By political reporter Naomi Woodley
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has all but ruled out a royal commission into the long-term effects of detention on children’s physical and mental health.
It follows a damning report by the Human Rights Commission, which recommends setting up a royal commission and “remedies for any breaches of the rights of children that have been detained”.
It is one of 16 recommendations in The Forgotten Children – the most comprehensive inquiry in a decade into the policy of detaining asylum seeker children who arrive in Australia by boat.
The Human Rights Commission is also calling for: all children and families currently in detention in Australia and Nauru to be released into the community within four weeks; the closure of the immigration detention facilities on Christmas Island; an end to indefinite detention; and an independent person to replace the Immigration Minister as guardian for unaccompanied children.
From January 2013 to March 2014 it reports 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.
“The overarching finding of the Inquiry is that the prolonged, mandatory detention of asylum seeker children causes them significant mental and physical illness and developmental delays, in breach of Australia’s international obligations,” the report reads.
Mr Dutton said the Government had long-standing, fundamental differences with Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs, but said there was no political witch hunt.
“I’m not going to be lectured to by people who want to misinterpret the current situation,” he told AM this morning.
“We can release children from the detention centres now and let me tell you, the boats start up again, the detention centres will be reoccupied and that is not something that we are going to tolerate.”
He said the Federal Government already provided significant additional resources in the areas of mental health, community, and employment support, but more would be done.
“The first thing I’m doing is making sure that where it is possible, we can release families into the community,” Mr Dutton said.
“We’ve reduced the number already.”
But he said it was difficult to say whether the Government would meet the deadline of releasing families into the community in four weeks.
“It’s hard to provide a yes or no answer for this reason – there are some families where the father, for example, has been assessed by the security agencies in an adverse way,” Mr Dutton said.
“And the balance for me is to decide whether or not that person is a risk to the Australian community.
“I also think it is very important to point out that the 1,200 people who died at sea should be remembered in all of this as well.
“They want to come to our country, I understand that, but if we allow the people smuggling trade to reignite, more people will drown at sea – including children. And that is something this Government will not tolerate.”
‘An awful culture of institutionalised child abuse’: Hanson-Young
The Greens have backed the call for a royal commission.
“I think this report really unveils an awful culture of institutionalised child abuse,” Greens spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young told AM.
“We saw, a decade ago, a very similar report, which talked about the damning effects of detention on children and we had politicians blame each other and saying no one wanted to see children in detention, and yet fast forward 10 years on, 15 years on, it’s all happening all over again,” she said.
“There are 105 children, I note on suicide watch, 10 of those children under the age of 10.
“These statistics come from medical reports, it’s all documented. The government knows this has been going on, this government and the previous government.
“A royal commission is absolutely warranted.”
Labor’s immigration spokesman Richard Marles said the Federal Opposition would not respond to the specific recommendations until it had properly considered the report.
But he said it was clear changes were needed.
“I think what comes from this report is a sense that the system can be improved, it needs to be improved, obviously things need to be done better so that kids can be taken out of this situation as quickly as is practicable,” Mr Marles told AM.
“Those stories contained in the report are obviously horrific, and it’s important that we understand them as deeply as we possibly can to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.”
Report will not waver Labor’s offshore processing policy: Marles
But Mr Marles said the confronting sections in the report, detailing the distress of children sent to immigration detention on Nauru, would not cause Labor to abandon its policy of sending all asylum seekers who arrive by boat offshore.
“Offshore processing is playing a vital role in seeing an end to the deaths at sea, and that is obviously a good thing,” he said.
“I think it would be an enormous mistake for this country to walk down a path where you open that up again and you saw the kind of carnage at sea that we’ve previously witnessed.
“Now in saying that, offshore processing needs to be done in a way which is providing safe, dignified and humane refuge, and we do have concerns about whether the current situation meets that description.
“I’d make the point that in the report itself it says that children should only be processed offshore where their human rights are being respected.
“It is important for the Minister to answer the question about whether it is possible for children on Nauru not to be in that detention facility and to look at ways in which that can occur.”
Parties reject suggestion of political motive on part of Triggs
The Human Rights Commission completed the report in November and the Government tabled it in Parliament on Wednesday night. It was the last possible day under law that it could be released.
A statement from Attorney-General George Brandis accompanied the report.
“The Government is disappointed and surprised that the Australian Human Rights Commission did not start this inquiry until 2014, considering the problem was at its most acute prior to the 2013 election, when the number of children in detention peaked at 1,992 under the former Labor government in July 2013.”
Both Labor and the Greens reject any suggestion of a political motive on the part of the Human Rights Commission president Gillian Triggs.
“I absolutely, completely reject the idea that the Commissioner and her work has been political, and I think that’s a deeply unfair aspersion on Gillian Triggs,” Mr Marles said.
Senator Brandis said many of the circumstances described in the report were of “historical interest only” because the Government had made changes since the inquiry began.
The Government said it did not believe the Commission’s jurisdiction extended to the detention facility on Nauru, and did not accept the finding that the Commonwealth was in breach of its international obligations under the Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Senator Brandis’s statement did not directly respond to the recommendation for a royal commission, but noted that “the best way to eliminate all of the concerns raised by this report is to end the people smuggling trade”.
“This Government has achieved that outcome,” the statement said.