Refugee activists have condemned the Federal Government's agreement with Papua New Guinea to start building work on a permanent detention facility on Manus Island.
(Transcript from World News Australia Radio)
Prime Minister Julia Gillard and PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neil have agreed to a tender process for construction, expected to begin next month.
But critics of the Government's asylum-seeker policies say making the detention centre permanent merely cements what was at first a rash act of political expediency in re-opening the Howard-era facility.
Kerri Worthington reports.
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The Manus Island immigration detention centre currently houses around 300 asylum-seekers.
But the Government wants eventually to find room for up to 600 asylum-seekers, including families, as well as 200 staff.
These will be asylum-seekers who've arrived since the Government implemented what it calls its No Advantage policy, and who can expect to stay in detention for up to five years.
Kon Karapanagiotidis of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, says the Immigration Department has indicated the expanded facilities on Manus island will also house what it calls 'other vulnerable groups'.
He says they are likely to include unaccompanied children.
"And there's no doubt that is in their plans because they see that as a critical thing as part of their fantasy of stopping the boats. You'll also see torture and trauma survivors. So what you are going to see are people who are already very fragile and vulnerable because of torture and trauma or vulnerability because of being unaccompanied children. You're going to see those people develop chronic mental illnesses. You're going to see those people escalate in self-harm. You're going to see people become extremely institutionalised and damaged. And we know this because we work with these people when they come out of years of immigration detention."
At a recent public hearing on the plans to upgrade the Manus facility, the Immigration Department said the centre will have accommodation in individual units rather than in dormitories, and will be open -- surrounded by pool fences rather than high, barbed wire ones.
That doesn't appease vocal critics Chilout, long-time campaigners for the release of all children from immigration detention.
Spokeswoman Sophie Peer says an open facility on such an isolated island is irrelevant as there's nowhere to go and no community life to engage with.
"The fact remains that the whole site, the whole island is completely inappropriate to be detaining children at all, and especially - as we're hearing from the government - for up to five years. That is an entire childhood for many of these children. The facilities as described are inadequate. They are not going to meet the needs of these highly vulnerable children, and certainly not over a five-year period."
Claudia Tazreiter is a member of the Border Crossing Observatory, an international network of academics and researchers that study asylum-seekers and unauthorised migration.
Dr Tazreiter says the Federal Government is cementing its offshore detention policies for asylum-seekers by going ahead with a permanent facility on Manus Island.
She says this serves to put the problem at a distance.
"So it's a geographic distance but it means that asylum-seekers are also at a moral distance from the Australian public. They really become invisible. And that means that responsibility for them -- and the Australian government does have a responsibility for asylum-seekers under international law -- and that responsibility is then completely put at arm's length, and the Australian public has little way of scrutinising what's going on through the media or through lawyers having access or through non-government organisations having access."
Dr Tazreiter says the Labor government and the conservative opposition both have similar approaches to offshore immigration detention aimed at appeasing Australian voters.
She says the public ought to take more interest in the issue.
"If they're not interested on human rights grounds, they ought to be interested on cost grounds. We know that immigration detention onshore, and particularly when it's offshore, is hugely expensive. So that even if people are concerned only from a cost analysis they ought to be interested in this issue. And from my point of view, of course, people ought to be interested because of what we're doing to human beings and what we're doing to children and families."
Claudia Tazreiter also says Australia has a regional obligation to find ways of tackling problems of immigration management, but the current approach sends an unfortunate signal to Australia's neighbours.
Kon Karapanagiotidis of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre agrees.
He says the expansion of the Manus Island centre and the re-opening of the centre on Nauru amounts to a land grab by Australia against two much smaller countries.
"It's like a little act of colonialism where both those countries are dependent on us for foreign aid and development, and we're going in with virtually no consultation and basically trying to appropriate land in both areas. And you're seeing challenges happening in both Nauru and Manus Island around how constitutional what is happening there is. And you're also seeing very disgruntled local communities which is only going to escalate in the coming years as well. So the whole thing is an absolute dog's breakfast."
Chilout's Sophie Peer says politicians should not be making decisions about the design and suitability of the Manus Island detention facility without personally visiting the site.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young toured the current temporary facility in January, but other political visits to PNG tend to bypass Manus Island - most notably, Prime Minister Gillard failed to go to the island during her PNG visit last week.
Sophie Peer says all Australian politicians need to visit the Manus Island facility themselves.
"It's very hard to understand humidity from Canberra, it's very hard to understand the malarial situation from Australia. We feel that it's essential that more and more of our parliamentarians visit Manus Island to fully understand what it is Australians are subjecting these children and families to. And if we're going to be approving a project like this that's costing a fortune in taxpayer dollars that these Senators and MPs be completely across what it is they're agreeing to."
The Salvation Army is no fan of Manus Island either although it is prepared to accept taxpayer dollars to act as a contractor there.
Major Paul Moulds says while the Salvation Army opposes offshore processing, it's on Manus Island and Nauru to meet humanitarian needs.
"You go where the need is, if the need is there then someone's got to go there. If the Salvation Army wasn't on Manus Island or wasn't on Nauru the security provider, the facilities company manager would be running that situation and the people would have less, less care given to them so that's why we are there because within the harsh environment within a difficult policy area we want to try to bring some humanity to that."
