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Submission to the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention from
Nicola Roxon MP, Shadow Minister for Children and Youth
The Commissioner will inquire into the adequacy and appropriateness of Australia's treatment of child asylum seekers and other children who are, or have been, held in immigration detention, including:
1. The provisions made by Australia to implement its international human rights obligations regarding child asylum seekers, including unaccompanied minors.
2. The mandatory detention of child asylum seekers and other children arriving in Australia without visas, and alternatives to their detention.
3. The adequacy and effectiveness of the policies, agreements, laws, rules and practices governing children in immigration detention or child asylum seekers and refugees residing in the community after a period of detention, with particular reference to:
- the conditions
under which children are detained;
- health, including
mental health, development and disability;
- education;
- culture;
- guardianship
issues; and
- security practices in detention.
4. The impact of detention on the well-being and healthy development of children, including their long-term development.
5. The additional measures and safeguards which may be required in detention facilities to protect the human rights and best interests of all detained children.
6. The additional measures and safeguards which may be required to protect the human rights and best interests of child asylum seekers and refugees residing in the community after a period of detention.
"Child" includes any person under the age of 18.
Introduction - Labor's Public Position on Asylum Seekers
For the purposes of this submission, I would like to reiterate Labor's existing public position, as announced by the Leader of the Party, The Hon. Simon Crean, in his Australia Day address 2002.
This position addresses issues regarding treatment of asylum seekers generally, but also specifically issues affecting children in detention.
Labor is prepared to work with the Government to get bi-partisan support for a comprehensive and lasting solution to issue of processing and humane treatment of people seeking asylum in this country. In doing so, we must ensure that our borders remain well protected, and propose achieving this through the establishment of a proper coast guard facility to patrol our coastline.
Further, there is a desperate need for expeditious processing to speedily determine the legitimacy of people's refugee status, once they arrive on our shores.
We believe that we must get the balance right between protecting our borders and compassion. This compassion should most obviously and immediately start with the children, either accompanying their parent or parents, and those who arrive unaccompanied.
Australians are becoming increasingly distressed with the plight of the children held in detention. It is a clear Labor principle that all children, regardless of their family background, should have the chance to be happy and healthy and get a good education.
As a nation, we should be able to agree that it is wrong to hold innocent children behind razor wire. Children should be out in the community where they can live more normal lives and not be subjected to further trauma and stress, above and beyond what they have experienced in the months and years before arriving in Australia.
We shouldn't wait until individual children in detention suffer abuse before we release them. A safer course and a sounder principle is to get them all out of detention centres.
We are proposing the following practical solutions:
Where children seeking asylum are unaccompanied by family members, they should be fostered out in the community as quickly as possible.
Where children are accompanied, we should allow them and their mothers to be released from the centres into ordinary style housing under appropriate supervision
Where for some reason a more formal detention setting is required for a child's family, then those families should be separated from the other asylum seekers and housed in more appropriate conditions.
Developing a more comprehensive policy on Detention
Labor is in the process of developing detailed policy statements on expediting processing and mandatory detention. These statements will deal with the details of Labor's plans to get children out from behind the razor wire.
Despite Labor's offer of bipartisan support, it appears likely that under the Howard Government children will remain in formal detention centres. Given this, as Shadow Minister for Children and as the local member for the electorate of Gellibrand, I wish to take this opportunity to detail some of the minimum conditions which must be provided by the Government for children in detention settings.
The implementation of these minimum conditions is no substitute for the comprehensive plan Labor will develop and release before the next election. However, the adoption of these minimum conditions by the Howard Government would go some way to alleviating the problems being experienced by children in detention today. I trust that these factors will be taken account of by the Inquiry.
Provision of Appropriate Facilities
It is important for this Inquiry to note and highlight the fact that basic needs are not being met for children in detention - not just in Woomera, but also in my electorate at the Maribyrnong Detention Centre.
Maribyrnong theoretically has separate facilities for families - but this essentially means a separate room for sleeping. Other communal areas are shared and young men (12-15) are required to sleep in the general men's facilities (with convicted criminals awaiting deportation).
We must do all we can to make the Government act quickly to release children, and in the interim urgently provide a better environment for these most vulnerable detainees.
Access to Educational Facilities
If children are to be held in detention, even temporarily, appropriate educational facilities must be provided. Despite these provisions being a requirement under the Immigration Detention Standards schedule in the Detentions Services Contract, it has been brought to my attention that these standards are not being met in some centres. (See attached letter from DIMIA, 26 March 2002).
Educational facilities are close to non-existent at Maribyrnong, and children must rely on the discretion of the Centre's management as to whether they can access external institutions. Smaller than the likes of Villawood, there are no teachers at the facility. Primary aged children have been allowed to attend local primary schools, but secondary aged children have not.
ACM and DIMIA fight over what should be provided for these kids and who should pay for it - all while they are held without any schooling. At the time of writing, DIMIA has confirmed that there are currently five children held in Maribyrnong. If the requirement to provide educational services is in the contracts with ACM, it appears DIMIA doesn't adequately enforce those provisions. This matter must be urgently dealt with.
Access to other Children's Services/Support
Again in Maribyrnong, there appears to be no access to specialist child carers, pre-school teachers, counsellors or community support. Maribyrnong is a centrally located facility, but welfare organisations other than the Red Cross are not granted general access, despite often being willing to provide services free of charge.
Recreational facilities are scant - the hope of children developing with a balanced sense of wellbeing in such an environment is impossible to imagine.
We are constantly learning more in Australia about early childhood development and the value of investing in our children early - so they can grow into balanced adults, socially and emotionally adjusted and able to communicate and learn readily in the future. Therefore, providing access to basic services such as maternal and child health nurses, post-natal care, and other such services that benefit both parents and young children should be considered an absolute minimum.
The Australian Early Childhood Association, a national peak body of practitioners and policy developers in the field of early childhood state in their position paper (2002):
- Families with infants and children who have been exposed to trauma should be placed in safe communities with the support of their primary caregivers
- Families should have access to the support they need to care for their children and participate in the community
- All school-aged children should have access to school education
- All children should be able to use early childhood services and funding should be available to support this. If young children need o be in child care, these services should be culturally appropriate and sensitive to the needs of traumatised children
- All children should have access to health programs and services
- Language support should be available in the child's home language to help them learn English
- Specialist support services should be available to help children cope with trauma.
Trauma Experienced by Children in Detention
Many community groups fear what the future will hold for these children in detention. Not only are the children exposed to trauma and dislocation through fleeing their home country, but then are subjected to extended periods in detention which compounds this trauma. What impact can this ultimately have on their development? What chance do they have of growing into happy, fulfilled adults?
An article published in the Australian Journal of Early Childhood (December 2000) titled "Working in early childhood settings with children who have experienced refugee or war-related trauma" (by Dr Margaret Sims, Dr Jackie Hayden, Dr Glen Palmer, and Teresa Hutchins) states that:
"Children who have experienced (traumas of war in countries from which they have been displaced) learn to adjust in order to survive. The extreme nature of their experiences results in adjustments that are developmentally dangerous (Marans & Adelman, 1997). Children learn to think of the world as a dangerous place where no-one can be trusted, especially not adults. They learn to act aggressively before they themselves are hurt. They learn to be hyper-vigilant, always on the lookout for danger and never relaxing. They often re-enact their trauma, playing out scenes of extreme violence and even involving other children in their play. Conversely, children may react to trauma by repressing all effect. They become unresponsive and close down emotional senses."
"These behaviours are seen as maladaptive and inappropriate in Australian early childhood settings. Children displaying them often become labelled as aggressive or withdrawn/shy by both staff and other children. This results in their social isolation from the peer group". (pp41-42)
These are not the sort of behaviours or environments that we should be accepting, or fostering, within Australian institutions. For those children who end up settling in Australia, either with their parents or in other arrangements, the long term damage is likely to not only affect themselves but other children and adults they come in contact with. For those children who are returned back to their country of origin or sent elsewhere, we can only be seen to have further added to their trauma during their period of incarceration at a very early and vulnerable period in their lives.
Some of the behaviours the above researchers observed in this study included:
- unusual withdrawn behaviour
- chronic fear
- fear of benign items and people
- unnatural clinginess and over-dependent behaviour
- continual difficulties at sleep time and sleep disorders
- aggression
- alterations to moods
- delayed development because of behavioural difficulties
They concluded that an empathetic understanding of the needs and situations of these children and their families was essential in order to lay even a basic foundation for assisting in the normal development of children at a young age. This is even more important for young children who have experienced the traumas most often faced in the process of seeking asylum in a distant country.
It appears that our current treatment of children within detention centres is not even close to meeting these basic standards of care, let alone concern, for the children affected. A thorough reappraisal, by experts in the early childhood field, of the facilities and professional care provided to children within detention centres appears to be urgently required.
Conclusion
In conclusion, in my position as Shadow Minister for Children and Youth, I congratulate the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission for undertaking this enquiry into Children in Detention. My concerns are in addition to the great deal of worry within the community about what is happening within our detention centres, and particularly the circumstances of the children. In respect of children, we cannot afford to wait until Labor is in Government and implements its policy of getting children out from behind the razor wire. I urge this Inquiry to make practical recommendations to the Government for the humane treatment of innocent children.
Like other community members, I am continuously frustrated by the shroud of secrecy surrounding detention centres. The community has a right to know the full truth about what is happening.
I trust that through this Inquiry more factual information, and greater public scrutiny, of the detention centre regime managed by this Government and its contractors, will be made available.
I appreciate the opportunity to make this submission and look forward to the results, evidence and recommendations being made publicly available as soon as possible.
Last Updated 9 January 2003.
