The Australian Human Rights Commission has said it will force immigration detention centre workers to give evidence to its inquiry into children in detention.
Its president Gillian Triggs made the announcement at a public hearing in Melbourne on Wednesday.
In February the commission launched an inquiry to investigate the ways in which life in closed immigration detention affects children’s health, wellbeing and development.
It has found almost 1,000 children are being held in detention and more than 100 have attempted self harm.
Professor Triggs said she would use her powers to compel some workers involved in the care and transfer of children to and from centres on Christmas Island and Nauru to give evidence at a third hearing.
She said many of the workers were currently constrained by confidentiality contracts as a condition of their employment.
“Certainly many people have been talking to us privately about their views, they are deeply troubled about the processes that they have been involved in and they want to speak out,” Ms Triggs said.
“For them it’s very difficult to give voluntary evidence, so for that reason I think it’s important that we do compel that evidence so that we have a clearer and a fuller picture of exactly what the conditions are for families and children.
“One of our greatest concerns is that children are now being held for significantly greater periods of time than has been in the past and that leads inevitably to a greater level of mental health disturbance.
“We have, I think it can be said, shockingly high numbers of self-harm incidents and talk of suicide amongst children and much higher than among the adult population.”
The inquiry will report to the Federal Government in September.
Children face fresh trauma: psychiatrist
Earlier, a psychiatrist told the hearing children faced fresh trauma by being held in government facilities.
University of Adelaide Psychiatry professor Jon Jureidini said the trauma children suffered in detention overshadowed any prior traumatic experiences they endured in their home countries.
“I think in every case of a child in immigration detention, the immigration detention experience has been at the forefront of their trauma,” Dr Jureidini said.
“Whatever trauma they’ve experienced prior has been pushed into the background not only for the journey by boat, but also sadly the experiences they’ve had subsequent to their arrival.
“A lot of children have had direct trauma themselves. The major impact is often the fear for their parents – the distress at what’s already happened to people, somebody’s been killed or disappeared in their country of origin.
“My experience is that … the focus of most of the children has been on their current experience rather than what’s happened to them in the past.
He said children are exposed to bureaucratic cruelty and “if not deliberate, then they’re reckless acts of cruelty that are happening to children in detention and their families all the time”.
Dr Jureidini cited examples including constant head counts and searches within facilities, bag checks and overzealous security for children heading to and from school, and babies often being woken by immigration authorities.
“Those little irritating bureaucratic barriers happen all the time – whether it’s getting permission to go to the health centre, arranging access to a visitor or see a lawyer,” he said.
“All this is happening to people who have poor understanding of English. There doesn’t seem to be a genuine effort of the authorities involved … frequently people are told it’s the other agency’s responsibility.”