tony Wright
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Iran players stand silently during the anthem before their match against Korea Republic on March 2.

Iran’s brave players have stood tall. Now Australia must stand with them

Both Australia and the Asian Football Confederation are being tested, not just on the pitch, but on whether they will protect the basic rights of athletes who have already shown immense courage.

  • Daniel Ghezelbash and Mary Anne Kenny
The Bibby Stockholm, an accommodation barge, was used to house asylum seekers under Corporate Travel’s UK contract.

Australian sales furore turns spotlight on UK asylum hotels

The British government is investigating its contracts with an Australian travel company that helps manage thousands of asylum seekers.

  • David Crowe
Mojgan Shamsalipoor

Mojgan, the Brisbane asylum seeker whose fight made headlines, free with permanent visa

In 2015, the Brisbane high school student was forcefully removed to a Darwin immigration centre, and she has remained in limbo on a six-monthly bridging visa. Finally, that has changed.

  • Felicity Caldwell
Nauru President David Adeang at Parliament House last year.

Wong, Burke admit to secret meetings with Nauru president

Wong’s office said she “raised recent media reports” with Nauru President David Adeang on Monday, but not until after he was photographed entering Parliament House on Tuesday.

  • Brittany Busch, James Massola and Nick McKenzie