Transcript of Hearing - ADELAIDE
Monday, 1 July 2002
Please note: This is an edited transcript.
This witness later agreed that his evidence could be made public.
Commissioners:
DR SEV OZDOWSKI, Human Rights Commissioner
MRS ROBIN SULLIVAN, Queensland Children's Commissioner
PROFESSOR TRANG THOMAS, Professor of Psychology, Melbourne Institute of Technology
MS VANESSA LESNIE, Secretary to the Inquiry
WITNESS,
sworn
Ex-DIMIA staff Woomera
DR OZDOWSKI: [Name removed], could I ask you now to state your
name, address, qualification and the capacity in which you are appearing
today?
WITNESS: Okay, my name is [name removed], my address is [address removed], I'm an ex-DIMIA officer, I worked for DIMIA for 37 years before I retired in January this year, 2002.
DR OZDOWSKI: For the record I'm accepting a statutory declaration which was provided by you.
WITNESS: Yes.
DR OZDOWSKI: The declaration is not to be put on the Commission's website or given to the press, however it can be used in context of the preparation of the record and the report may quote from this submission.
WITNESS: I will agree with that.
DR OZDOWSKI: You agree, thank you very much. Now, you asked for an in-camera session and I accepted it and all of what you will say here will remain confidential. You will be provided with a copy of the corrected transcript but the transcript won’t be provided to any other parties.
WITNESS: That's fine.
DR OZDOWSKI: Could I ask you to state your reasons why you preferred to appear in-camera?
WITNESS: Actually I was advised by your office that maybe it was - there was some legal restriction on me talking even though I've resigned from Immigration but there still might be some fetter put on me by the Department either in taking some action to prevent me giving evidence or something like that if it become known.
DR OZDOWSKI: I see.
WITNESS: The other aspect I suppose - I was - as you mentioned I'm not seeking any particular personal glory, I don't want to be hounded by press or others. I don't really mind whether the Department knows that I'm giving evidence, that's up to them and it wouldn't take Houdini to work out with some basic facts of who I was. I'm not hiding behind anything but by the same token I'm not seeking any notoriety either.
DR OZDOWSKI: Thank you very much. I understand the technical reasons and some other reasons you gave me. Could I ask you to make a - just a statement - an opening statement describing your role and especially your role in the establishment of Woomera?
WITNESS: Sure.
DR OZDOWSKI: And please remember that, when making all of the statement, we are in particular interested in the impact on children of detention.
WITNESS: Yes, I understand. The main issue of my concern is the impact of the children, and women to an extent too. It was interesting when I first was given the portfolio of researching whether Woomera could be set up as an Immigration Reception Processing Centre for the overflow of refugees who were coming in by boat, we were told both by the Minister and senior hierarchy in Immigration in Canberra that the majority of people coming, nearly all of them would be single males coming from Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, in the main, from in general the Middle East but they almost all would be single males. History would show that they would be very pliable and compliant, that they would be fairly successful in their applications, probably in excess of 90 per cent.
The centre was meant to be therefore an Immigration Reception Processing Centre and it was just for that purpose to receive people and to process their applications and move them on. It was not meant to be a detention centre. The stay for the people would be relatively short, no real indication was given of that but the impression one was given was somewhere between six weeks and three months.
DR OZDOWSKI: So why - in this case, Woomera - why spend so much money on taking them so far away?
WITNESS: The - there were quite, I guess, that was partly my suggestion in some ways that Woomera would be an advantageous point for that, one was that the town was looking for some injection of new business. The town was devolving itself of the Americans and various other facilities had gone and it was virtually dying. They were looking somehow for more injection of interest, particularly people coming in to the town.
DR OZDOWSKI: Did you think from the beginning about the establishment of a separate camp as it is now?
WITNESS: No.
DR OZDOWSKI: Or rather about using the existing accommodation in Woomera?
WITNESS: The suggestion by Defence and to me was, well, we use a part of the town, virtually a suburb if you like, of the town because the town was something like 70 per cent unoccupied. It would be very easy to quarantine, so to speak, a block or several blocks and keep expanding as need arises with accommodation provided, which was as much as they envisaged for the Kosovars, which was their original suggestion.
DR OZDOWSKI: So you have ... etcetera.
WITNESS: That is right. However, that was - it was vetoed and I've wrestled with how that was done, whether it was done by DIMIA or - I'm pretty certain it was done by DIMIA hierarchy and Defence working out, no, it would be better for Defence purposes if the establishment was separate from the town. Immigration certainly felt that it would be better if it were separate from the town.
DR OZDOWSKI: So Defence simply wanted to keep resources they had in town for some future possible uses?
WITNESS: They saw, yes, they saw a marriage of the workers staying in town and doing their shopping in town and then going to work at another site, more or less quarantining the establishment of the centre away from the town, but using the town's resources and using the town as a base. There was still however some discussion with Defence on what they could do to contribute to the lifestyle of the people coming in, eg, the school, the library, the recreation environment and those sorts of aspects.
DR OZDOWSKI: So the issue of school was considered in that earlier process of establishing it?
WITNESS: Definitely, right at the very start there was some suggestion that the children could go to school in town and that was seen as a positive. There was other aspects of the town's oval, the park and various other things that could be used, the swimming pool, etcetera, could be used by people in controlled circumstances. The library, the priest up there who was there at the time, the Catholic church was still open at the time, was very keen to be involved with visitation to the centre, with assistance at - with books and some exchange, if you like, between the children and encouragement for children to come to their school to hear about the adventures of people coming from different parts of the world.
All of those exposures were seen at the initial talks to being very fruitful, very opportunistic for the town, and opportunistic, I guess, for the people coming in too, but for various reasons they didn't happen.
DR OZDOWSKI: Could you explain those reasons for …?
WITNESS: A lot between wishing and hoping, I suppose, but basically as I said in my statutory declaration that it comes down to a matter of being able to control people. There are two issues, I suppose; one was the detainees themselves, their security and safety so to speak, whilst they were being schooled, using the library, using the swimming pool, using the recreation facilities and the manpower that would be required to accompany those people both by bus and to maintain a sense of security whilst the people were there. Obviously with no fences and those sorts of things security would have to be dealt with in a different way and probably that would be more manpower in doing so. The point that most people weren't going to run away was not seen to be reflected on a lot.
The other aspect, however, was the townspeople’s concerns themselves. Whilst the hierarchy of the town, the Woomera Board and Defence supported those things being used because they saw a reason for keeping those things there, the townspeople themselves were anxious about assimilating with the detainees. Various fuel for their concerns was through the media with all sorts of outbreaks of diseases and alarmist sort of reactions like that only added to the townspeople’s concerns, who were worried about their children's exposure to that, in particular, and their own.
DR OZDOWSKI: Could we move on and I would like to ask you how did it work between you and Canberra, or the manager of DIMIA in Woomera and Canberra? What is the relationship there?
WITNESS: It was interesting because I later on thought it was a bit of management without power, whatever I did was with Canberra's agreement. Whenever I tried to work maverick for expedience or something I would be castigated for it, but often I did because things would come up that needed, as I saw it, immediate attention, immediate decisions. A lot of those things then I would go back to Canberra and say: I've done this. Most were quite straightforward and accepted, some weren't and some were changed.
DR OZDOWSKI: So what you are saying really is that it was centrally managed really?
WITNESS: Absolutely, absolutely centrally managed.
DR OZDOWSKI: That the persons were almost like a post office box and the messages are…
WITNESS: Initially we had a very close open relationship, Canberra and I. As time went on they became quite closed and I found myself more and more in isolation from Canberra and the reasons behind why things were happening.
DR OZDOWSKI: And it would impact similarly all other people there or you because of some personal issues or whatever you felt closed out of it?
WITNESS: That is an interesting thought. I feel that the DIMIA manager there in Woomera was also finding the same sort of frustration. It may be because our particular style was more of involvement with the detainees, more of a hands-on trying to fix things. On more than one occasion we were told that we were getting too close to things, that it was not our role to be so obtainable.
DR OZDOWSKI: So it was the role of ACM in a way to have that direct contact and your role was to keep a few steps aside and because you didn't keep to that role Canberra started to …
WITNESS: It - it really wasn't my style.
DR OZDOWSKI: Yes, started to treat you a bit …
WITNESS: I'm not one to just sit back and just sort of observe things, report how it's not going to work or whatever, I'd rather be up-front and work with ACM, the infrastructure personnel and those sorts of things in order to see what problems were arising and decide them.
DR OZDOWSKI: And what was the relationship between you and ACM or between DIMIA officials and ACM officials?
WITNESS: Very good early on. It remained, I think, very good within Woomera. It is fair to say that [with] ACM hierarchy from Sydney, however, it was a more strained relationship. ACM, as far as infrastructure was concerned, were nervous about my involvement. I think ACM would have preferred to deal with the Department hierarchy without me there. That would have meant that they could …
DR OZDOWSKI: Deal with Canberra or deal with other officers in Woomera?
WITNESS: Certainly deal with Canberra as far as infrastructure was concerned, however, there was quite a lot of times, of course I could negate the practicality perhaps of what they were supposing or the reasons for what they were supposing to be done, I could sort of put them in another context and say: well, that really isn't a reason for doing those sorts of things, we should be looking for something else. I'm grasping at an example to make things clear, we could take the playground for argument’s sake, we had a playground all ready to put up and those sorts of things but ACM would refuse to put it up, to get it erected, because they had a liability issue with those of - and so they resisted it. Now, basically what it came to…
DR OZDOWSKI: But who was responsible for it, who was paying for it so to say?
WITNESS: ACM would have been first port of call, but you have expected perhaps the Department would then have to…
DR OZDOWSKI: Foot the bill?
WITNESS: Yes.
DR OZDOWSKI: But they still have got veto power in case you wanted to erect something and give them for the usage they could say, ‘No, no, we don't need it’?
WITNESS: That's right.
DR OZDOWSKI: And relating to equipment for children, was that the case?
WITNESS: Yes, they were the experts, I suppose, and as far as running the centre was concerned in knowing how they could run it. An imposition by the Department of actually doing things which would have an impact on resourcing, or have an impact on funding some way or whatever like that, they would withdraw from because they didn't want to take on that responsibility and to a certain extent, I'm not making myself very clear, I know, but to a certain extent, the Department wasn't really controlling the situation because ACM was still agreeing or not agreeing what they would operate under, if that makes sense. So they were saying: no, we won't do that unless we have got this in place.
DR OZDOWSKI: And possibly the agreement between you and ACM had something to do with it, which was quite possibly a fixed agreement?
WITNESS: Yes.
DR OZDOWSKI: But okay, going back as you said at the beginning, at least, at the Woomera level, the relationship between DIMIA and ACM people was very close?
WITNESS: Very close, yes.
DR OZDOWSKI: Very close. Was it that close that the division between the purchaser and the supplier was a bit lost in it?
WITNESS: All the time we had - see, ACM also had [another company] operating for them who were actually doing the purchasing and those sorts of aspects. So it is an arm of ACM to an extent. Yes, I mean, it was a difficult path, I can understand what you are saying, I mean, socially and work-wise, our relationship with [another company], with ACM and with Immigration was all quite friendly and all above board. Nevertheless, ACM, I relied on the facts they gave me to a certain extent and the facts that [another company] gave me to a certain extent as well as my own common sense to see whether things were correct or not. If they didn't make sense I would dig deeper and so on. So I was relying on what information I was given. Socially and work-wise we got on famously, but that's not to say that I couldn't be fed a load of fish and …
DR OZDOWSKI: I don't understand?
WITNESS: Pardon?
DR OZDOWSKI: I don't understand that?
WITNESS: I could - I could have been fed anything…
DR OZDOWSKI: Okay, okay.
WITNESS: …and have to agree with that unless my own sense told me or my own research told me that that was wrong.
DR OZDOWSKI: Would you, for example, if something had happened, if for example, ACM official dealt a bit harshly with a detainee…?
WITNESS: Right.
DR OZDOWSKI: …and there was a chance that it would spill over, would you close ranks at that stage?
WITNESS: No, I think, the ACM manager, my relationship with ACM was more through the manager than the people that were filtering through. The ACM managers up there were very, very – went by the book pretty much as far as I could work out. They - the only time we would be panicky about things and closing rank would be more in relation to the media in some ways coming on to the camp, all those sorts of aspects, rather than be openly cooperative with them. We might make barriers for them or something of that nature.
DR OZDOWSKI: Also for people like us or Ombudsman?
WITNESS: No, I wouldn't say that, in fact, no, the opposite often applied, we welcomed [it] because I saw, as far as the inmates were concerned, a positive benefit for them being able to feel that their claims or their position was being appreciated by somebody outside of Immigration, the Australian Government. They would chant for the UN, for various other people like that to hear their plight. They didn't believe the reaction that was given back in the papers sometimes which they read was reflective of all Australian society. They felt that it was manipulated. They felt that Australians, by and large, they felt their inhuman suffering, as they saw it, was not appreciated by people, with people in Australia and that they didn't believe that Australia would act that way.
DR OZDOWSKI: Yes, I can understand it. Now, could we move to younger people and children and maybe let us start with unaccompanied minors. Were they provided any special care, or any special protection, or any special services because of their status?
WITNESS: I think I'll start by saying that the camp was a large compound. There were no particular discreet areas to put people, certainly from in the first six to eight months. There was no discrete area to put anybody. They could be put, for argument’s sake, in the northwestern wing or whatever, but it didn't mean that someone from the southern area couldn't walk up there at any time of the day or night, and that was fact, they could. There was no restriction on people doing that. People could be asked why they were visiting a toilet in the northern area of the camp when they had one down the south, but if they wanted a walk, they wanted to walk, you know, and there was nothing to restrict them from that.
So as far as accommodation, as far as isolation or other protection of isolated minors, it wasn't possible other than by giving them a separate room and we had some, what we call dongas, five rooms separate and they could be put in there. Sometimes two, sometimes one, would be in at a time and they would be kept there and they could lock their door, well, they really couldn't lock their door because ACM wouldn't let them lock their door. It was possible for anyone to get at them, I suppose, but practically therefore there was no area of the camp they could be put which would ensure them not being intimidated, molested or whatever by other adults.
DR OZDOWSKI: What about families with children, were there any special measures put in place to…?
WITNESS: Similar situations happened where they would be put in these five room areas and perhaps that five rooms or that particular wing would be for families and those toilets and ablutions would be designated for families but other people still could use them.
DR OZDOWSKI: With toilets, why are the toilets not cleaned by ACM people?
WITNESS: I don't know.
DR OZDOWSKI: Yes, why it is left to clean itself, so to say?
WITNESS: I'm not sure to be honest, I was told and I just accepted that there were various duties that the people would do, eg, cooking. ACM would provide chefs and others would wanted to work then would work with those chefs. Similarly, with the ablutions it didn't need a supervisor to do that other than necessarily a block officer who would expect the toilets to be cleaned twice, three, four times a day or whatever was necessary. It seemed that people volunteered for these types of duties to relieve their boredom, to give them some sort of commitment. Why there weren't regular cleaning teams going through, I don't know. Again, a cost factor and I would imagine that it was an agreement under their contract that it was something that could be done by inmates.
DR OZDOWSKI: During your time there what was provided for children, was there school?
WITNESS: There was a kindergarten. There was a library, there was some sporting equipment, but not much else.
DR OZDOWSKI: Kindergarten was available for what, full days, eight hours a day for kids under five?
WITNESS: No, I've got to think back. It was available in the mornings I think, and again it was, although it was run by - encouraged by the recreation officer, there was a core group of inmates, women, who assisted and did various things in the kindergarten with the children, to entertain them.
DR OZDOWSKI: So basically, extending the basics, not only kindergarten but all other services for young people to - when did it start changing?
WITNESS: I don't think it did, I mean there were some things put in place such as computers and those sorts of things started to be put in place for the inmates. There was some videos and things like that but by the same token there was no - school wasn't compulsory. There was no, as I saw it, real curriculum for children attending school. It would be difficult to do that any way because there was a turnover of people, there was always somebody new coming in. The range of ages of the children would be quite marked and we might only be talking of say 30 or 40 children en masse. However, an excuse was perhaps that there needed - there didn't need to be a lot provided for children because they didn't come to those sorts of things, but the other answer could be perhaps if there were more provided they would have, perhaps if there was more of a range of activities and organised curriculum and those sorts of things then people would have come.
DR OZDOWSKI: I saw a number of teenagers, not this time but when I was there one year ago, just hanging around, doing nothing most of the day, standing in groups, or smoking or talking about something.
WITNESS: Yes, yes, sure.
DR OZDOWSKI: But they were really involved in nothing.
WITNESS: That's right.
DR OZDOWSKI: Was it a similar experience you had?
WITNESS: Yes, it was.
DR OZDOWSKI: How would you explain this?
WITNESS: It is pretty hard for me to be definitive about this but I was told by block officers and others that they hadn't been to school. A lot of these children hadn't been to school and weren't used to - weren't keen to go and study, they couldn't read and write, they weren't interested in doing that sort of thing. They'd been living by their wits, for argument's sake, so I was told, but it's very easy to generalise these sorts of aspects. It seemed to me as though there could have been a more concerted effort in targeting these groups.
There was a recreation officer, for argument's sake, and an education officer who could have done with more resources, more people to assist them, I think. Nevertheless these jobs were pretty difficult, I'd agree, because it was - they were largely thankless jobs, I think. A lot of the people there really only wanted to be released, to go somewhere else.
DR OZDOWSKI: I will ask my Assistant Commissioners to ask you a few questions because in a way we will run out of time.
WITNESS: I'm sorry if I'm going too far.
DR OZDOWSKI: Can I ask you one last question? In your experience with Immigration for over 30 years, what is really the likelihood of a family, an asylum-seeking family, absconding if it is left in the community?
WITNESS: I feel - and there's always exceptions and I don't want to focus on those - in general people are going to remain contactable. If a person has an application on foot and processing is continuing they will remain - you would expect them to remain in contact with the Department and available. It might be difficult though where things were being tested. Some of these people definitely came with their stories rehearsed. They may well have been in circumstances that would qualify for refugee circumstances anyway but they were virtually sold stories with their passages which they were told would give them refugee status and to stick to those stories. So they would assume identities or assume circumstances which had worked previously. As you know, when everyone is interviewed they are given a tape. A person takes that tape away on release. They figure therefore that those questions got them refugee - or those answers to those questions got them refugee status and they sell the tape. There were some people who clearly were not what they were saying to me. I would just glean that from conversation with them and from knowing them for some time.
DR OZDOWSKI: Possibly you are talking more about single males?
WITNESS: Correct. Families, I think that is a different situation in the main.
DR OZDOWSKI: Because in a way, at least to my mind and talking in some other places, if you have got, say, a family with three small kids and if you settle somewhere, say, on the weekly reporting or on a bond or some kind of community assurance and especially if the processing takes as long as it takes, you will stick by the rules because you will send the kids to school and so on.
WITNESS: Yes.
DR OZDOWSKI: At least to my mind it would be difficult to abscond at very short notice, in a way. So I'm asking you how would this in your experience…?
WITNESS: I don't want to be obtuse but I will answer it this way. To my mind we are not talking about a great many people for a start. Secondly, it is much more difficult for a family, if they do abscond, to hide because of the very things you just said. Therefore any immigration officer, enforcement officer, worth his salt should be able to track down that situation fairly quickly. I don't think there's a big risk in my own view. In the balance of things I think you would say you are not talking a lot of risk here, you are not talking a lot of probability. Let us work with something where we release them and have them on a reporting basis.
Now, that brings the question therefore though of why wouldn't you extend that to everyone and I think that question also needs to be asked honestly by the Department. Is it worth putting all of our resources or all of this money into mandatory detention and all of the infrastructure, et cetera, to make sure that that is somewhat humane or whatever, for as long as necessary to determine these people's status and then get rid of them if they don't qualify. Should we put all this money into that or should we put them into the community and then seek those out, those 10 per cent or whatever it is, who choose not to report and abscond at the end of the process?
DR OZDOWSKI: You are giving this evidence in-camera but it is in a way very important information for us. Would it be possible to report, say for example, that an experienced officer of the Department was of the view that the risk of absconding of families is not huge or, as you said, that it is very small or something, or it would identify you …
WITNESS: I've got no problem with that. I'm just thinking the Departmental response would be, ‘Well, what would that person know anyway’.
DR OZDOWSKI: Okay. Let us put it this way. If we would like to use any bit of what you said in the report we will come back to you and we will clear it with you.
WITNESS: I've got no problem. I just remember - if I can digress, sir - when I was manager of the enforcement area for some time I made a comment which was reported in the press [location removed] at one stage because I got on the radio there to talk about compliance and employers and those sorts of things. I made a fairly glib statement like, ‘most of the people who overstay have done no wrong other than overstay their visas. They are not criminals, they have really just overstayed their visa, taken an opportunity not to return home, for economic gain sometimes or for other reasons.’ Well, I was jumped on from a great height by an officer from the Department who brought out reams of statistics of how many criminals there were at large which - and I went back a little tongue-in-cheek and said, ‘Well, that doesn't say much for the rest of our migration system because really the people we pick up are only a snapshot of what we bring in legally anyway’ and that didn't get me any friends either. But you can imagine, yes, the Department's reaction was, ‘What are you?’ You know, heresy virtually. What I'm just saying now is heresy too, but I do believe we should be looking at things in a different way and having left Woomera I question why I was involved in a role there as unquestioned as I was when I was doing it.
DR OZDOWSKI: [Name removed], thank you. Let's allow other people to talk and I will sit quiet. I will try to do my best.
MS LESNIE: Could I just follow up on what you just said. What do you think are the reasons that allowed you to do what you did in Woomera - allowed you to work in Woomera without having concerns at that time?
WITNESS: You become very steeped in what you're doing. You are also trying to do the job for which you are paid. I've been an immigration officer for a long time. I was used to serving various Ministers and some I disagreed with but I never got into a situation really where I questioned the ethics of things and sometimes you have to be divorced from the role in order to look askance at it and ask yourself what on earth were you doing.
Probably after coming away from Woomera, as I've said in my affidavit, I suffered some trauma and I was undergoing counselling which led me to confront these issues myself. As a result I was asking myself why I couldn't see these sorts of things and what I could have done if I had seen them. Would there have been anything practical I could have done? The Minister, I had his ear from time to time. You are apolitical while you are doing your job. You were paid to do an apolitical job, so you did it.
If I had come down to questioning my role and not liking it, and there have been plenty of times through my service where I have questioned my role, I've moved and done something else and probably that would have been open to me then. Resignation or something of that nature wouldn't have been the issue but it had never caused me to actually address my whole ethics and say, I shouldn't be working for Immigration if this is the way I feel.
MS LESNIE: While I have got your ear, I was just wondering if you could elaborate actually on the last sentence in your statement. You said that while you did the best you could, the parameters are fundamentally flawed when it comes to providing for children's needs. I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit more on the parameters that you are referring to.?
WITNESS: What I was referring to there was the camp itself and the facilities within the camp were never intended for children; were never set up for children; were never envisaged that they would be part of it. Our whole aspect, if we were starting from scratch, I would hope would be quite different. We've got children, we've got families, we've got single women, we've got single men. How do we cope with these things? To my mind we would need to, if we were going to maintain them in a prison environment as we seem intent on doing, then we need to do it in accordance with their individual safety, respect for their privacy and those aspects.
MS LESNIE: Do you know anything about the new centre planned at Baxter?
WITNESS: Not much. I believe it's going to be more purpose-built. There was some accommodation, for argument's sake, which was commissioned while I was up there right at the very end which were meant to be more comfortable, more able to provide for families all to be in one block together. However, there was still the issue of ablutions being separate. Now, as I understand it, I've heard from somewhere - in the back of my mind it's still there - that there are going to be ablutions attached to these wards or whatever they have at Baxter. So maybe that will overcome some issues of safety and privacy that really wasn't possible at Woomera.
PROF THOMAS: You said in your statement that you were threatened on a number of occasions by detainees:
...and felt that my life was in danger.
Did that apply also to other officers?
WITNESS: Yes. Yes, it did.
PROF THOMAS: So can …?
WITNESS: I don't know if you want me to elaborate.
PROF THOMAS: How was your relationship then with the detainees and the children especially, how did you observe the relationship between the children and the other officers?
WITNESS: There was one time when there was a series of marches along with a hunger strike at the camp and each afternoon and each evening there would be a march around the camp of chanting and those sorts of things. The nurses were trying to break the hunger strike with individuals who were starting to become ill and we were very concerned about the children. The children were hungry but their families wouldn't permit them to eat. At one stage the children were gathered at one of the gates of the compound and there was people marching around. I went and grabbed a basketful of fruit from the kitchen and took it to the children. When I did, people then came from everywhere and ripped the fruit - adults - ripped the fruit out of my hands, some of them ate it and some of them destroyed it. I then went and got some more fruit and ordered more fruit to be brought, as much as could be brought, and I opened the gate and went in and I ordered the adults to stand back. There was no ACM officers with me. It was quite a riotous situation but I was determined that I was going to give the children the fruit.
I rather authoritatively told the people to stay 10 metres back and to stay there until I had given the children the fruit and then I would give them some fruit if they wanted it. The children then grabbed the fruit and so on. Luckily that worked. There were other times the physical threat was real. There was the chanting and parading around was quite threatening. Some of the fences were not - they were fairly high and unwieldy and people would shake the fences. There was such a mob mentality there that if they had pushed the fence down and got into the administration area I'm not sure whether any of us would have been safe. We would have been outnumbered some 10 to one. There's nothing we could have done to stop them. The CERT team, the response team, the ACM officers would have been just as vulnerable as I was and certainly I wouldn't have been resisted. At worst - at best the administration would have been trashed and burnt. At worst lives would have been lost and that was possible.
There was a time that I - I don't wish to digress too much but there was one other time where there was a break-out of the secure area very imminent and we had to get a padlock and a big lock around the gates. To come out into the area would have given them free access to the admin area and everything else and most of these people in this secure area were quite bad. They'd shown complete disregard and some were quite violent. They were pushing on these gates, these large gates, as a phalanx and they'd pushed them open. The response team and various ACM officers were pushing back on them so that they got the gates closed.
[Company name removed] employees, engineers, and myself were trying to get a chain around the gate and then we were attacked with - anything that could be used was thrust through the bars at us to spear us or to lance us. A response officer was injured badly in the leg even though he had protective gear and a shield, he was trying to protect us. One of the fellows, one of the engineers, was on his belly on the ground putting this chain through and he managed to get the chain and the padlock on. I'd had enough of this standing about five metres back and being rained on with rocks and various other things and I ran in and grabbed his legs and pulled him back. I said, ‘Enough, let them go’ but he'd just got the padlock on. He was badly bruised and scratched but luckily nothing worse.
DR OZDOWSKI: What about children? Were they involved in these kinds of skirmishes?
WITNESS: No.
DR OZDOWSKI: They were not there?
WITNESS: No.
DR OZDOWSKI: So parents put them …
WITNESS: This was in a very bad part of the camp, a different aspect. Sometimes children - children weren't used in that physical confrontation situation. Whenever I was confronted in the main compound or anything else by 50 or 60 people they were men, very angry and would be right in the face and no one could have protected me if things got really heated and it was more my diplomacy or foolhardiness, I don't know what it was, but I regarded if I was going to communicate with these people and respond to their needs and anticipate what they required in an effort to make it the best I could for them, I needed to be able to communicate with them and be there with them. I wasn't going to be scared of them, there was no point.
MS LESNIE: Did DIMIA provide you with any sort of de-briefing from that event?
WITNESS: No.
MS LESNIE: So you were left to deal with it by yourself?
WITNESS: Yes. They probably would have said I was an idiot for doing what I did but it was the only way I could do the job, the way I felt I needed to do the job. Also I felt that these people were in dire circumstances not because - they weren't reacting against me, they didn't want to harm me, they just wanted to get out and they wanted some answers. They did - I understood - I expected respect what I said because I always spoke the truth. There was no point harming me because then they'd have no one to speak to. I really believed that and I think they did too.
MRS SULLIVAN: Would you like to make a comment about ACM’s recruitment and training processes in terms of their subsequent interaction with kids? So the first one is recruitment?
WITNESS: Yes.
MRS SULLIVAN: Then the second one is training.
WITNESS: It is easy to be - I was appalled actually at the standard of officers that sometimes presented as ACM officers. I thought they were inappropriate.
MS LESNIE: Can you give an example without mentioning any individual?
WITNESS: A lot came from prison backgrounds. They were prison officers on leave and I think their reaction was basic to most situations. I don't want to generalise but quite a few of them I think did not have a very good education and their response to argument was to fight.
PROF THOMAS: I notice now that many are women now. How about during your time?
WITNESS: There were quite a few women also at the time. None of the CERT team, which I call the response team, were women, and I think a lot of the people I'm talking about were in this response unit, picked, because they were rugby scrum players who weren't scared of anything and who meted out - who were prepared to bully, if you like.
MRS SULLIVAN: So let us move on to the training bit then. Was there any specific training in relation to their interactions with children that you are aware of?
WITNESS: I don't believe there was. I'd be surprised if there was. I think their training was more in relation to how to manage the people and usually it was from a point of how you made people do things they didn't feel like doing or whatever, how to run a prison camp. It wasn't. ‘What are we trying to do here?’ It wasn't a matter of questioning your ethics or ‘What are we trying to achieve?’ It would have been better to come from, instead of a prison containment sort of background, to come from a welfare type of background and say, ‘How could we help these types of people?’ The few people who were trained in those sorts of avenues were the teachers, the social workers, the nurses and those sorts of people but the general ACM officers were not. Some were very good but a lot were not, in my view.
MRS SULLIVAN: Did you see any obvious differences between those human services staff - the teachers, the doctors, the nurses - in their interactions with children compared with what you would expect of their interactions in the broader community?
WITNESS: Yes, those sorts of people were very aware of the vulnerability of the children and sometimes of the trauma of particular children. In some instances where they were encouraged to spend more time with them the teachers would look after them more concentratedly. Others were encouraged to be at the medical centre and run errands to be close to the nurses.
MRS SULLIVAN: So there were sort of informal mechanisms for this to happen?
WITNESS: There was.
MRS SULLIVAN: Did people take these issues formally to the management?
WITNESS: I think some did complain about - I think there was a couple of nurses who complained about some abuse of children. Whether they were factual or not I don't know. There was some instances nevertheless - I remember one fellow, for argument's sake, one lad who was diagnosed by the psychologist as having severe trauma to the extent that he was grinding his teeth in his sleep and needed quite concentrated ongoing treatment. We were able to get Canberra Immigration to agree to move the family to Villawood where the services of a psychologist would be much more accessible on a more regular basis but that took some time.
The nurses were well aware and used to seek him out each day and keep him close with them, have him involved in those sorts of aspects. What had happened was the lad had his mother and sister taken off the plane as he and his father - he and his father were allowed to continue on. The young lad was close to his mother and missed her and worried about her welfare. The father took little interest in the welfare of the boy and I'm told that that was reasonably common.
DR OZDOWSKI: [Witness name removed], maybe one last thing. We see for example quite a number of people who go to places like Woomera and are teachers, doctors and so on, who spend a relatively very short period of time there and then they are very strong critics of whole system. When the people who are there a longer period of time, they maybe see it more as natural, as normal. Yes, they are critical of some aspects, but basically are more or less satisfied with how it works. How would you explain this differentiation?
WITNESS: While I was working for DIMIA I think I was in a situation where I really felt we were doing the best with what we got. To a large extent I felt we could have achieved a lot more if there had been more respect for property and more respect for the services we were trying to provide. We could have …
DR OZDOWSKI: By detainees? More respect by detainees?
WITNESS: Yes. There would be a lot more encouragement to provide a lot more things and a lot more openness to communication and various things like that if there was more respect for them. Equipment was always being tampered with which made it difficult. I've lost my train of thought. Sorry, no, I've got it back.
DR OZDOWSKI: Some time is critical.
WITNESS: When I left Woomera and I was forced to confront what had happened to me there and I started to question my ethics about why I was there or what I achieved or what I hoped to achieve while I was there, then my thinking was different. I think then the whole reason for people going to Woomera should have been questioned more and I questioned it more, whereas at Woomera I accepted it because you become more inwardly focused.
DR OZDOWSKI: A part of the system?
WITNESS: Correct, and trying to work within it, trying to do the very best within the parameters you had. When you can move outside of those parameters, you wonder why the parameters were ever set.
DR OZDOWSKI: When you observed people there, the detainees, how long did it take for them - for mental health to start to deteriorate?
WITNESS: Some were very good. Some managed to hang on to normality if you like for quite a few months. Others were severely traumatised when they came and you could see by their reaction that they were quite mistrustful, nervous, closed in everything they did. They just sank down very quickly and some bizarre behaviour, yes.
DR OZDOWSKI: My impression not so much from this, but from the previous visits, was that people usually who arrived quite recently, and I would say up to three months and they quite often were still in separation, were saying very good things about Australia, they were thankful and so on.
WITNESS: I think that is right.
DR OZDOWSKI: But I think this three, four month period of time was as far as they could take it, and regardless of what conditions there were, because looking even at Cocos Islands after four months, men were crying and they were basically sitting on the beach there.
WITNESS: Yes.
DR OZDOWSKI: Yes, without any fences.
WITNESS: I think that is right. As it goes on you wonder, if we're here that long, how long is it going to be? All I know is that the question of when are we going to be released became not a lip need but something that was just - sometimes they despaired of asking it, but they would never stop asking it because it might be them, it might be that they would get a ‘yes’ but they never got a ‘yes’. They never got, ‘it will be in two weeks’, or ‘six weeks’, and that was the worst part, not knowing how long.
Even a person in prison generally knows how long they are there for and getting back to what you start with, often it is what they were told by the people smugglers that they would be taken into custody and would remain in custody for X weeks, X months, whatever. So there was an expectation at least of that, but once that had gone they would say, often the inmates then would say, ‘but we were told we wouldn't be kept longer than this and yet we are. We haven't even been interviewed yet. Why is this?’ And quite rightly, you would say, ‘yes, I agree’.
DR OZDOWSKI: The Minister or others would possibly say that if we were to release families with children to the community to wait for a decision then everyone, all refugees would be coming on a boat with their family. How do you deal with this kind of an argument?
WITNESS: Well, I don't know. It would be interesting wouldn't it, to see whether in fact the policy has worked against people coming here or whether it is just the hazardness of the route that people choose to go to other places. I mean there are many thousands …
DR OZDOWSKI: Factors.
WITNESS: … in Europe who are going there in various countries, many, many thousands. Why would they come to Australia? It is a long way away for a start from the Middle East. It is a circuitous route and it is quite a dangerous one. It is not as though you can just get off an aircraft. I'm sure all of these people would have just been on an aircraft if they could have been or had that assurance that they would at least be landed. I just wonder whether Mr Ruddock may well say that his policies are working by discouraging them from coming.
It is a pity that Australia's heart is so hard in this matter. If it came from a different light I don't think it would matter too much. We had quite a different reaction to the Vietnamese when they came here. There was an encouragement by the government to process people quickly and for the community to accept them and I think we are richer for that today. I know we are. I'm not sure we need to be so feared but there is a xenophobia about the Middle Easterners by this government as I see it.
DR OZDOWSKI: Thank you very much. Anything further? No. Thank you very much and I really do appreciate your contribution to this Inquiry.
WITNESS: Thank you, Doctor.
Last Updated 12 August 2003.
