Transcript
IAN RINTOUL: It's not the doctors and medical people that are necessarily the first to know about issues of abuse or mistreatment or other things that are affecting children and other people I mean it's a basic issue of equity if there's now a provision to exclude doctors and health professionals, the question is why should they be exempt from the Border Force Act but most people who actually have contact with the children and much more day to day contact with the children remain under the effect of the Border Force Act? And I think it's very clear when you look at the kind of actions that the government has taken, it has mostly been taken against those people who are in more direct contact like the Save the Children workers for examples.
DANIELA MAOATE-COX: Is it a harsh punishment?
IR: Well yes, there's provision for very very serious fines of tens of thousands of dollars and up to two years jail so the government has very seriously put very severe penalties in place for people who would be charged and convicted under the Border Force Act and it's very clear from our own experience that the treat of those fines, the threat of jail, even just the threat of the Border Force Act is a very severe impediment to people feeling that they can speak out freely, and while the government may not have used the Border Force Act directly to take someone to court, it's clearly had the desired effect and that is to intimidate people.
DM-C: So what legal options are there to challenge this?
IR: There is a High Court action and it does seem that the government responded both to the political pressure from the doctors and medical professions and their associations and of course there's been a public outcry in any case, we saw the revelation in the Nauru files that very many people, ex-workers were willing to thumb their nose at the Border Force Act or at least to run the risk of falling foul of the Border Force Act by going public and to back up what they knew about the files and about the incidents that were reported in those files. But the government seems to have moved because of the High Court challenge that the doctors were mounting against the Border Force Act and because of political pressure and there certainly is now consideration by other groupings, by teachers for example, to either extend the present court case, see whether they can become substitute plaintiffs if you like, or to launch their own challenge.
DM-C: How would the court fees be covered?
IR: There's such tremendous public interest in the Border Force Act by both lawyers and by the public. The challenge that was mounted by doctors wasn't costing tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of dollars as you might expect but the lawyers were mostly willing to act pro bono to take this case to the High Court in order to get justice to be done. So there's sufficient public interest and sufficient interest from the legal profession that I don't think there'd be any trouble at all in finding pro bono lawyers and getting to the High Court to challenge what is a very discriminatory Act.
