Friday 22 August 2014

UN agency in High Court challenge to Abbott government's treatment of asylum seekers

UN agency in High Court challenge to Abbott government's treatment of asylum seekers

UN agency in High Court challenge to Abbott government's treatment of asylum seekers











George Newhouse: case will test the government's powers
George Newhouse: case will test the government's powers







The United Nations refugee agency will seek to appear in a
High Court challenge to the Abbott government's power to intercept boats
on the highs seas, hold asylum seekers indefinitely on customs vessels
and seek to return them to third countries.




The full court will hear the challenge in October and rule on
the legality of the government's recent treatment of 157 Tamil asylum
seekers who were held in windowless rooms on a customs vessel for almost
a month before their transfer to Australia and then Nauru.





The UNHCR is planning to apply to appear in the case not as a
litigant, but to assist the court on points of international law. It
will be the first time the agency has sought such leave since 2006.




A lawyer representing the asylum seekers, George Newhouse,
said on Thursday the case would test the power of the government "to
intercept a boat on the high seas, hold the passengers virtually as
prisoners for a month and then attempt to send them back to another
country".





"This is a case that has never been tested before and the
power of the government to undertake such action is in question," Mr
Hewhouse said after a hearing before the full court was set for October
14 and 15.




"This has important implications not just for Australia, but
for all nations, and it's likely that we will see intervention from
human rights bodies both here and internationally," he said.




The Australian Human Rights Commission is also set to apply to appear before the court.



The Human Rights Law Centre’s director of legal advocacy,
Daniel Webb, said he remained deeply concerned about the wellbeing of
the 157 and the circumstances in which they were "forcibly and
secretively" transferred to Nauru. 




“They were together eating a meal, then suddenly they were
rounded up, split into three groups and taken to separate locations," Mr
Webb said.




"Once there, they were told they were going to Nauru and
asked to sign forms. Many of them were crying and pleading to speak with
their lawyers. Their requests were refused and they were told they were
going to Nauru whether they liked it or not. The families were then
forcibly put on buses and taken to the airport.




“These people had just spent almost a month locked in
windowless rooms on a boat. Now they were being forced onto buses by
guards under the cover of darkness and refused access to their lawyers.
They were terrified.” 




Mr Webb said the ordeal has taken its toll on all members of
the group, but expressed particular concern as to the impact on the
children.




“There are 50 children in this group who have endured a truly
wretched few months. First they were detained at sea. Then they were
secretly and forcibly taken away to Nauru. Now they’re languishing in
detention on a remote Pacific island in conditions the UN has described
as inhumane and unsuitable for children."




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Wednesday 20 August 2014

If you're a kid in detention, a date is everything

If you're a kid in detention, a date is everything









If you’re a kid in detention, a date is everything




Scott Morrison is trying to manage the politics of children in detention.
AAP/Nikki Short



Scott Morrison’s release of more children from detention is
selective, and the timing of his announcement has a distinctly political
flavour to it.




The decision applies to about 150 children under ten years old, who
will be out by Christmas, but not to the several hundred more who
arrived from July 19 last year, when Kevin Rudd made his announcement
that all asylum seekers would be sent offshore. To let those out would
undermine the government’s deterrence policy, Morrison says.




There are currently 876 children in detention, including on Nauru.
This is 516 fewer than at the election. At the end of July there were
148 on Christmas Island.




Morrison says the government has progressively released children, and
blames Labor for the slowness, on the grounds fresh arrangements for
bridging visas had to be made. “Labor’s arrangements for bridging visas
were insufficient to protect and support young children.”




The timing is pointed, coming days before Morrison appears at the
Human Rights Commission inquiry into children in immigration detention,
which reports to parliament in mid-September. Morrison says he’s been
working on the plan for months. When he was asked whether this
announcement was about “trying to improve your image before you front
the Human Rights Commission” he replied: “That is a pretty cynical
question”.




Cynical question or not, the minister no doubt wanted to have some
positive news out, though one would imagine, given earlier evidence from
doctors about the bad conditions to which children have been subjected
and the fact there is no release for many, that he might be in for some
stern interrogation when he appears on Friday.




Like most other stages of the asylum debate, the Abbott government is
reliving Howard government experience in relation to children in
detention.




But Howard’s hand on children was forced especially by the moderates
on his backbench. These days, the Liberal moderate voices are silent. At
least the Human Rights Commission inquiry has had some public impact.




While Morrison is trying to manage the politics of children in
detention, he is also at work to finalise an agreement – of which
Australia should be ashamed – that would send people from Nauru to
Cambodia.




Alastair Nicholson, chair of Children’s Rights International and a
former chief justice of the Family Court, who is very familiar with
Cambodia, on Monday made the compelling case against this scheme.




“The concept of Australia sending people who are in need of refuge to
a country like that is almost indescribably bad as policy,” he told the
ABC’s Lateline.




It would be especially bad for unaccompanied minors, he said
(although it is not known whether there would be any of these among the
people sent).




“I don’t believe that asylum seekers or anyone else gets very much
protection from the law in Cambodia … It’s one of the poorest countries
you would find in southeast Asia … It’s just the worst sort of place
from the point of view of sending asylum seekers, and particularly
asylum seekers who don’t have any cultural or other ties to the
country.”




We still know little about the Cambodian arrangement. Morrison’s
claim on Tuesday that “we’ve made no secret of the fact that we’re in
these discussions with Cambodia” is a stretch. The first information
came from the Cambodians, as has most that followed. The Australian
government reportedly pressed (not very successfully) on Cambodian
officialdom a desire for confidentiality.




As Nicholson said: “We’re never told anything about what the
minister’s doing – that’s part of the problem, really. And once it’s
done, there’s very little that can be done about it.”




We have got used to the Morrison style of secrecy.



For example when he kept a boatload of asylum seekers on the ocean
for weeks, refusing to say where they were. His declining to talk about
“on water” matters became a matter for ridicule as well as concern.




The reality of what’s done behind the scenes in border protection policy can be much at odds with the gestures.



Guardian Australia is reporting emails
obtained under freedom of information showing the immigration
department’s efforts to repatriate (voluntarily) Syrians from Manus and
Nauru earlier this year.




This week Morrison said 4400 places would be reserved in the
(existing) refugee program for Syrians and Iraqis. The government wanted
to be seen to be doing something in line with Tony Abbott’s strong
rhetoric about the crisis in Iraq.




A disconnect? One would think so. As there will be between the fates
of children, depending on whether they arrived before or after a
particular date.




POSTCRIPT: It is reported
from PNG that police have charged two men over the murder of Iranian
asylum seeker Reza Barati, killed during the Manus Island riots in
February. The men are said to have worked for G4S, the company that
managed security at the time. One was arrested in July and the other
this week.















Monday 18 August 2014

Advocates slam Coalition over refugee intake

Advocates slam Coalition over refugee intake

Advocates slam Coalition over refugee intake




Date
  • 18 reading now








"It was extremely disappointing that up to 4000 applicants waiting in the queue missed out on places in this program": Scott Morrison.
"It was extremely disappointing that up to 4000
applicants waiting in the queue missed out on places in this program":
Scott Morrison. Photo: Wolter Peeters








Australia will quarantine one-third of its humanitarian
program  for Iraqis and Syrians fleeing the violence of terror group
Islamic State, but refugee advocates have condemned the government for
reducing its refugee intake despite the growing crisis in the Middle
East.




Sweden has announced it will take unlimited numbers of Syrian
refugees and Germany said it would take an additional 10,000, bringing
its intake to 20,000. Norway will accept an extra 1000.





Australia reduced its humanitarian program refugee intake last year from 20,000 to 13,750.




"This is phoney generosity, trying to mask the fact that Australia has cut its refugee intake from 20,000 to 13,750": Ian Rintoul.
"This is phoney generosity, trying to mask the fact
that Australia has cut its refugee intake from 20,000 to 13,750": Ian
Rintoul. Photo: Louie Douvis







For this financial year, 4,400 of those 13,750 places will be
reserved for Iraqis and Syrians who have fled  violence and genocide in
their countries.





Immigration minister Scott Morrison said more places were
available under Australia’s special humanitarian program (a sub-category
of the humanitarian program) because of the government's "success
...  in stopping the flow of boats”.




“It was extremely disappointing that up to 4,000 applicants
waiting in the queue missed out on places in this program, and that
their places were being taken up by those who had arrived illegally by
boat. This practice has ended under the Abbott Government,,” Mr Morrison
said.




But Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul said there were no extra refugee places in Mr Morrison’s announcement .



“This is phoney generosity, trying to mask the fact that
Australia has cut its refugee intake from 20,000 to 13,750. This is not a
humanitarian response, this is hiding the fact that we are accepting
fewer refugees than we were.”




Mr Rintoul also condemned the “false dichotomy” of separating
refugees who received visas to Australia offshore from those who
reached Australia by boat.




“It’s blatantly hypocritical. We say we will resettle Yazidis
from northern Iraq, but if those people were on a boat they would be
locked up offshore.”




David Manne, from the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre,
said while Australia’s commitment to fulfilling its humanitarian intake
was welcomed, the program needed to be urgently restored to 20,000
places and even expanded.




“The fact of the matter is that behind the rhetoric,
Australia has reduced its humanitarian intake at a time when there has
never been greater need in the world for humanitarian protection.
Currently, more than 50 million people are refugees or displaced within
their own countries,'' Mr Manne said..”




 Human Rights Law Centre director Daniel Webb said the
reserved places for Iraqi and Syrian refugees in the Middle East exposed
the “senseless cruelty” of offshore processing of those from the same
countries who arrived by boat.




“It’s a complete misrepresentation to say that we are only
able to accept these refugees because we’ve denied protection to
others,'' Mr Webb said.




Ongoing violence in the Middle East has sparked mass movements of refugees.



In recent days, up to 35,000 Iraqi Yazidis have fled Islamic
State-led genocide, many escaping from Mount Sinjar through Syria to
camps in the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan.




The three-year Syrian civil war has forced up to
two-and-a-half million civilians to escape that country, mainly for
camps in Jordan and Lebanon.




Australia is the third largest ''third-country’' resettler of
refugees in the world, behind the US and Canada. But fewer than 1 per
cent of the world’s refugees are resettled in a third country.




In absolute terms, Australia ranks 49th in the world for refugee intake, and 69th in the world on a refugees per capita basis.









Wednesday 6 August 2014

Gaza: when words fail

Gaza: when words fail









Gaza: when words fail

article by  Mike Beeson






EPA/Oliver Weiken



The continuing slaughter of women and children in Gaza is a painful
reminder of the inadequacy of international institutions and our
collective inability to impose order, let alone justice, in the world.
The absence of a united ‘international community’ is plainly one reason it is so difficult to address even the most confronting and unnecessary of humanitarian crises.




There are others, though, which may point to an even more pervasive
and corrosive threat to the way we conduct and think about international
relations.




It is not only the Palestinians who are being brutalised at the
moment, though. So are we, albeit at an altogether less traumatic,
sensory level. The increasingly routine nature of human suffering not
only deadens our emotional responses, it also risks normalising high
levels of indiscriminate organised violence as an acceptable part of
international affairs.




Cynics may say it was ever thus, but it’s important to recognise that
– until recently, at least – there seemed to be a growing aversion to
using force to ‘solve’ international problems.




This is – or was – not only surprising, but mildly optimism-inducing,
especially when seen against the backdrop of what some of the leading
lights of international relations theory would have us believe.




According to Thucydides, widely considered the father of Realist
thinking, the strong do what they will and the weak endure what they
must. This cheery aphorism not only applied to ancient Greece, Realists
claim, but to every period in history – including our own.




And yet not only has interstate violence been in precipitous decline
for decades, but the most powerful states have not always taken
advantage of their overwhelming military superiority. Many people are –
understandably, perhaps – critical of America’s involvement in Iraq and
the violence this involved and unleashed. What most people don’t
consider though is that it might have been far worse.




The great paradox of America’s foreign policy is that for all its
military might it has been unable to win decisive military victories
against Third World, even third rate, opposition. Why? Because American
foreign policymakers felt some degree of socially constructed,
non-military inhibition about what they could and couldn’t do.




In Vietnam, for example, the Americans drew the line at using nuclear
weapons in the North, even though there was little chance that either
the Soviet Union or China could have done much to stop them.




Much the same could be said about North Korea now. The US could
remove the North Korean regime and its military tomorrow if it wished to
do so, with very little fear of retaliation from China or anyone else.
One reason that it does not is that this is simply unacceptable
behaviour.




For a nation that styles itself the leader of the free world and a
beacon of progressive values, killing thousands, possibly millions of
innocents to remove a strategic threat would not be a good look – no
matter how odious the regime.




Put simply, the US is constrained in part by domestic and
international public opinion and the norms of non-violence and
proportionality that have become an entrenched, if sometimes
unrecognised, part of an increasingly transnational order.




Being a good international citizen means accepting the legitimacy and
appropriateness of such norms. It is precisely this non-material
influence on international behaviour that is currently being undermined
by recent events.




We have already become accustomed to the idea that at least one
country has the right, if not the responsibility, to employ drones to
eliminate people who are deemed – rightly or wrongly – to be
‘terrorists’.




Inevitably there is ‘collateral damage’ in the form of civilians who
are in the wrong place at the wrong time. The ‘good’ thing about such
weapons from the perspective of those that deploy them is that they
involve no risk to their users, and because they are unseen, evoke
little public outcry.




What’s happening in Palestine is – or ought to be – different. We can
literally see for ourselves that not only is it painfully apparent that
blameless women and children are the principal victims, but it also
becoming evident that, for some people at least, it is the necessary and
acceptable cost of dealing with an implacable foe.




In other words, the normative constraints that have hitherto stopped
states from using disproportionate force – especially when the world’s
media is looking over their shoulders – no longer seem to apply in quite
the same way. Our socially constructed, discursively realised, ideas
about humanity, morality and justice are in danger of being permanently
undermined.




True, words will become important once again – if only so the
protagonists can use them to call a halt to the current mayhem Gaza.
Whether they will have lost some of their potential potency when it
comes to curbing future outrages remains to be seen.




I’m reluctantly coming to the view that Thucydides may have known
something awful, true and timeless about some of the more powerful parts
of humanity.







Tuesday 5 August 2014

Australia's detention regime sets out to make asylum seekers suffer, says chief immigration psychiatrist | World | The Guardian

Australia's detention regime sets out to make asylum seekers suffer, says chief immigration psychiatrist | World | The Guardian

Australia's detention regime sets out to make asylum seekers suffer, says chief immigration psychiatrist




Guardian Australia exclusive: Doctor who was
responsible for mental health of people in detention becomes the most
senior figure to condemn system from within, saying immigration
department deliberately harms vulnerable detainees in a process akin to
torture










Australia’s asylum detention regime is akin to torture, says immigration’s mental health chief.


The chief psychiatrist responsible for the care of asylum seekers in
detention for the past three years has accused the immigration
department of deliberately inflicting harm on vulnerable people, harm
that cannot be remedied by medical care.



“We have here an environment that is inherently toxic,” Dr Peter Young told Guardian Australia.
“It has characteristics which over time reliably cause harm to people’s
mental health. We have very clear evidence that that’s the case.”





Dr Peter Young, who until a month ago was director of mental health services at International Health and Medical Services

Dr Peter Young, who until a month ago was director of mental health
services at International Health and Medical Services, the private
contractor that provides medical care at Australia’s detention centres.
Photograph: Mike Bowers for the Guardian


Advertisement
Young
is the most senior figure ever to condemn the detention system from
within. Until a month ago he was director of mental health for
International Health and Medical Services (IHMS), the private contractor
that provides medical care to detention centres on the Australian
mainland, Christmas Island, Nauru and Manus Island.



Young has extensively briefed Guardian Australia about a system he
says is deliberately harsh, breaks people’s health, costs a fortune,
compromises the ethics of doctors and is intended to place asylum
seekers under “strong coercive pressure” to abandon plans to live in
Australia. “Suffering is the way that is achieved.”



He believes this process is akin to torture: “If we take the
definition of torture to be the deliberate harming of people in order to
coerce them into a desired outcome, I think it does fulfil that
definition.”



Young strongly criticised the immigration department for:


Delays that endanger health in bringing
patients to Australia from Manus and Nauru: “It is seen as undesirable
because it undermines the idea that people are never going to Australia
and also because of the concern that if people arrive onshore then they
may have access to legal counsel and other assistance.”



Leaving people in detention who are
acutely suicidal: “Trying to manage them in a non-therapeutic setting
like that is just inherently futile. It’s not going to work.”



Returning patients with less severe
problems to detention despite medical advice that they cannot be
expected “to fully respond to treatment in an environment that was
making them sick”.



Misusing patient information. “People
disclose a lot of personal information which is then recorded in notes
which are then available to non-medical people for other purposes.”
Young says the dual role of IHMS staff treating detainees but reporting
to the department raises fundamental ethical problems for doctors in the
system.



Displaying an obsession with secrecy:
“Speaking out of turn is clamped down on whenever it occurs … they
continue to maintain the fantasy that they can keep everything a
secret.”



Reluctance to gather and use mental
health statistics that might “result in controversy or threaten the
application of the policies of deterrence”.



Directing doctors not to put in
writing that detention has led to deterioration in their patients’
mental health. IHMS doctors ignored the direction. Young said they saw
evidence all around them of detainees “sick because they are there and
getting sicker while they remain there”.







Asylum seekers’ medical records ‘are being used against them’.


Guardian Australia contacted IHMS and the immigration minister for comment, neither responded.


The Manus camp particularly appalled Young. “When you go to Manus Island
and you walk down what is called the ‘walk of shame’ between the
compounds and you see the men there at the fences it’s an awful
experience,” he says.



“You have to feel shame. You have to understand what that feeling is
about in order to be able to be compassionate. By feeling the shame you
stay on the right side of the line.”



Young told Guardian Australia IHMS figures had shown for some time
that a third of adults and children in the detention system had what he
called “a significant-level disorder”. If they were living in Australia,
that would require the care of specialist medical health services. The
figures only got worse as detainees stayed longer in detention: “After a
year it approaches 50%.”



Last week, in alarming evidence to an Australian Human Rights Commission inquiry,
Young said the immigration department had refused to accept IHMS
statistics proving damage to children and adolescents held in prolonged
detention. He told the inquiry: “The department reacted with alarm and
asked us to withdraw the figures.”



In a belligerent appearance before the inquiry, the secretary of the
immigration department, Martin Bowles, accused the president of the
Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, of making “highly emotive
claims” about health problems in the detention system. He had not heard
evidence of the problems provided by Young and other IHMS doctors
earlier in the day.





Martin Bowles, secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, gives evidence at last week's Human Rights Commission inquiry.

Martin Bowles, secretary of the Department of Immigration and Border
Protection, gives evidence at last week’s Human Rights Commission
inquiry. Photograph: Joel Carrett/AAP


His hand shook as he confronted Triggs. When his evidence produced
laughter he demanded the room be silenced. He refused to answer some
questions and retreated at times behind a wall of bureaucratic prose.



But Bowles did not deny a link between prolonged detention and mental
illness. He called this a “well-established” issue and insisted his
department was doing “everything it humanly can” to provide “appropriate
medical care” to address the mental health problems of detainees.



Young told Guardian Australia that was impossible: “The problem is the system.”


Young is confident that in his time at IMHS the men and women working
for him made better assessments of detainees’ health and delivered much
better treatment than in the past.



“But you can’t mitigate the harm, because the system is designed to
create a negative mental state. It’s designed to produce suffering. If
you suffer, then it’s punishment. If you suffer, you’re more likely to
agree to go back to where you came from. By reducing the suffering
you’re reducing the functioning of the system and the system doesn’t
want you to do that.



“Everybody knows that the harm is being caused and the system carries
on. Everybody accepts that this is the policy and the policy cannot
change. And everybody accepts that the only thing you can do is work
within the parameters of the policy.”



The window of reasonableness closes

Young arrived in the system in 2011 at a crucial moment: the high
court was about to knock back the Gillard government’s proposed “Malaysia solution”
and, as the boats arrived in ever-increasing numbers, the detention
system was bursting at the seams. So the government began processing
detainees quickly and releasing large numbers into the community on
bridging visas. “The problems that we were seeing from a mental health
perspective decreased massively.”



Young has been a psychiatrist for nearly 20 years, most of that time
working in public health. He joined IHMS believing the detention system
was problematic but confident that good could be done from the inside.
“I felt that given the experience I had I could work between the
immigration department and IHMS and the detention health advisory group
to bring about positive change.”



The year before Young’s arrival, the immigration department had been
put on notice once again that prolonged detention harms mental health.
Professor Kathy Eager of Wollongong University reached that conclusion in a study commissioned by the department itself.



“There is,” she wrote, “almost universal criticism of the policy of
detaining asylum seekers, particularly in terms of the mental health
implications.”



Her findings were backed by the department’s independent Detention
Health Advisory Group (Dehag), the Australian College of Mental Health
Nurses and the Australian Psychological Society. In 2011 the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists declared:
“Prolonged detention, particularly in isolated locations, with poor
access to health and social services and uncertainty of asylum seeker
claims, can have severe and detrimental effects.”



While detainees were being rapidly released, Young observed attitudes
towards them improved throughout the system. They were not treated as
prisoners.



Their mental health was generally good: “These people are actually
quite robust and psychologically healthy individuals despite all the
suffering that they have been through.”



But what Young calls “the window of reasonableness” stayed open for
only six months. With boats arriving in unprecedented numbers and the
opposition in full cry, the government reversed direction. Once again
boat people were to be held for long periods. The camps on Manus and Nauru were reopened. Kevin Rudd announced that no new boat arrivals would end up living in Australia.



“You just can’t overstate how things changed so rapidly when the
policy changed,” Young says. Once again the system treated them as
prisoners. The impact on their mental health was as predicted: fine for a
few months, then increased depression, anxiety and stress.



“Most people have a level of resilience which allows them to function
fairly well for a few months, but after that time there is a steady
deterioration … after six months the cumulative harms accelerate very
rapidly.”







Asylum seekers self-harming is ‘seen as bad behaviour’.


Uncertainty does the worst damage, Young says. Then comes
hopelessness. “They are constantly given a message that they are on a
negative pathway, meaning their claim is not going to be accepted. This
is despite what we know about the outcomes of processing in the long
term, which is that greater than 80% of people are found to be genuine
refugees.”



And they have so little autonomy. “Just the day-to-day daily lives
that they experience living in the detention system means that they have
very little control over what they do. It makes things particularly
difficult for people who are there with their children as well. Their
capacity to act as parents and to make decisions on behalf of their
families is so restricted.”



Young sees immigration detention as inherently more harmful than
prison. “In prison those with mental health problems generally improve.
People are more well on their release than when they entered. What we
see in detention is the opposite of that. Over the course of time in
detention, they get sicker.



“We don’t have families in prisons. Secondly, when people go to
prison they go through a recognised independent judicial process. It’s
not arbitrary. This is an arbitrary process and people see it as being
unfair and that is another factor.



“Also, when people are in prison they have a definitive sentence so
they know there is an end point. This is not like that at all. This is
indefinite.”



Each quarter IHMS presents the department with figures on the health of detainees. The data for July to September 2013 showed
a third of those held in detention for more than a year were
experiencing extremely severe depression; 42% were suffering extremely
severe anxiety; and 42% were extremely stressed. The report notes these
figures are consistent with internationally published research: “The
pattern shows the negative mental health effects of immigration
detention with a clear deterioration of mental health indices over time
in detention.”



Abbott takes power

“People didn’t really take Rudd seriously,” Young recalls. “But
everybody was saying when the Libs get in it’s really going to get
tough. So there was a building up of expectation that things were going
to get worse, which made it worse in itself.”



When the change came in late 2013, there was no radical shift in policy. “Everything just got harsher.”


Relations between the department and its independent health advisers
were already rocky. Dehag had been set up in 2006 at a time of acute
embarrassment after it was discovered that a schizophrenic Australian
resident, Cornelia Rau, was being held in the detention.





Cornelia Rau

Cornelia Rau, whose wrongful incarceration caused a crisis in the
immigration department. Photograph: Luke Hemer/Sunraysia Daily/AAP


She was thought to be German, was desperately ill and the immigration department refused to release her for treatment. She was finally identified naked in the yards of the Baxter detention centre.


Dehag had an independence the department came to regret. Its dozen
members were nominated by peak medical authorities, including the
Australian Medical Association, the Mental Health
Council of Australia and the professional colleges for nursing, general
practitioners and psychiatry. The experts were at the table but the
department found itself dealing with people who could neither be
corralled nor muzzled.



“It’s always been a very tense relationship,” says Louise Newman,
director of the centre for developmental psychiatry and psychology at
Monash University. Newman chaired the group for a time. “At every
meeting until they disbanded us we would make a statement that we did
not support mandatory detention or prolonged detention of any form, that
it was damaging and that it created problems that we could not fix.”



Young, who sat in on the group’s meetings, confirmed the experts’
fundamental objection to detention: “That’s been the baseline position
that they have always held and they have always presented.”



The group watched with concern as the Gillard government reversed its
policy of swift release for asylum seekers. Newman sees the second
round of detention as worse than the first because it came as the
evidence of harm was even more firmly established. “They replicated the
very conditions that they have admitted contribute to mental harm and
deterioration,” she said.





Dr Louise Newman

Dr Louise Newman: ‘We’re saving lives by sending people mad.’ Photograph: Dean Lewins/AAP


“It’s seen as collateral damage. The department does what it can to
reduce it but in the name of the greater good of border protection and
deterrents it doesn’t really matter. We’re saving lives by sending
people mad.”



The group drove change. “The department was very pleased to use
things that we brought in, so any positive reforms that have gone on in
the system in terms of screening people and healthcare and health
standards were all done by Dehag.”



But Newman alleges the department later sabotaged medical screening
of asylum seekers for signs of torture and trauma. “We argued that no
one who had been tortured should be detained or particularly not in
remote places. The departmental doctors decided the best way to get
around that was not to do the screening, so they didn’t find out who was
tortured. They stopped it on Christmas Island so people could be
shipped away before it was even known if they were trauma survivors.”



Tension between Dehag and the department intensified after Bowles was
appointed secretary of the department in 2012, Newman says. Bowles is
not a doctor but for much of his career was a health administrator
before joining the defence department. He is one of a group of former
army and defence figures who now hold the most senior positions in the
immigration department.



Bowles announced a review of Dehag, which he renamed the Immigration
Health Advisory Group (Ihag). He failed in manoeuvres to change its
membership but imposed a former military doctor, Paul Alexander, as its
chairman. “It was meant to be a much more controlled group,” Newman
says.



Bowles wanted the experts to withdraw from public debate. Young says:
“They wanted the thing to be more watertight.” The experts were not
accused of leaking. “But they expressed views in public which were
relevant to the business before the committee.” They continued to do so.
The most vocal was Newman.



The experts and the department continued to be at loggerheads over
the standard of care for detainees. Newman says Dehag and Ihag always
argued that detainees had to be looked after “regardless of visa status”
while they were in Australian hands, and it was an ethical obligation
on all medical practitioners working in the system to provide care to
Australian standards.





A child inside the Nauru detention centre

A child inside the Nauru detention centre. Photograph: Guardian exclusive


But once Nauru and Manus reopened, the department began to demand
treatment be pegged to the much lower standards of care on those
islands. There would have to be exceptions – no inpatient mental
healthcare is available on Manus or Nauru – but the department’s wish was to lower the general standard of care for detainees in those camps.



At what was to be the last meeting of Ihag in August 2013, the issue
was debated at length. An impasse was reached, says Newman. “The
department at a very high level from secretary down argues the
Australian government is not obliged to provide our standard of care to
these people.”



But experts insisted that standards must be maintained and that the
department’s plan was an ethical minefield for doctors. “Clinicians who
go along with it are absolutely compromised,” says Newman.



Ihag experts continued to work in the system, but they never met as a
group after Abbott’s victory in the federal election of September 2013.
A long pattern of suddenly cancelled meetings ended with no meetings
called at all. In mid-December the experts received letters thanking
them for their service. They were dismissed. Alexander was now to be the sole adviser on medical matters to the renamed Department of Immigration and Border Protection.



Scott Morrison,
the new minister, issued a statement: “The large membership of the
group made it increasingly challenging to provide balanced, consistent
and timely advice in a fast-moving policy and operational environment.”



Young says: “That doesn’t wash at all. Ihag had consistently told the
department things it didn’t want to hear and the department had pretty
transparently sabotaged the operation of it for more than 12 months.”



The chiefs of peak medical bodies, including the AMA’s Dr Steve
Hambleton, expressed shock at Ihag’s demise. Abbott condemned the
generally negative reporting of the move as “a complete beatup by the ABC and some of the Fairfax papers”. The prime minister declared: “This was a committee which was not very effectual.”



The rising tide of data

Morrison had been in the job only a few months when he assured
Australia that mental health problems among detainees were on the wane.
In mid-December, Nine News reported: “Immigration minister Scott
Morrison yesterday said diagnosed mental health problems among detainees
in Australia had fallen from a peak of 12% in 2011 to the current rate
of 3.4% as a result of greater resourcing.”



Young is scathing about Morrison’s figures. “That’s not a prevalence
rate. It never has been. It’s a pale shadow of what the real prevalence
rate is because of the way that data is derived.”



Young says Morrison was ignoring the figures revealed by regular
screening and instead using a count of visits to GPs or psychiatrists
where mental health problems were raised. “It doesn’t take into account
people who may have a disorder who are not seeing either of those two
categories of clinicians.”



Gathering better statistics was one of Young’s key ambitions in his
time at IHMS. The department dragged its feet on his proposals to use
new measures to screen mental health problems. “There seemed to be a
fear that it would result in controversy or threaten the application of
the policies of deterrence,” Young says.



But the chief psychiatrist finally got his way and the new measures
were used for the first time in the first quarter of this year. Young
presented these figures to the Royal College of Australian and New
Zealand Psychiatrists in May. They confirmed the long-established
pattern: about a third of all those in detention had clinically
significant problems – and the longer the detention, the worse the
problems.



Half those who had been detained for 19 months or more were extremely
or severely depressed; 40% were extremely or severely stressed; and 40%
were extremely or severely anxious. The worst scores were gathered on
Manus and Nauru. But the figures show a common pattern across the whole
detention system.





A slide from a PowerPoint presentation by Peter Young

A slide from a PowerPoint presentation by Peter Young, provided to
Guardian Australia by the Royal College of Australian and New Zealand
Psychiatrists


In a PowerPoint presentation provided to Guardian Australia by the
college, Young concludes: “All show linear deterioration in mental
health status over time in detention.”



Young’s staff were also collecting figures on the impact of detention
on children. “Changing to instruments more appropriate for children has
been something the department has dragged their feet on for quite a
long time.”



Young shocked the Human Rights Commission inquiry last week by alleging the department refused to accept these Honosca (Health of the Nation Outcome Scales for Children and Adolescents) figures.


He told Guardian Australia: “This is not the only instance where data
which has been seen as controversial or just difficult to understand
has been buried.”



But Triggs requested the figures be given to her inquiry. They show
across the mainland detention system a large number of children showing
emotional distress or related symptoms. Young considered the figures a
sign of serious problems that needed urgent consideration and action.
Some of these children are those that IHMS doctors reported as showing
issues of self-harm, regression, aggression, bed-wetting and despair.





Health of the Nation Outcome Scales for Children and Adolescents (Honosca) figures

The Health of the Nation Outcome Scales for Children and Adolescents figures


When Bowles was questioned at the inquiry, he did not deny his
department issued instructions to IHMS to withdraw the figures but was
at pains to suggest to the commission that they remained under
consideration by the department. He said: “I have no doubt that most of
this sort of reporting is mainstream.”



Giving evidence to Triggs’s inquiry was Young’s last assignment for
IHMS. As his three years with the commercial providers drew to a close,
he decided to make a professional and public assessment of the detention
system once he was free to do so.



“As a medical practitioner your duty is always to your patients and
the people you look after,” he says. “To them you have a broader moral
and ethical responsibility. In this case you see harm being done and as
the primary duty of a doctor is to do no harm, your duty is to speak out
against that harm – to say that harm should not be done.”