Transcript
GREG BARNS: The senate standing committee was a remarkable exercise and what was remarkable about it was that the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, which is the most secretive department in the Australian government, was the only organisation to make a submission in which it said, 'offshore detention remains a viable option.' But furthermore, it treated this committee with contempt. The committee found that the Department of Immigration frustrated it in its attempts to access information. They refused to provide assistance and they were certainly not wanting any independent and external scrutiny of their policies and procedures.
We were happy with the report because it confirmed, unfortunately, what the ALA has being saying for some years and that is that refugees and asylum seekers in these centres are living in an unsafe environment, widespread mental health problems, self-harm, physical health problems, they're all causally linked to the mistreatment meted out to them by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and its contractors.
We've also been fortified by the fact that the senate committee said that the Commonwealth's workplace regulator, in other words the regulator that looks after all Commonwealth workplaces and which does have jurisdiction for offshore workplaces, needs to actually make sure that it's got proper oversight of health and safety of refugees and asylum seekers and workers, for that matter, in those facilities.
BEN ROBINSON DRAWBRIDGE: That's not a bit of a stretch for Comcare to be looking out for detainees?
GB: Not at all. Comcare's obligation under Commonwealth workplace safety law is not simply for workers and contractors in Commonwealth places of employment, but for any person who is in that space. So if a person comes on to those premises they are entitled to be treated safely and that, of course, includes detainees.
BRD: But again, is it the best agency to be overseeing issues like mental health and self-harm?
GB: In the absence and the abject failure of the Commonwealth to allow, for example, the Australian Human Rights Commission, to allow a senate committee, to allow anyone else into these detention centres for proper scrutiny, the only agency which has got the proper teeth, the legal teeth, to ensure a more humane environment is Comcare. And Comcare has abjectly failed, in our view, in undertaking that responsibility and the senate seems to agree.
BRD: Detractors of the senate's report say there is no new information here, no smoking gun, so do you think this report is really going to change anything?
GB: Well I think that's missing the point. The point is that the senate standing committee is a comprehensive look at this particular issue. But I think the other point to make is the appalling failure of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to co-operate with the committee. Normally, departments will fully co-operate with senate committees, they are after all accountable to the parliament and they will co-operate. They've singled out that department here, by effectively saying that it was frustrated in their attempts to access information and the standard of assistance provided by the department was sub-par. Now, to treat the senate with such contempt I think says a lot about the culture of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.
BRD: Is it not merely conforming with its own rules about secrecy?
GB: It's not. What it's doing is deliberately ensuring, as it has done right through this exercise but particularly under the current leadership of the department and that includes the minister, that there is no independent scrutiny even the scrutiny of the Australian parliament, which is where the scrutiny should come from when it comes to government departments.