Freeing Ali

Michael Gordon was the first journalist to gain unrestricted access to the refugee detention centre on the tiny island of Nauru, the centrepice of the Australian government's Pacific Solution. In April 2005 he interviewed more than half of the asylum seekers who remained on the island, witnessing at first hand the conditions in which they were held. His reports from Nauru, published in The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald, drew an enormous response from readers.
At the centre of those articles was Ali Mullaie, a young Afghan asylum seeker teaching computer skills to Nauruan school children. Freeing Ali follows his story from Afghanistan to Nauru, and ultimately to Melbourne - and recounts the experiences of survivors of the SIEV X tragedy and the "children overboard" saga. Michael Gordon examines how ordinary Australians forced the Howard government to drop the harsher elements of its border protection policy. And, as the pressure grows back in Australia for a change in policy, he assesses the costs, in human and financial terms, of the Pacific Solution.