Let me tell you what isn’t fun as an adult immigrant from New Zealand to Australia. It’s not just the whacky, bitey spider-snake things; it’s explaining the seemingly limitless powers of Peter Dutton, Border Force and Home Affairs to my colleagues back home.
In the last week since I told you about the NZ teen locked up in the adult Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation, I have appeared on NZ TV and written another piece trying to explain the whole mess. And readers, I have really tried. I asked Border Force more than ten questions about this minor in the last week, and received only this piece of fulsome bullshit that answers none of the questions I asked:
We are committed to keeping minors out of held detention, however from time to time there may be occasions where minors will be temporarily held in immigration detention. This could be as a result of airport turnarounds, people who are in the final stages of removal from Australia, or due to criminal or security issues.
A range of care, welfare and support arrangements are in place to provide for the needs of young people in detention. Service providers are contracted to provide age-appropriate health, education, recreational, and cultural services.
Where do I start?
In regard to the alleged “educational services”, the teenager I have been in contact with, *H, says “that’s crap”. “I am meant to be in year 12. They send someone in for one hour a day and we just do activity sheets.”
And the health services? When H had what sounded like the flu, he was told to walk to the nurses’ station which is the furthest point from his room but he felt so unwell he couldn’t, and was bed-bound for days. When he eventually got there, he was offered Panadol.
[Shadows of family separation policy haunt NZ boy stuck alone in detention]
He does, however, have access to some recreational services. H is able to use the gym at the centre — something I have been encouraging him to do, because it will help him sleep without the anti-psychotics that International Health and Medical Services staff wanted him to take.
But then I heard a story about three asylum seekers who were observed in the gym doing an exercise the guards interpreted as practice for wall jumping and they were promptly sent to Christmas Island. So what should I tell him? Move really slowly? How do you feel about yoga, son?
I even tried the National Children’s Commissioner Megan Mitchell’s office. She issued a statement in reply:
The Convention on the Rights of the Child requires that children only be detained as a measure of last resort and for the shortest possible period of time.
Last year, the UN Committee on the Rights of Migrant Workers and the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child called on governments to ‘expeditiously and completely cease or eradicate the immigration detention of children’.
We know that prolonged detention can have a profoundly negative impact on the mental and emotional health and development of children.
Yes, prolonged detention is definitely having an impact on the mental and emotional health of H. I can confirm that, and ABF show no signs of easing up despite the diplomatic scrutiny of their NZ counterparts. H has been in the facility for close to four months. He was told he and another minor would be moved to a new unit in the immigration centre today, but that they would no longer have access to to the computer room.
When he asked why, he was told “because we have some money we have to spend before the end of the financial year”. H and the other young man have said they will refuse to shift.
At this stage I will gladly accept readers’ tips on how I explain to New Zealanders why a not terribly criminal young person has been shifted so far from his family into an adult detention centre. ABF certainly aren’t interested in explaining themselves, or their use of all our money.
Correction: an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated H had been in the Melbourne facility for six months.
I don’t know where to start, but I admire your efforts, all the more so because you use “fulsome” properly. Keep the spotlight on BorderFarce from as many angles as possible.
I don’t know where to start, but I admire your efforts, all the more so because you use “fulsome” properly. Keep the spotlight on BorderFarce from as many angles as possible.
Rebekah, I think you should start with Winston Peters.
Herr Dutton and Turnbull don’t have hearts so don’t expect any sympathy from either of them. Good luck. I hope H survives intact.
Thank you for pursuing this Rebekah. I’ve emailed my MP in Melbourne to try and bring more attention to this case. Is there anything else a random bystander can do?
I cannot understand the issue of age – what is so totally different from being a 17 year offender and an 18 year offender – nothing much! One is deemed to be an adult another a mere child. Things would be different under the old system when an adult was 21 year old – that is more realistic but now an adult is 18 – the 16 to 18 age zone is not too dissimilar.
Look at the poor child in a spit hood – now a complete adult serial offender. Same animal still antisocial. Perhaps richer because of the benefits of publicity.
The difference is that 17 is not 18 and a 17-year_old is not legally adult. Our Government still maintains the fiction, for the time being, that we uphold the rule of law in Australia. As for the boy in the spit hood: we have another fiction that imprisonment is intended to provide a process of reform of the offender. It usually doesn’t, as we can easily see, and ill treatment in prison is guaranteed to increase the offender’s hatred of authority. In the case referred to the boy and other boys were blatantly subjected to illegal abuse, violating again our polite fiction of a rule of law.
Thank you Rais. Very well said.
yes it is a fiction that imprisonment is a process of reform – imprisonment should be should be – yes ! it is a punishment, but if you want to change we will assist you _ if you don’t want to take the opportunity, take the punishment.
The serial offenders know the ropes and the end result is rarely reform – that is why they are serial offenders .
As a taxpayer for well over 50 years I would like to see the tax dollars I pay used constructively. “Justice” should have a constructive purpose. I’m sorry but “punishment” is not a constructive purpose. If some people want to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars per year per offender to exact revenge from damaged people who, on release, have nowhere to live, no skills to offer on the labour market and no experience of anything but what they were doing before they were sentenced, by all means they can spend their money punishing them. I’d like to see my money used to improve people’s safety and give hope to those without hope.
Personally, Des, I can’t understand how people like yourself can be such huge bootlickers.
Draco I couldn’t agree more. Desmond is a repulsive dinosaur.