High levels of self-harm and abuse involving children living in immigration detention are adding to what a paediatrics professor has described as a “toxic environment”.
The Human Rights Commission (HRC) report, titled The Forgotten Children, has found immigration detention is a “dangerous place for children”, and has called for a royal commission into the practice of putting asylum seeker children into mandatory detention.
From January 2013 to March 2014 the HRC found there were 233 assaults in detention involving children, 33 incidents of reported sexual assault, with the majority involving children, and 128 children who harmed themselves.
Paediatrics professor Elizabeth Elliot took part in a site visit to children in detention, and said she found “unacceptable conditions”.
“They were living in a tropical climate in very cramped conditions in a cabin of three by 2.5 metres with no adequate places to play,” she said.
“We found that children weren’t able to attend school and that many children were waiting for specialist medical appointments on the mainland for unacceptable long times.
“We also found high levels of mental ill health both in the mothers and fathers in the young children.”
She said there were clear signs of stress among the children, with older children showing signs of depression and anxiety, whereas some younger children had become aggressive, regressed developmentally and were not talking.
Backbenchers urged to speak up against policy
A coalition of church leaders believes pressure is building within Government ranks to end the policy that has led to long-term child detentions.
Misha Coleman, from the Australian Churches Refugee Task Force, said there was a significant and growing number of backbenchers that want change.
“Now is the time for those backbenchers to come forward to Tony Abbott as part of the new Tony and the new deal and the new good government that we’re supposed to be experiencing as of this week,” she said.
Unicef Australia urged the Government to change its asylum seeker policy, with spokeswoman Amy Lamoin saying she believed the rapid shift of children out of detention under Immigration Minister Peter Dutton in past months was significant.
“We actually see this as an acknowledgement by minister Dutton of the very serious harm of detention for children,” she said.
“And our question to Government has to be if we acknowledge that serious harm to continue this way, with this policy approach, means that we are choosing harm.”
The Australian Coalition to End Immigration Detention of Children has endorsed the HRC report’s call to release all children.
But spokesman Oliver White said the recommendation for legal change to stop the detention of children in the future is just as important.
“It’s not good enough just to release the children, but that we need to have legislative change which ensures that this can never happen regardless of which party is in power,” he said.
HRC report ‘blatantly partisan’, Abbott says
Prime Minister Tony Abbott this morning attacked the HRC over its report, saying it should be ashamed of itself for conducting “a blatantly partisan politicised exercise”.
The Government all but ruled out holding a royal commission, and Mr Abbott questioned why the HRC did not launch an inquiry when the previous Labor government was in power and the number of children in detention reached a peak of almost 2,000.
“Where was the Human Rights Commission when hundreds of people were drowing at sea?” he said on Macquarie Radio.
“Where was the Human Rights Commission when there were almost 2,000 children in detention?
“This is a blatantly partisan politicised exercise and the Human Rights Commission ought to be ashamed of itself.”
HRC president Gillian Triggs “totally” rejected the suggestion the report was biased and said both sides of politics are responsible for breaches of Australia’s international obligations.
“The commission is doing its job, we are doing our job under our statute and according to the law that underpins our work,” she said this morning.
“This is not a politicised exercise. It is a fair-minded report.
“The evidence on which we rely is evidence which covers the period of the former government as well as the nearly 18 months of the current Government.
“The facts frankly speak for themselves.”