Last updated: July 2008

Australia Detention Profile 

Controversies and Criticism

A number of official inquiries and investigations into immigration detention conditions were conducted between 2000 and 2007. The findings of these investigations have spurred severe criticism of detention conditions in Australia, and in some cases have brought changes in policies and practices.

 

Mandatory detention. Church representatives, refugee advocacy groups, and human rights activists have  criticized the mandatory nature of detention of non-citizens in Australia. Asylum seekers, they claim, are punished prior to the determination of their asylum status (Einfeld 1993, Birrell 1993, and Brennan 1993 in Stevens 2002). In 1998, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) declared that Australia’s detention regime violated the 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights through the denial of the refugees’ right to liberties. The Minister for Immigration has responded to these criticisms by arguing that Australia has the right to exercise its sovereignty in determining who can enter and remain (Ruddock 2000 in Stevens 2002).

 

The detention management. A complaint was launched against GSL Australia in 2005 by the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ), Rights and Accountability in Development (RAID), the Human Rights Council of Australia (HRCA), Children out of Detention (ChilOut), and the Brotherhood of St Laurence, based on the Guidelines for Multinational Enterprises of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). They claimed that GSL, through its public-private partnership contract with the government, is fully responsible for the management of the centres and therefore must be held accountable for the human rights of detainees. Violations of human rights, they claimed, were well documented by national and UN human rights bodies and the UN refugee agency. Violations included the detention of immigrants without a specified or legal time limit and inadequate access to appropriate health care, causing high occurrence of depression, self-harm, and suicide attempts (International Commission of Jurists 2005; libertysecurity.org 2005).

 

In separate accounts in 2002 and 2003, detainees were reported to have set four of the seven Australian immigration detention centres on fire, with police reporting that inmates started fires and attacked guards with iron bars in breakout attempts. Detainees were said to have participated in these riots in protest to their inhumane treatment (DIAC 2002).

 

The 2005 Palmer Report, a government-sanctioned report spurred by the unlawful detention of Cornelia Rau, a German-born Australian resident, concluded that the management of detention centres was fraught with organizational problems that jeopardized the government’s capacity to carry out its migration policy while respecting human dignity. It concluded that Rau’s detention in Brisbane Women’s Correctional Centre for six months was purely administrative and far removed from the Migration Series Instructions, which  set out guidelines for fulfilling public interest powers in reference to the Migration Act 1958 (Palmer 2005).

 

The detention services contract with GSL Australia was, the Palmer report stated, “fundamentally flawed” and incapable of producing outcomes expected by the government, detainees, and Australian people (Palmer 2005). Mental health assessments and care of detainees were found to be inappropriate, with communication barriers between health care workers and immigration detention center staff. External accountability mechanisms were reportedly lacking, in addition to staff cultural and attitudinal problems, a clear lack of executive leadership, and a great disconnect between detention policy, management in Canberra, and the time reality of processing detainees (Palmer 2005).

 

Length of detention. The extensive periods of immigration detention in Australia, since the initial 273 day limit was lifted in the early 1990s, has long been in the subject of criticism. In 2004, P.N. Bhagwati, a regional adviser for the UNHCR in the Asia Pacific, stated that detainees in the Woomera Immigration Detention centre “were prisoners without having committed any offence” (cited in Leach & Mansouri 2004). In 2007, HREOC reported on the excessive periods of detention of unlawful immigrants, citing cases such as the stateless Kashmiri Peter Qasim, who was transferred to a psychiatric hospital after being detained for over six years; and three-year-old Naomi Leong, who was released in 2005 after being detained all her life (HREOC 2007). Earlier, in 2005, the Palmer Report had attributed the lengthy periods of detention to inadequate formal training of management staff, a lack of understanding of legislation, and a primitive database infrastructure used for the processing and coordination of detainees (Palmer 2005).

 

Improvements. HREOC reported marked improvements to detention conditions since the 2005 policy changes, including a significant reduction in tension levels and more positive attitudes of DIAC and GSL staff. There were no complaints from detainees during HREOC’s 2007 visit, in contrast to the multiple complaints HREOC reported in previous years. Many of the problems previously raised by HREOC had been corrected by 2007, with refurbishments and renovations continuing to improve the physical environment of centres. Programs and activities were more readily available to detainees, including increased access to the Internet, excluding those in the NIDC. HREOC also praised the new Sydney and Perth Immigration Residential Housing facilities which, they claim, improve the living conditions of detainees (HREOC 2007).

 

HREOC still had some criticisms, however, claiming that the external excursion programs, which had increased during 2006, had been reduced at all facilities, with the exception of NIDC. HREOC claimed there was a clear connection between external excursion programs and reductions in tensions, health, and mental health complaints. In addition, HREOC reported in 2007 that the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre, which houses some of the most long-term detainees, remained the “most prison-like of all facilities,” and recommended further refurbishments there (HREOC 2007).