(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
More allegations of sexual assaults inside Australia's immigration detention centres have emerged with incident reports obtained under freedom of information.
The Australian edition of the Guardian newspaper says there have been at least 34 reports of sexual assaults in detention centres since 2009.
The latest allegations mirror similar ones revealed by the SBS Dateline program which resulted in an independent review being ordered.
SBS understands that report has now been completed but the Immigration Minister Scott Morrison is refusing to reveal any details.
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Greg Dyett reports.
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For more than a decade now, mental health professionals, such as the former Australian of the Year Patrick McGorry, have warned that Australia's immigration detention centres can not only exacerbate existing mental illnesses they can actually cause them.
As well, reports of self-harm have been common.
But this year, allegations of sexual assault inside the centres have also generated alarm.
The SBS Dateline program spoke to a whistleblower who left Manus Island earlier this year after working for the contractor that runs the centre.
Journalist Mark Davis says Rod St George made some disturbing allegations.
"Rod painted a portrait of the facility that was bursting at the seems, that was being mismanaged, that was breaching its duty of care to the refugees that were in it and was a system that was unable to protect victims of sexual assault at the hands of other refugees but a system that was unable to protect those victims anyway, whether it could separate them, whether it could physically protect them, whether it could send them off the facility and his observations of this ultimately led to him breaching his contract, you know, he was being threatened with a criminal code to speak out about what he saw."
Rod St George told Dateline it all got too much for him in mid-April after just a month on the job.
"With many self harms in one day and then several of the guards were assaulted. One man was kicked unconscious. They've reached a point where they can't tolerate it any more. There's no media coverage. There's no legal representation. It's just become a dark and dirty secret."
The allegations resulted in the appointment of lawyer Robert Cornall to conduct what the then Labor government called an independent review.
Dateline's Mark Davis says some of the witnesses were not happy about how they were questioned.
"Cornall called in various witnesses in the presence of Department of Immigration officials, I know the witnesses were uncomfortable with the Immigration Department officials being present. I know that many of them very bravely gave their accounts of what they witnessed at Manus Island. I know several of them were concerned that the inquiry didn't appear to be willing to look at the role of the department itself. The inquiry seemed to be about the criminal prosecution of refugees that were being detained by the department. I know of at least three people that appeared before that inquiry that objected to those grounds of the inquiry and said their concerns were to do with how the Australian government was managing this facility and for the safety of both the staff within the facility and the refugees within the facility."
Following the publication in the Guardian of more allegations of sexual assault in immigration detention, its journalist Paul Farrell tried to get the Immigration Minister Scott Morrison to provide an update on the status of the Cornall inquiry.
"Well, any report or advice I may or may not have received is something I would report on at an appropriate time. But, as I said, any of the matters that require criminal investigation, we would never hesitate to refer those matters to the police because they're the appropriate agency to deal with criminal matters and we take a very strong view about crimes being potentially committed in detention centres and people who are found to commit crimes in detention centres, if convicted, face having their visas or their applications for visas denied. (Reporter) Will you release the Cornall review publicly? (Morrison) Well I said I will make a decision on any report I may or may not have receive, or any advice, at the time."
Scott Morrison says it's best to bring in the police when crimes are alleged to have been committed against asylum seekers.
"A few weeks ago I sat down with the police commissioners from all states and territories and what we discussed there was giving police full access to be able to investigate crimes if they're allegations of crimes, whether it's in detention centres or in the community, it is the job to have police go in an investigate those crimes. If people are going to make allegations they can do that, they should do that to the appropriate authorities, if they're presenting those allegations to any agencies under my authority then I would expect those to be appropriately referred to the police."
But Dateline's Mark Davis says the people he spoke to at Manus Island were more interested in how the centre was being run rather than whether individuals were to be charged.
"Well, you know the fact that he'd argue it's a police matter, that is absolutely contrary to certainly the people, the staff members that have spoken to me. Their concerns aren't to do with specific acts of assault. Their concerns are to do with an institutionalised, or an institution that's creating this environment where people can assault one another and can get away with it and where the system itself is generating a level of insanity, that's the concern of the workers. It's not that well someone has been assaulted and they weren't charged, it's very easy to charge somebody, it's very hard, it's difficult to sort of unstick a problem, an institutional problem in a place like that."
