Transcript
A report in the Australian newspaper has been confirmed by the former attorney general and now High Commissioner to Britain George Brandis, who says he expects there will be no refugee children left on Nauru by the end of the year.
With more than 200 children already evacuated, 38 remain on Nauru.
Paediatrician Paul Bauert says he would welcome their evacuation but is worried the end of the year deadline could be too late.
"Particularly those children that are left, when they're seeing some other children being removed and brought to Australia, their level of hopelessness will increase. All doctors are really concerned that that level will get to the stage where suicidal ideation will become real, that we will either lose children by suicide or lose children through the Resignation Syndrome, where they become so profoundly depressed that they would rather be dead than continue the mental pain that they have at the moment."
With the Australian government set to lose its one seat majority, it's come under pressure from the opposition, independent MPs and three of its own backbenchers to evacuate the children from their five year exile on Nauru, where one in four are reported to be suicidal.
The prime minister Scott Morrison told reporters yesterday the government was quietly making it happen.
"In the last nine weeks, the number of children on Nauru has halved. So we've been getting about this quietly. We haven't been showboating about it. We've just been getting on, dealing with these issues in the appropriate way in accordance with our policies, policies that not only have reduced the number of children on Nauru, but has insured that no children are going to Nauru."
But with the vast majority of the children evacuated by court order or the threat of legal intervention, refugee advocates have accused Mr Morrison of lying by omission.
Lawyers and doctors working pro-bono have been assisted at court by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, whose chief executive, Kon Karapanagiotidis, says the prime minister is trying to take credit for evacuations his government has fought tooth and nail to prevent.
"More than 200 kids that were brought here to get critical medical care, were all brought here be legal intervention or court order. That is, for five years bar the last fortnight, it required us going to court to force the government to bring kids that were suicidal, kids that were at risk of dying as young as six-months of age. It's only been the last two weeks that he government has started to bring people without the threat of legal action. So yes the government is very much trying to take credit so our Prime Minister in Australia, Scott Morrison, continues to lie to the Australian public."
Mr Karapanagiotidis says legal action will continue to evacuate the remaining children and could be extended to about 90 families on Nauru, some of whom with vulnerable adolescents who were detained as kids.
Dr Bauert says he'll be following one case due in Australia's Federal Court in Melbourne.
"The government is going to the court tomorrow in an attempt to block some children that really do need to be removed today. So although we're hearing that the government is moving towards getting these children removed voluntarily themselves they're in fact, by their actions, fighting these removals."
Dr Bauert says he also holds fears for children brought to Australia, who are now be kept under guard when they should be released into the community.
