Doctor challenges anti-whistle blower law

Transcript

The Republic of Nauru Photo: AFP

An Australian doctor has challenged Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to prosecute him under anti-whistle blower legislation by speaking out about the health of children kept in detention on Nauru.

Professor David Isaacs, a paediatricrian from Sydney, risks two years imprisonment under the Border Force Act by describing the treatment of asylum seekers in Nauru as torture.

Ben Robinson reports.

David Isaacs spent week at the Nauru detention centre in 2014 and says all the children he treated were traumatised while others had been abused and were committing self harm.

"The worst I saw was a six-year-old who had strangulation marks around her neck where she tried to hang herself with a fence tie. A six-year-old. I've never seen that in my life before. All the children I saw were traumatised in one way or another. I saw children who were self harming, cutting their wrists and so on. I saw a boy who sewed his lips together as a protest and collapsed after three days and had to be resuscitated. This is what I saw all the time, children that were suffering from what we're doing to them."

Professor Isaacs says keeping asylum seekers in prolonged detention damages their mental health and amounts to torture.

Last year, the Australian government passed the Border Force Act which prevents workers in offshore dentention centres from disclosing details about the facilities.

Professor Isaacs says it's morally wrong to suppress that information.

"What I want is for the Border Force Act to be challenged in court. It's a law that silences freedom of speech and it's not the sort of thing one expects from a democratic country. I want to challenge it and I want the Government to say alright we'll prosecute you and if not they should repeal the law."

David Isaacs' lawyer, Julian Burnside QC, says a loophole in the Border Force Act should allow him to mount a successful defence.

"By drawing attention to systemic problems in the detention system, if those comments are made for the purpose of helping diminish a serious risk to the life or health of people, in other words diminishing systemic problems, then that circumstance would operate as a defence."

But Julian Burnside says he doubts the Australian Government will bring a prosecution.

"By prosecuting him the Government would create a legitimate, very public platform from which all of the very shocking conditions in detention would be exposed because that would be the defence. I think the Government is probably alive to that and probably a bit too smart to provide such a platform for the evils of the detention system to be exposed."

The Australian Prime Minisiter's office couldn't confirm if they'd received David Isaacs' challenge, but the Refugee Action Coalition's Ian Rintoul says it's unlikely the state will take action.

"Good luck to Turnbull if he takes up David Isaacs' challenge. I don't think he will. I think the Border force Act is there to intimidate people. There'd be a huge response in Australia if they tried to prosecute a doctor or a nurse or an immigration worker for speaking out about what they've see on Nauru."

Mr Rintoul says he encourages other workers in detention centres to blow the whistle on any maltreatment of asylum seekers.