Mridula Amin

1 month ago | business-humanrights.org | Mridula Amin

“'Scared' and 'helpless': Rayasi's dream of working in Australia was not what she envisioned”More than 7,000 workers have absconded from the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility scheme over the past five years, some due to poor working conditions, exploitation and abuse. But the choice to walk has left many in limbo…Rayasi was assigned to the 'stomach section' of the factory, which involves cutting a cow's stomach and removing its contents while high-heat steam is blasted to kill bacteria.

1 month ago | sbs.com.au | Mridula Amin

Rayasi came to Australia full of hope. She did not expect to wind up injured and undocumented less than a year later. The 42-year-old Fijian national had prayed for months for a place in the Pacific Australia Labour Mobility (PALM) scheme: a temporary visa program designed to plug Australia's labour shortages by recruiting workers from nine Pacific Island nations and Timor-Leste.

2 months ago | sbs.com.au | Mridula Amin

Nick Lutton celebrated the new year with a fresh chapter in mind — he and his wife had just sold their home and bought an acreage in Queensland, where they would soon move with their young family. But a few hours into 2025, he went into cardiac arrest from heart failure and died on the floor of their Wilton home, aged 44. "I found my phone, called triple zero, and started CPR," his widow, Stacey Lutton, recalls tearily. Her 11-year-old daughter Evie had also awoken.

Feb 19, 2025 | sbs.com.au | Mridula Amin

This article contains references to child abuse and suicide. Digger* remembers when he was six years old, being told by the other boys how to make his bed to ward off predators in the night. He would tuck the sheets tightly under his small mattress to make a cocoon. "We thought that was our safety net. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. I can still remember hearing boys scream as they were taken away," Digger recalls.

Feb 7, 2025 | theguardian.com | Mridula Amin

Phyllis Tedesco has lived in western Sydney for 50 years but has never visited the city’s most famous beach, Bondi – until last weekend. The 67-year-old, who migrated from Italy when she was five, lives in Fairfield. On Sunday, she hopped aboard one of the free buses operated by her council this summer, ferrying locals to Sydney’s eastern suburbs beaches to help combat the “many barriers to access”. For Tedesco, the bus is a golden ticket.