The “ghetto-like” Christmas Island detention centre is bursting at the seams as boat arrivals swell. But housing asylum seekers at the long-defunct Curtin facility in the desolate north of Western Australia could make conditions even worse.
That’s the view of Curtin University human rights academic Professor Linda Briskman, who remembers the “dire” conditions at the Curtin facility, which immigration minister Chris Evans has said will host up to 300 male detainees.
Briskman spoke to Crikey from Christmas Island, where she said conditions have “deteriorated”. The number of detainees fluctuates but reports this week put the total figure at 2358, while the renovated capacity of the facilities is only 2040 people.
“It’s overcrowded, absolutely stacked to capacity,” she said. “There have had to be more and more makeshift accommodation facilities set up. People are living in demountables, housed in tents.”
She raises concerns over the facility where women and children are kept, called the construction camp: “That’s what it looks like. It’s not the place to have families. It’s quite small, rather ghetto-like.”
She pointed out the main centre is a maximum security detention centre, so people don’t have freedom of movement, except with guards. “Most people don‘t get out of the centre very much at all. Taking people out for outings is quite difficult … People’s basic liberties are taken away,” she said. At the other two sites, the security is still present, if less evident.
“They do have doctors on the island,” she said, “and quite a well-equipped medical centre. As the numbers have increased, people have found it increasingly difficult to get the health care they want in a timely manner.”
People have suffered a lot during their journeys to arrive at the island and are quite traumatised, then experience further trauma when they are placed in detention, she said. “Psychological services are there but I think they need to be increased.
“People who are going to have their claims suspended under the new policy, Afghans and Sri Lankans, that’s going to cause greater uncertainty than we’re even seeing now.”
The Curtin army base — located near Derby, a small community on the north-western coast of Western Australia — was used to house asylum seekers under the Howard government until it was closed in 2002. Refugee advocates contacted by Crikey were reluctant to guess at the current state of the facilities, since access had traditionally been tightly restricted and few people had been able to visit them.
“The conditions were pretty dire,” Professor Briskman said, adding that one of the concerns about the reopening of the centre is that it’s not yet clear what it will look like.
“The main concern is that it’s so isolated,” she said. “Why locate people in such remote places away from public view and away from access to all the resources needed for someone’s well-being?
“There’s basic provision of food and sustenance and beds but that’s not all people need. One of the concerns that I’ve got is that people are unlikely to get visitors. When detainees get visitors it certainly helps boost their morale.”
Professor Briskman believes mandatory detention should be abandoned. And failing that, “neither Christmas Island nor Curtin should be a place where people are processed. People should be relocated to cities or large regional towns, and they should be in community settings. It’s a highly politically charged decision. In effect we’re increasing the huge amount already spent on mandatory detention.
“It’s a beautiful place. The detention centre is really a blot on the landscape.”
Whatever the conditions are on Christmas Island or Curtin, I am sure the conditions are preferable to those that the refugees are allegedly fleeing from.Human rights academics have no greater capacity for evaluation than any other Australian citizen.
I would have thought that being accommodated relatively comfortable if crowded conditions, with access to sporting facilities, computers, health care, good food and the knowledge that one was not going to be murdered in the night by whatever tyranny the so-called refugees are fleeing from would be preferable to being subject to the allegedly high-risk conditions in their home territory. If they are opportunistic immigrants expecting to be welcomed with open arms then they have voluntarily placed themselves in the wrong category by bypassing standard immigration facilities
These refugees are now relativelysafe and free from tyranny. As they have bypassed standard immigration and refugee processing facilities, they must expect to be detained and duly processed. I’m sure if the conditions on Christmas Island and Curtain a less favourable than the claimed a oppression that they are fleeing from, that the government would willingly pay their fares home.
Greg: you cant really believe that “any Australian citizen” knows as much about this topic as someone like Professor Linda Briskman? Ordinary Aussies in the street could not possibly be as well informed as some like Briskman. Experts in Human Rights would have visited places and talked to people you and I would never see or meet. They would have read more, heard more, seen more and thought much more, than you and I will ever do on these issues.
To write them off as you do reveals a desire to maintain your pre-formed view on the issue. Even if we end up not agreeing with different experts, we should at least acknowledge their expertise and hear what they have to say.
You raise some important considerations. But others will disagree with you. There can be examples given of refugees being attacked and even killed by other refugees in detention – especially when people from traditionally hostile cultures or countries or religions find themselves locked up in the same facility together. There is evidence of serious psychological trauma that many have experienced, because of the uncertainty of their detention, the uncertainty of how long it will go for, and the possibility of being rejected and sent back to their original country.
You are effectively saying: these desperate families should be grateful that we are putting them in jail – jail with no date of release is better than the war torn country, or the persecution, or the poverty, they fled from. Perhaps it is Greg. But if so, then not by much.
Does it not concern you that we are one of the only “advanced” or “western modern 1st world” nations that have indefinite detention in jails for refugees? How have all the others nations – who get way more asylum seekers that we do – how have they got it so wrong? Aren’t they all stupid not to follow our example! … hmmm … something else is actually going on, I would suggest.
Elizabeth – firstly, Curtin is not an ‘Army base’. Curtin is what the RAAF call a forward bare base set up for the forward deployment of military aircraft should combat operations be required in northern Australia. It has a runway (of course) and other basic airfield facilities such as refuelling equipment. It had basic accommodation for numbers of visiting military personnel. It is not an ideal place to keep people seeking refugee status but it wasn’t built as a holiday resort. It would be no worse than the hell holes on Nauru and Manus Is that Howard and Ruddock used to imprison asylum seekers under their ‘Pacific Solution’.
As I understand it the large, expensive to set up, Commonwealth detention centres at Port Augusta and Woomera have basically been stripped. Did none of the gormless Public Serrvants responsible for that not realise they might be useful again and place them on a care and maintainance basis rather than selling much of the equipment and fittings off at the usual cheap Government disposal rate. Now we see that they could have been useful if opened up and used again far more cheaply than re-building them almos from scratch. Even if actual detention type security was not needed for low flight risk inmates the accomodation facilities, ie beds, alone would have been useful.
Both centres being relatively close to major population centres could have been used to house people who appeared to qualify for residence but need some final work on their cases and those assessed as more likely to be refused and sent back somewhere could be kept in the more remote Christmas Island and Curtin sites, making flight into the population less of a risk. Sounds simple, but probably too simple for the average dimwitted Government time server.
And these people get promotions and pensions, not the sack as should happen for allowing, in fact causing, such waste!
@GREG ANGELO – Of course you’ve omitted to mention, that the current Australian of the Year, an eminent Psychiatrist, with over 20 years experience in the mental health of young people(Dr Patrick Mc?) has already stated, that detention centres are “breeding grounds” for mental illnesses. You conveniently forget to mention what being exposed to traumas that hopefully, you and I will never experience, does to human beings. Can you imagine what it’s like in Afghanistan to see your mother and/or sister, wife, daughter, raped and murdered in front of you for example? They’re then forced to watch their bodies mutilated? Or watch your child blown up by playing with a ‘pretty’ unexploded cluster bomb? Or a landmine? There are more landmines in Afghanistan than anywhere else. It’s estimated, that at least 90 Afghani civillians die each month! We’re causing that!
Recent ‘surges’ by the US in Afghanistan, have resulted in hundreds of people fleeing their homes. While these people are given prior ‘notice’ of impending bombings or drones, there is no attempt to find alternate and safe accommodation for them – “they(US/NATO forces) don’t want to create ghettos”? In other words, they don’t give a s**t about what happens to them, and as we’re part of the killing sprees, we don’t care either. Then, we abrogate our responsiblity once again(via the Migration Act and international laws and agreements we’ve made – with pride?) when some, a very minute number make it here! With so many of the Geneva Conventions abused by the US(and us) in both Iraq & Afghanistan, we now reinforce the misery caused by us to those who legally seek our protection! What sort of moral code is being followed here? A very shabby one indeed! All this for what? Oil & Gas and other minerals etc, that’s what?
We’re still providing medical/psychiatric care for the human beings we allowed to be mistreated and/or are perpetuating their trauma via the Howard govt? We don’t learn do we? How many millions have been paid out for inhumane/criminal behaviour of the past by Howard and his thugs – whether they were the willing participants like Abbott/Minchin/Pyne(good little catholics all) or the cruel and vicious workers in these hell holes – or those in the Immigration Dept?I note, that the bloke in charge is still there? Why wasn’t he sacked yrs ago? The Chinese have a saying, ‘that a fish rots from the head’? Amen!
This is shameful! It doesn’t take this long to do health and security checks? They should be out in the community within 3 months, and shorter if there are children – up to at least 16 yrs! Jail is no place for traumatised people! Certainly not for children!