From yesterday’s AM:

TONY EASTLEY: The Commonwealth Ombudsman has just released a report
detailing another case where an Australian citizen has been wrongfully
detained.

A
45-year-old man, known as Mr T, was mentally ill and was locked up in
the Villawood detention centre in Sydney on three separate occasions.

This
investigation followed other problems with the Immigration Department,
and scathing reports into the detention of mentally ill Australian
resident Cornelia Rau and the deportation of Vivian Alvarez.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman John McMillan joins me now from Canberra.

Good morning Mr McMillan.

JOHN MCMILLAN: Good morning Tony.

TONY EASTLEY: How did this man come to be locked up on so many occasions?

JOHN
MCMILLAN: On each occasion, he… his behaviour at a railway station, for
example, had attracted the attention of state police and because of his
poor language skills, and apparently born overseas and confusing
answers, the Department of Immigration was called and on each occasion
they formed the view that he was an unlawful non-citizen and under the
Migration Act there’s a statutory duty then to detain a person.

So,
on three separate occasions he was then taken into Villawood detention
centre, various… between 1999 and 2003 for periods of five days, 240
days, and six days, so a total of 253.

TONY EASTLEY: So, getting close to three quarters of a year, he was locked up on three occasions?

JOHN MCMILLAN: Yes.

TONY EASTLEY: Are there similarities to the Cornelia Rau case in this one?

JOHN
MCMILLAN: There are… I suppose the disturbingly similar pattern is that
a person who is suffering from mental illness has attracted the
attention of state officials, who’ve then contacted the Department of
Immigration.

The Migration Act has a low threshold for mandatory
detention of a person, that is a reasonable suspicion of a person who
is an unlawful non-citizen.

The person’s been taken into
detention. The departmental officers have not been adequately trained,
either in using the information available, using the department’s data
systems for identifying a person, there have been periods of
inactivity.

So with a cumulative set of problems and errors, a
person has not been properly identified and as a result has spent some
months wrongfully in immigration detention.

TONY EASTLEY: Were
you surprised that these problems were occurring, considering that we
had the Cornelia Rau and the Vivian Alvarez cases before?

JOHN MCMILLAN: They all come from the same era, and so in that sense there is no surprise.

It’s
disturbing to see that a person who is an Australian citizen can be in
immigration detention and it prompts some deeper questions for all of
us, not just Department of Immigration, about how adequately we can
deal with people suffering mental illness and how adequate our legal
and administrative framework is for identifying persons whose identity
is confusing or unknown.

The… one would hope these incidents never happen again…

TONY EASTLEY: Do you think there are more of these cases to come?

JOHN
MCMILLAN: After the Rau and Alvarez cases, the Minister referred over
220 cases of possible wrongful detention to my office for
investigation. This is the first case on which a report has been
published. We’re looking at other cases, it’s possible that there will
be some similar findings.

They all come from the same era. As
you would know, the Government has since committed to a substantial
reform program within the Department of Immigration and I think my
report makes some very targeted and concrete recommendations about the
areas where improvements are needed.

TONY EASTLEY: We’ll leave it there.

The Commonwealth Ombudsman, John McMillan, thanks for joining us this morning on AM.