A former Salvation Army worker who provided welfare services at the Australian-run asylum seeker detention centre on Nauru says the situation of hopelessness at the camp was so bad he had to speak out.
Mark Isaacs has just launched his book, The Undesirables, in which he reveals that he was sent to Nauru within a week of signing up with little training.
Mr Isaacs worked on the island between October 2012 and June 2013 and says he found harrowing conditions at the centre with dozens of asylum seekers suffering mental breakdowns while in indefinite detention.
He says the Australian public should be demanding better treatment of asylum seekers, and he hopes his book will inform them.
"The Australian public should be concerned that this policy is governed by secrecy, and why do we ban the media from these islands? Why don't we tell the people what's going on? If this is such a great policy and all these people actually are illegals, then why does the international community condemn us for it? There's a lot of questions we have to ask ourselves and our politicians and I think the aim of this book is to open up peoples eyes to a world that they weren't privy to previously."
Mark Isaacs.
