Children in detention: A Last Resort?
HREOC report condemns treatment of asylum seekers

Bob Briton

Since September 11, 2001, Australians have been subjected to a 
vastly increased amount of propaganda about the supposed threat 
that asylum seekers pose to the Australian community. A new layer 
of anxiety about terrorism was added to the perennial warnings 
from conservative governments and a mostly compliant media about 
waves of uninvited aliens arriving from the north to take "our" 
jobs and change "our" culture.

For a long time this has proven to be a potent electoral brew for 
the Coalition parties. The "War on Terror" provided a suitable 
pretext for the Pacific Solution of warehousing the refugees 
fleeing intolerable conditions in Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan. 
Though it sounds ludicrous now, it was argued that Australia must 
be protected from the arrival of terrorist "sleepers" aboard the 
wretched, overcrowded fishing boats from Indonesia. This was used 
to suppress a fuller public debate and a more sympathetic 
response that might have been possible.

Another aim and consequence of the policies and the media war was 
the destruction of the electoral base of the then thriving One 
Nation party. The crude arguments being made by the Howard 
Government in support of being "tough on boat people" were the 
same as those the more overt racists advanced for being "tough on 
immigration". Many credited Howard's infamous "we will decide" 
speech for his government's re-election in 2001.

Lies exposed

However, times appear to be changing. The public, once very open 
to these anti- human ideas, has become more sceptical. The 
glaring absence of Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq has, no 
doubt, contributed to this scepticism. The spectacle of US and 
other forces supposedly opening the way to the establishment of 
democratic institutions with their violent and lewd abuse of 
prisoners has also fuelled the doubts.

Over the years, braver media voices have spoken out. Books about 
the misguided policy of detaining asylum seekers and its shocking 
consequences have appeared on the bookshelves — Tom Mann's 
Desert Sorrow and Father Frank Brennan's Tampering with 
Asylum among them.

It was inevitable, too, that we would get to know the people 
caught in Australia's bristling, unwelcoming defences and grow to 
like them. TV audiences were introduced to an unassuming young 
Afghan former detainee when SBS broadcast the documentary 
Molly and Mobarak earlier this month.

Findings damning

Condemnation of government policy has now reached the official 
level. Two weeks ago the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity 
Commission (HREOC) released the results of its extensive two-year 
investigations with the National Inquiry into Children in 
Immigration Detention Report — A Last Resort?

The Commission's stated goal is to "foster greater understanding 
and protection of human rights in Australia and to address the 
human rights issues facing a broad range of individuals and 
groups". It is an independent statutory authority of the 
government and in this instance it was examining the most 
outrageous and indefensible of the many violations of the human 
rights of the asylum seekers in detention. Even so, few would 
have predicted such a comprehensive condemnation of the Federal 
Government in its findings or such a radical departure from its 
policies in the recommendations from the HREOC. The Commission 
found that the government's mandatory detention policy violates 
the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, which stipulates 
that detention of children should only be considered as "a last 
resort" and for the "shortest possible time".

The report found that the children in immigration detention have 
suffered numerous and repeated breaches of their human rights. 
The Commonwealth has failed to protect the mental health of 
children, to provide adequate health care and education, failed 
to protect unaccompanied children or meet the needs of children 
with disabilities.

Release the children immediately

Among the major recommendations was the immediate release of 
children and their parents into the community or home-based 
detention. If this were not done immediately, then their release 
from detention centres or residential housing projects should 
take place no more than four weeks after the tabling of the 
report. It also recommended changes to relevant legislation to 
reflect a presumption against the detention of children.

Other recommendations deal with the need for the granting of 
humanitarian and "bridging" visas for children waiting for their 
cases to be assessed. There was a lot of criticism of the 
negative psychological effects on detainees released on the 
restrictive Temporary Protection Visas (TVPs). There was a call 
for standards of treatment of children in detention to be 
codified and a further review of the impact on children of 
legislation that has created "excised offshore places" and the 
"Pacific Solution".

In fact there was not a single bouquet in the report for any 
aspect of the government's odious policy of mandatory detention 
of children or, for that matter, of mandatory detention of asylum 
seekers in general.

It should be noted that these findings and recommendations were 
not plucked out of the air. The report was the result of a two-
year inquiry, which took 346 submissions (including 64 
confidential ones) from a substantial number of professional 
groups including lawyers, doctors, nurses, psychologists, social 
workers and education specialists.

Of course, the Commonwealth and state governments contributed. 
The Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous 
Affairs (DIMIA) gave evidence as did present and past staff of 
Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) — the corporation 
that administers the detention centres for the government.

Inquiry staff visited ALL the immigration detention facilities 
and interviewed 112 children and their parents. There were 29 
focus groups involving about 200 children, parents and other 
former detainees. The Inquiry held 61 public sessions involving 
105 witnesses and 24 confidential sessions with 50 witnesses. It 
heard oral submissions from the Department and ACM in December 
2002 and provided them with opportunities to respond to the 
initial findings and a second draft.

Nobody has dared to suggest that the report is light on evidence 
or based on a narrow range of predictably "anti-government" 
sources. Neither can it be claimed that the report deals with 
"ancient history". While numbers are down from the shamefully 
high figure of 842 in 2001, there are still 173 children in 
immigration detention in facilities throughout Australia and on 
Nauru and Christmas Island.

Criminal conditions

The statistics in Last Resort? reveal just how 
contemptuous the Commonwealth has been of the needs of these 
children. For example, at Woomera during 2000, despite the best 
efforts of the overwhelmed teaching staff, children received only 
between one and three hours of teaching per day. In 2001 there 
were no more than five staff to meet the needs of 456 children. 
By contrast there is one teacher for every 25 to 30 children in 
Australian primary schools. Even today, not all detainee children 
have access to regular schools.

From January to June 2002, there were 760 major incidents 
recorded by the Department in the centres involving 1149 
detainees. Of these, 321 were alleged, actual or attempted 
assaults (19 involved children), 174 involved self-harm (25 
involved children) and about 30 per cent involved contraband, 
damage to property, disturbances, escapes and protests. No 
special measures were taken to protect children from the effects 
of these incidents.

For the record, the average period of detention for a child 
expanded from one year, three months and 17 days at the beginning 
of 2003 to one year, eight months and 11 days by year's end. The 
longest period in detention for a child was five years, five 
months and 20 days. The child and his mother were released from 
Port Hedland in May 2000 after eventually being assessed as 
refugees.

It is when the statistics give way to individual cases that the 
report's conclusions become most compelling. Australians may have 
already seen details of some of these cases in the media over the 
years. To see the examples brought together in the HREOC report 
is quite confronting.

In 2001, a six-year-old child stopped, eating, drinking, talking 
and sleeping after seeing an adult detainee attempt suicide. In 
May 2002, a psychiatrist diagnosed a 13-year-old boy and an 11-
year-old girl in a remote centre as suffering from a major 
depressive disorder. They had been in detention for over a year. 
They are still in detention!

Another child with severe cerebral palsy was detained for two 
years at Curtin and 12 months at the Baxter Centre before being 
released. His mother had such difficulty caring for him that, 
after 16 months, she handed him over to ACM to be looked after. 
Once she got the help she needed, she resumed care of her child. 
However, for seven months the child was wheeled around in a 
baby's pram because no suitable wheelchair was provided.

Suffering was avoidable

HREOC shows that all of this suffering was avoidable — even 
under existing legislation. Though laws demanding mandatory 
detention while awaiting a visa or deportation have been on the 
statute books since 1992, the Minister has had the power to 
declare any place in the community a "place of detention" since 
1994. All unaccompanied children could have been placed in foster 
homes using these provisions. All other children and their 
parents could also have been placed in the community under 
certain conditions.

However, only two families have ever been transferred to "home-
based detention". It was not until detainees went on a hunger 
strike, sewed their lips together and entered into a suicide pact 
in January 2002 that about 20 unaccompanied children were 
transferred to foster home "detention" in Adelaide. After the 
Tampa incident such humane acts were off the political agenda. 
Racism and militarism were being promoted ahead of compassion. 
Now, it seems, the pathetic excuses advanced for mandatory 
detention are falling away as quickly as the justifications for 
the war on Iraq. The "security" arguments have evaporated. Last 
week — three years after Howard vowed that none of the desperate 
souls aboard the Tampa would ever be allowed into the country — 
the last of the detainees from the Norwegian freighter was found 
to be a refugee and not a "queue-jumper" or an "illegal" after 
all. Over the years, 93 per cent of all detainees have been found 
to be similarly deserving of refugee status.

Now, Minister Amanda Vanstone is left with only one defence: the 
"message" that the release of children and their parents would 
send to the people smugglers. Even this point is sounding lame. 
Cara Minns of Penshurst wrote for most Australians in her letter 
to the Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald last week:

"Release the children from detention, Senator Vanstone. I don't 
care what message it sends. If these children are being 
sacrificed to achieve my security, then the price is too high to 
pay. Release them all and release them now."

Children in immigration detention

Nauru 70; Villawood 36; Port Augusta HP 18; Community detention 
(e.g. foster care) 17; Christmas Island 16; Baxter, SA 11; 
Maribyrnong,VIC 2; Port Hedland, WA 0; Perth, WA 0; Total: 
170

(children in immigration detention) Source:
DIMIA, Senate, NauruWire