6 July 2004
Not one child should remain in detention, says Human Rights Commissioner
Human Rights Commissioner Dr Sev Ozdowski cautiously welcomed the Federal Government's move towards removing more children from immigration detention.
Immigration Minister Senator Amanda Vanstone yesterday announced that only one child of an asylum seeker who arrived in Australia by boat was still in a detention centre on the Australian mainland.
The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission recommended the release of all children who were in immigration detention when its report - A last resort? National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention - was tabled in Federal Parliament on May 13. The deadline for release was June 10.
"Senator Vanstone's announcement is an important acknowledgement of the plight of the children who were the subject of the Commission's recent National Inquiry," said Dr Ozdowski. "It is also recognition of the mental health damage inflicted on these children by long periods in detention. I am glad that the Government has continued to remove children from detention and I am looking forward to the day when no child will be in any form of detention in Australia."
However, Dr Ozdowski said there were still children in the Port Augusta Housing Project, Villawood, Maribyrnong, Christmas Island and Nauru who face increasing risks of mental health consequences the longer they remain in detention.
"The Vietnamese children on Christmas Island have been there for more than a year and the children on Nauru have been there for more than two and half years."
Dr Ozdowski said the current immigration detention system needed to be changed to comply with the international Convention on the Rights of the Child, as recommended by the National Inquiry report.
"The presumption against detaining children for long periods of time needs to be enshrined in legislation. Long term detention destroys the mental health of children and robs them of their childhood. It is time that Australia's immigration laws reflected its obligations to children under the Convention on the Rights of the Child."
For further information about the report see: http://www.humanrights.gov.au/human_rights/children_detention_report/index.html
Media contact: Janine MacDonald 02 9284 9880 or 0407 660 235
Last updated 13 July 2004.
