Michaelia Cash (WA, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

asked the Minister representing the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, upon notice, on 1 March 2011:

(1) Which detention centres provide telephones for the personal and business use of asylum seekers?

(2) How many telephones are available for use by asylum seekers in each detention centre?

(3) Since August 2008:

(a) how many calls have been made on a monthly basis using these telephones at each of the respective detention centres;

(b) to which countries were these calls made; and

(c) what was the total cost of these calls listed by country and detention centre?

(4) Are the phone calls made by asylum seekers monitored in any way; if so, how; if not, why not?

(5) Is there a limit on the number of calls made by each asylum seeker per day; if so, what is the limit?

(6) Is there a limit on the duration of each of these calls; if so, what is the limit?

(7) Which detention centres provide computers with Internet connections for the personal and business use of asylum seekers?

(8) How many of these computers are available for use by asylum seekers in each detention centre?

(9) Are there any restrictions imposed in relation to the use of computers?

(10) Are there any specific websites to which access for asylum seekers has been restricted; if so, which websites?

(11) Are there any specific websites to which access for asylum seekers has been banned; if so, which websites?

(12) What are the rules or policies underpinning restriction to specific websites?

(13) What monitoring is in place to determine the appropriateness of the use of websites by asylum seekers?

(14) What monitoring is in place for websites that are not in English?

(15) If an asylum seeker is found to have accessed an inappropriate website, what action is taken to deal with such a situation?

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship has provided the following answer to the honourable senator's question:

(1) All immigration detention facilities provide telephones for the personal and business use of asylum seekers.

The detention service provider, Serco, will facilitate the use of a phone for clients' business use with Migration Agents, lawyers etc. The Department also facilitates calls by the asylum seekers to family, when they first arrive by boat, to inform that they have arrived safely. All other personal calls made by clients are via the use of phone cards, purchased by clients using their Individual Allowance Points.

(2) --

(3) Business calls to Migration Agents, lawyers etc are not generally logged so there is no data available on number, country or cost. There is also no data available on personal calls made using phone cards.

(4) Staff at the immigration detention facilities do not monitor phone calls. Any monitoring of phone calls would be an invasion of the client's privacy.

(5) There is no limit on the number of phone calls.

(6) There is no duration limit on phone calls subject to reasonable use so that others can make phone calls.

(7) All immigration detention facilities provide computers with Internet connections for the personal and business use of asylum seekers.

(8) --

(9) Some facilities have time limits on the use of computers. These restrictions are only applied to ensure all clients have fair and equitable access to the equipment.

(10) At DIAC detention facilities, Internet access is made available to people in immigration detention. On Christmas Island DIAC provides Internet services, and the detention service provider, Serco, is responsible at all other sites.

DIAC policy is to ensure that people in immigration detention do not access:

DIAC and Serco use well-regarded 'Internet Content Filter' products to review every request for access to an Internet site. A Content Filter trawls the Internet & categorises Internet sites against keywords. These services, and there are several of them, work by trawling the Internet and examining large numbers of sites. They regularly update the local content database, and they attempt to categorise every site on the Internet by matching the content against 'keywords'—'news', 'shopping', 'pornography', 'blogs', 'social networking', 'terrorism', 'malware' and many more.

On Christmas Island DIAC, through its service provider, Optus, uses the McAffee Web Gateway content filter. Serco uses the Barracuda Content Filter. Both products allow individual sites to be allowed or denied against the default category treatment.

(11) Websites are allowed or denied according to the categories which have been established in Content Management Filters. See answer to question 10 for examples.

(12) Websites are allowed or denied according to the categories which have been established in Content Management Filters. See answer to question 10 for examples.

(13) Content Management Filters block access to ranges of sites, as described in the answer to question 10. Beyond that there is only manual surveillance of viewing habits by Serco staff.

(14) Content Management Filters block access to ranges of sites, including foreign language sites. There is no additional monitoring of foreign language material accessed by detainees.

(15) If the client breaches the DIAC Computer and Internet Conditions of Use Agreement, the following actions could be taken: