Click here to return to the Submission Index
Submission to the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention from
The Australian Nursing Federation (Vic Branch)
The Australian Nursing Federation is the peak industrial and professional body representing the nursing workforce. In Victoria we have in excess of 34,000 members. Further, ANF (Vic Branch) is affiliated with the Australian Council of Trade Unions and the Victorian Trades Hall Council (VTHC).
The ANF (Vic Branch), both through VTHC and individually, has voiced its concern for the plight of those in immigration detention centres by:
- Regular visits as part of a VTHC contingent to Maribyrnong Detention Centre to visit and take gifts to the refugees
- The passing of a unanimous resolution at the February 2001 Branch Council meeting supporting VTHC's call for an urgent Federal Government review of the mandatory detention of refugees seeking asylum
- Numerous articles in our monthly publication, On the Record, urging nurses to lobby for a must and humanitarian refugee policy.
The subjects of this Inquiry Children in Immigration Detention Centres (and their parents) are seeking refuge under the United Nation's Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, yet are incarcerated with fewer rights than prisioners.
It is inhumane to indefinitely imprison people, especially children, who are fleeing due to a well founded fear of persecution.
The mandatory detention policy actively harms the health and well being of those seeking protection from prosecution, and is contrary to the civil rights and freedoms of children, as articulated by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
The results of numerous studies overwhelmingly demonstrate the serious harm and adverse long term health effects of imprisonment of adults and children. Such health effects include both physical and psychological health. Children are more vulnerable than adults to the conditions under which they live. Their healthy development is crucial for the future of any society.
The policy of detaining refugee families is contrary to the Health for All principles of the Ottowa Charter and other binding conventions.
Australia is a signatory to the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Yet in Australia, some children are denied these rights because they are considered to be refugees, not children.
The "Pacific Solution" of establishing detention centres in Papua New Guinea and Nauru is the antithesis of good public health policy as:
- The refugees are being exposed to new tropical diseases
- The health status in some of these communities is extremely poor and local health systems are unable to cope with local health problems, let alone these additional problems
- It is remarkably expensive for the Australian tax payer
Refugees can be speedily processed for health and security reasons in Welcome Centres (as in New Zealand) not in detention centres
The ANF (Vic Branch), as an organisation representing nurses, is particularly concerned about the health status of these children. ANF (Vic Branch) recognises that health is far more than the absence of disease, and has a view that there are numerous social determinants of health, including adequate income, housing, employment, transport and education.
While such determinants are largely outside the health care sector, children in detention centres, at a minimum, require programs that are family centred and address the health impacts resulting from their social and cultural dislocation, and the traumatic and violent experiences they may have suffered or witnessed in their homeland, en route to Australia and indeed, since their arrival at a detention centre.
Such programs must provide at the very least screenings that are available as a matter of course within the general Australian community. Similarly, education of a level and standard equivalent to what may be reasonably expected within the general community needs to be made available to these children and their parents.
ANF (Victorian Branch) regards the continued detention of these children and their families as a shameful act which damages our national psyche, and leaves citizens feeling demoralised and disenfranchised, as decisions to detain these children and their parents is contrary to our national belief in fairness and equity.
Last Updated 9 January 2003.
