Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is appalling that the gravity of the Australian Human Rights Commission report into children in immigration detention has been obscured by the government's bizarre and ugly attack on the commission's president, Professor Gillian Triggs. The report, covering a period in which both Labor and the coalition were in government, details 233 assaults against children, 33 reported incidents of sexual assault and 128 children who have engaged in self-harm. Instead of engaging in the politics of personal attack, the government should be asking itself, 'How is this being allowed to happen and how can we make sure it doesn't happen again?'

This report has come at a time when we are seeing the outcomes of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Only a few years ago we finally gave a formal apology to the forgotten Australians, the half a million children and child migrants who grew up in institutional or out-of-home care during the 20th century. That apology was a sombre occasion as we reflected on what had been an acute failure of government responsibility at many levels, a failure that enabled the unconscionable, painful and cruel treatment of children who, without parents, relied on government and public institutions to protect them. On that occasion, I said in parliament:

There is no greater act of responsibility, there is no heavier weight of care and there is no larger placement of trust than that which exists in undertaking the care and custody of children who are without the benefit of a secure and capable and loving family. A society's capacity to look after children who find themselves in those circumstances is one of the best measures of its compassion, of its commitment to a broad safety net for the protection of the vulnerable and the disadvantaged, and of its principles of social responsibility and social justice.

The forgotten children is the title of the Human Rights Commission's report, and the resonance of that terminology with the forgotten Australians is telling.

The Human Rights Commission's report demonstrates unequivocally that children in our care who have come seeking refuge have instead experienced physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse in our effective custody. This tragedy, this failure of responsibility, has occurred across both the current and former governments and should certainly lead, inter alia, to a royal commission, as the Human Rights Commission has recommended. However, senior members of the government, including the Prime Minister and Attorney-General, as well as Liberal senators in Senate estimates last week, have chosen to respond by launching an offensive attack on Professor Triggs that has been widely condemned within the Australian community.

The Human Rights Commission report itself is clear, and I will quote some of its simple findings:

The evidence shows that immigration detention is a dangerous place for children.

…   …   …

Australia is unique in its treatment of asylum seeker children. No other country mandates the closed and indefinite detention of children when they arrive on our shores.

And the report notes that the relevant Minister for Immigration in this government and in the former government both:

… agreed on oath before the Inquiry that holding children in detention does not deter either asylum seekers or people smugglers. No rationale for the prolonged detention of children seeking asylum in Australia has been offered.

On that basis, we absolutely cannot accept that violence and severe mental and emotional distress is an acceptable part of Australia's approach to asylum seekers. We must utterly reject any suggestion that assaults on children and the sexual abuse of children are to be considered in the context of reducing dangerous boat journeys or drownings at sea. It is clear the practice of offshore detention cannot be tolerated when it is manifestly failing standards of care and respect for human dignity and fundamental rights.

I conclude by returning to what I said in 2009 when speaking about an earlier group of forgotten children:

Today we rightly apologise, as a government and as a national parliament, for wrongs that were allowed to occur by the Australian government in previous incarnations. They may be wrongs that we, as members, do not feel personally responsible for, but I would observe that collective responsibility means nothing if the responsibility is not in some way felt by the individuals who make up that collective, from representatives to citizens.

…   …   …

Finally, we should perhaps reflect that Australian governments in the future may well be obliged to apologise for our errors and failures. So by taking responsibility for things that have occurred in the past, as we do today, we also have the opportunity to remember that the duty of care which was not discharged to the forgotten Australians and child migrants is the same duty of care that we must remain ever vigilant to uphold.

Well, that future is now. None of us who recognise the importance of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, and none of us who supported the government's long overdue apology to the forgotten Australians, should stand by while the Australian government, in our name, in the name of all Australians, operates a system that is producing lasting harm to children and adults in our care. It has to stop.