12 May 05 - Herald Sun

AN Australian embassy official in the Philippines would visit Vivian Young to provide consular assistance and arrange her return if that was what she wanted, Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said today.

Ms Young, known also by the names Vivian Solon, Vivian Alvarez and Vivian Wilson, was wrongly deported to the Philippines four years ago in an Immigration Department bungle just days after she was involved in a road accident.

Ms Young, who has two children in Australia and had lived in the country for up to 18 years, has now been found living in a hospice in the city of Olongapo, north of Manila.

"The senior administrative officer of our embassy in Manila is now on his way to meet with her and the embassy in Manila will provide consular assistance in the usual way," Mr Downer said today.

"Should Miss Solon wish to return to Australia, the embassy will facilitate that return."

Mr Downer was forced to defend Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone, who has been criticised over the case.

He said it was not an act the Government deliberately perpetrated.

"Senator Vanstone has had a good deal to say about this," he said.

"There is a good and a feisty woman doing a good job and defending her corner. Senator Vanstone is a very honourable woman. She is a very humane and decent person."

Australian priest Mike Duffin discovered that Ms Young was the woman who had been cared for in the convent for the past four years when he saw a report on ABC TV.

Fr Duffin is the chaplain of a shelter run by nuns from the Mother Teresa Missionaries of Charity, which has cared for Ms Young since her deportation. He said Ms Young had been stuck in a hospice for the past four years after being placed there by Australian officials.

But Senator Vanstone said earlier the department had no information on Ms Young's whereabouts after she was met at the airport in the Philippines.

"The file does also show there was some discussion about whether she would make contact with some nuns."

Senator Vanstone said the department had not been able to interview any of the people on the file who made those notes because the matter had been handed to former Australian Federal Police commissioner Mick Palmer, who is conducting a government inquiry into immigration bungles.

The inquiry will examine why Ms Young was deported and why Australian authorities were unable to find her after they realised their mistake.

Earlier, Ms Young's sister, Cecile Solon, said from the Philippines that she was relieved her sister had been found alive but was baffled as to why she was deported in the first place.

"There are questions to be answered," she said on ABC TV.

"I just feel that there was no compassion in (the) handling (of) her," she said.

"I feel there was some kind of racial discrimination."