ChilOut, an organisation campaigning for the release of children from detention, says it is sceptical of claims made by the Federal Attorney-General about asylum seekers.
Senator George Brandis last night announced all children in detention will be released by the early months of next year.
He made the comments at an awards ceremony hosted by the Australian Human Rights Commission in Sydney.
“At the end of November there were 702 [children in detention] but I can tell you that between now and Christmas, in other words in the next two to three weeks, all of the children in detention on Christmas Island will be released from Christmas Island and will be returned to the community as soon as possible,” he said.
Senator Brandis blamed the Labor government for what he called ‘the legacy caseload’ of 1,992 children in detention.
“There are 1200 fewer today and by the early months of next year there will be none,” Senator Brandis said.
“All of the children in detention will have been released by the early months of next year and we will be back to where we were in November 2007 when the number of children in detention was zero.”
But this claim has been rejected as untrustworthy by an organisation that campaigns for the release of children from detention.
“We do remain sceptical of comments made by both the Attorney-General and the Minister,” said campaign coordinator of ChilOut, Claire Hammerton.
“First of all we understand that there are no plans at all to release children from Nauru and there are 167 children languishing there.”
Ms Hammerton also expressed concern about the scope of the word ‘released.’
“It is unclear whether that necessarily means released into the community or whether it could mean released into another form of detention,” she said.
Immigration and Border Protection Minister Scott Morrison said Australia’s offshore policy continues to apply.
"The government will be bringing the children on Christmas Island to the mainland before Christmas, to be included in the legacy caseload," he said.
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