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by Meredith Edwards OAM, Chairperson Justice for Refugees SA

Justice for Refugees SA (J4RSA) was formed at a public meeting in Adelaide on 26 February 2002, in response to widespread concern about government policies and actions towards refugees and people seeking asylum. The organisation ceased in 2007, following improvements in refugee policy but reformed in June 2015 in response to the re-emergence of the unjust treatment of refugees. We are in the process of documenting the history of Justice for Refugees SA and its evolving links with COFA since 2002.  If you have any information, please email Meredith Edwards.

J4RSA advocacy is informed by the United Nations Human Rights charter.  For many in the field of working with and supporting refugees recently arrived in Australia, Circle of Friends Australia (COFA) provides the wrap-around support while Justice for Refugees SA us focused on policy advocacy through writing letters, submissions and visiting politicians, along with raising public awareness of the plight of refugees and people seeking asylum.

We are a non-partisan and not for profit group which links with other advocacy groups throughout Australia such as the Refugee Council of Australia (RCOA), the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC). Australian Refugees Advocacy Network (ARAN) and the Permanency and Family Reunion Network. Such Australia-wide advocacy has seen significant successes in:

• People on temporary visas being given a pathway to permanency through Safe Haven Enterprise Visas (SHEVs); many of whom have now gained Australian citizenship
• People previously failed under an unfair refugee claims system called “Fast Track” are now being granted a pathway to permanency in Australia
• Greater public awareness of the reasons why people seeking asylum are forced to leave their home country and the constraints they face settling into Australia.

The need to advocate for fair of refugees and people seeking asylum is as important now as it was in 2002; particularly with the rise of anti-migrant sentiments in some sectors of Australian Society.

Our current priorities for advocacy are:

• In the long term, securing permanency for those refugees who had been medically evacuated to Australia from Nauru who do not currently have a pathway to permanency. They are regarded as “transitory” and do not have access to the same supports as other refugees. In the short-term we advocate for them to gain access to tertiary education and have uninterrupted access to Medicare, despite delays in the processing of visa renewals
• Raising awareness of factors impacting on refugees, both in Australia and those placed offshore

For more details about our advocacy, check our new website and follow us on our Justice for Refugees SA Facebook page.

Justice for Refugees SA is also promoting a Refugee Council of Australia initiative to create a greater sense of belonging for refugees, asylum seekers and migrants called Sanctuary Runners.  We have had two successful parkruns at Carisbrooke Park in Salisbury North.  There is more information on our website about how to become involved. The T-shirts are free.

by Bob Wilson, COFA Committee

You may have caught the announcement last month: the Community Refugee Integration and Settlement Pilot — CRISP to its friends — has officially become a permanent part of Australia’s humanitarian migration program, effective from 1 July 2026.

It’s run by Community Refugee Sponsorship Australia (CRSA) in partnership with the Commonwealth government. Since 2022, it has matched more than 950 refugee newcomers with trained Community Supporter Groups in every state and territory.

An independent evaluation by the University of Queensland found the settlement outcomes genuinely impressive.

Read the model again and see if it doesn’t ring a bell. Five or more volunteers, welcoming a household from the day they land, sticking with them through that hardest first year of settlement. That’s not a new commitment to us. That’s what we commit to as active members of a COFA circle.

It’s not entirely a coincidence, either. COFA joined CRSA as a Supporting Community Organisation back in December 2025. The CRSA team out of Sydney will continue to run engagement events here in Adelaide, South Australia annually.

So the door’s already open — the question our Management Committee is chewing over now is how far our Circles, new and established, will go with it.

Three paths are on the table.
Our larger, more established Circles could register directly with CRSA as a Community Supporter Group, taking on a newcomer household from the moment of arrival. This might be a step too far for some groups as their ongoing commitments to their current set of clients might take all their resources and time.

Or a COFA Circle could partner with a new or existing CRSA group, backing them with fundraising and on-arrival support rather than running the whole show.

Finally, we could actively seek to set up and register new Circles of enthusiastic newbies and seasoned COFA members to take on this challenge.

My own hunch is that it’s worth chasing the first option where a circle has the numbers and the appetite for it — it puts our experience exactly where it’s most useful, welcoming a family from day one.

But there’s a genuine role for the second as well, and probably no reason a circle couldn’t do a bit of both.

It’s a case of a national program finally catching up with what a handful of us have been doing around kitchen tables for years. If your circle wants to talk it through, grab me or drop the committee a line — five volunteers and a spare room’s worth of goodwill, and you’re most of the way there already.