(Transcript from SBS World News Radio)
Prime Minister Tony Abbott has dismissed a report into the detention of children, saying Australia's human rights monitor should be ashamed of itself.
The new Human Rights Commission report concludes detaining children is a violation of international human rights law, and it calls for a royal commission.
Thea Cowie has the details.
(Click on the audio tab above to hear the full report)
The report is entitled "The Forgotten Children" and details the impact of detaining asylum seeker children between 2013 and 2014.
Findings are based on more than a thousand interviews with children and their parents, medical experts and detention centre workers.
Findings include that one in three children detained in Australia and on Christmas Island have a mental health disorder requiring psychiatric support.
And that over a 15-month period there were 112 incidents of self-harm among children and 27 incidents of voluntary starvation.
Human Rights Commission President Gillian Triggs says the findings are deeply shocking.
"One parent told the inquiry team, 'My son thinks we're robbers.' Another said, 'My child only takes orders from the Serco guards.' Many children are wetting the bed again long after being toilet trained. Children are especially frightened of the nightly head counts with officers flashing torches on them at 11pm and 5am the next day."
Recorded assaults on children numbered 223, and there were 33 reported incidents of sexual assault, the majority involving children.
The report calls for a Royal Commission into the detention practices of successive Australian governments over the past 23 years.
The Prime Minister rejects the recommendation, and speaking on Macquarie radio he questioned the timing of the report.
"Where was the Human Rights Commission when hundreds of people were drowning at sea? Where was the Human Rights Commission when there were almost 2,000 children in detention? This is a blatantly partisan politicised exercise and the Human Rights Commission ought to be ashamed of itself."
Australian Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young says a Royal Commission is needed to prevent more suffering.
"It's time we ended the blame game and accepted detaining children hurts them, it damages them and it's time it ended. No MP in this place can exercise their conscience and remain a supporter of children in detention. No MP in this place can continue to turn a blind eye to the medical evidence that children are being systematically and institutionally abused and destroyed."
The Prime Minister says the report is redundant because drownings at sea have stopped and considerable progress has been made in removing children from detention.
"I reckon that the Human Rights Commission ought to be sending a note of congratulations to Scott Morrison saying, 'well done, mate, because your actions have been very good for the human rights and the human flourishing of thousands of people'."
Latest immigration figures show there are 211 children being held in immigration detention centres, including 119 in the offshore processing centre on Nauru.
The report calls for all of them, and their families, to be released within a month.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has told the ABC he can't say if that request will be met.
"The situation is difficult and it's hard to provide a yes or no answer. There are some families where the father, for example, has been assessed by the security agencies in an adverse way. And the balance for me is to decide whether or not that person is a risk ÂûY8LÂûY8Lto the Australian community. And in that situation, I will not be releasing that person into the community. In some of those situations we've approached the families and said we're happy to try to accommodate the wife or the mother and the children to go out into the community and in some cases, families have rejected that offer."
The report calls for detention facilities on Christmas Island to be shut down, and recommends that an independent person replace the Immigration Minister as the guardian for unaccompanied children.
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