ASRC at Detention inquiry

Mr Karapanagiotidis?If you wonder what the future of a policy of mandatory detention in any form will look like, all you have to do is look at its history and what is happening right now.

The reason that we have this human cost is that mandatory detention is unworkable, unnecessary and unjustifiable. There is an alternative. Detaining in any form people who are seeking asylum will damage them; it will traumatise them.

I have been running the ASRC for 7? years and, in that time, I have assisted 7,500 people. The stories that stay with me and haunt me are those of the people with whom I have worked in detention. I try to understand what sort of policy could create the suffering that I have seen and heard of: the little 10-year-old girls who, while in the Maribyrnong Detention Centre, ate their own faeces; and the men on hunger strikes for 28 days who then slashed their wrists and used their own blood to sign farewell notes on the walls. I think about a mother who waited for her daughter to leave to go to school and then tried to crush herself under an electronic hospital bed, in the hope that her daughter would not be returned. What sort of policy creates this?

I think back to a few years ago and the poor man who, after 5? years in Baxter, turned up and asked me to help him get back into detention because he did not know how to cope on the outside. That is what mandatory detention does. I think of the children with whom I worked who stitched their lips together, and the men with whom I worked who tried in every possible way to poison themselves, slash themselves, bury themselves?to kill themselves.

What sort of policy does this? It is an unworkable policy. This rubbish that 30 days, 60 days or90 f*&#ing days is somehow going to create a humane mandatory detention policy is a lie. Every day that you detain someone, you break them. Every day that you detain someone, you humiliate and degrade them; you rob them of their liberty, of their freedom and of their very being. I think of two poor young Afghan men who have been in Maribyrnong since June, waiting on identity and security checks. In 16 years of mandatory detention, show me one Afghan terrorist as our reward for this policy.

Mandatory detention is unworkable. The blood on the former government?s hands is everywhere. The broken men that I work with, who walk the streets of Melbourne, who spent four, five, six and seven years in detention, are dead inside. For them, that life, liberty and hope are gone forever. This policy of mandatory detention is not just unworkable but also unnecessary.

What do we know about undocumented arrivals? We know that they are the most oppressed and the most persecuted. I know three things. My organisation and the Hotham Mission together were the ones that pioneered alternative detention in this country. We were the ones who cared for people who otherwise would have died in detention. The reason that this is not an inquiry into deaths in custody is that organisations such as ours across this nation have done the work of this government. People otherwise would have died; they would have killed themselves indetention. Over 200 people were released into our care. They were undocumented arrivals whose cases were still on foot. Many of them had identity, health or character issues to be resolved. Not one of those people in our care every absconded. We know that undocumented arrivals are the ones who are least likely to abscond.

The second thing we learned about undocumented arrivals is that they are the ones who are least likely to have any history of criminality. Tragically, they are the ones who are most likely to be the victims of criminality and persecution. Not one in the 16 years of our policy of mandatory detention has been found to be a terrorist. The fiction that mandatory detention is built on, which I will get to shortly, is a pile of lies.

What is the third thing that we know? Apart from the fact that they are the least likely to

abscond and the least likely to have a criminal record of any group of asylum seekers in this country, the third thing that we know is that they are the ones most likely to be found to be refugees. I have acted legally for some 6,000 asylum seekers in the last seven and a half years.?In my experience, undocumented arrivals are four times more likely to be found to be refugees.

So the ones that we are subjecting to this onerous, immoral and brutal policy of mandatory detention are those most likely to be found to be refugees?more than 90 per cent of undocumented arrivals, during our policy of mandatory detention?those least likely to abscond and those least likely to have a history of criminality. Mandatory detention is unworkable, unnecessary and, most critically, unjustifiable.

Mandatory detention is based on a body of lies?the myth that we need it for health checks,security checks and identity checks. Our fear prevents our saying, ?Let?s abolish it because the human costs, the financial costs and the costs to this country are too great; they are unbearable, untenable and unacceptable.? We hold on to it; we somehow think it is protecting us. Yet we go it alone. We are the only developed country in the world to have such a policy. The US does not even have such a policy. The UK, Sweden, Denmark, Canada and New Zealand do not have such a policy. Why do we go it alone in this?

Let us start with No. 1: ?We must have a policy of mandatory detention for the sake of health checks.? Millions of tourists come to this country every year without having a health check. I can talk just about community based asylum seekers who come here on tourist visas and apply for protection. The public perception is that, upon their applying for protection, there must be a rush to health check them. It is about a month after applying for protection before they are asked to do a health check. They are given another month on top of that, before they have to do that health check. If they miss that deadline, it is no big deal. At least two months pass.

People say to me, ?But, Kon, what about tuberculosis and HIV?? As the organisation that runs the only health service for asylum seekers in Victoria, we are the ones that treat most of those cases of HIV and tuberculosis. And what do we have to do when they are found with that? We call up Health Services Australia and, within four weeks?not the next day, not within 24 hours?we have to fill out a form called an 815 health undertaking. I have four weeks to call Health Services Australia to let them know that I am working with someone with tuberculosis or HIV. We do not lock them up; nor do we deny people asylum on the basis of their health. I have never heard a bigger load of rubbish than mandatory detention being necessary for the sake of health checks. Where do we do it in the community with asylum seekers? Rightly, we do not do it. We never detain them under any circumstances, because it is a health issue and not a border protection issue.

The second and third great lies upon which mandatory detention is built are the ideas of security and identity. I invite the committee to look at the facts and figures?and not just at the fact that we have not had one single terrorist in 16 years of mandatory detention policy. Show me the war criminals, the mass murderers or the convicted murderers?show me anyone. What would the figure be? It would be 0.001 per cent of the 20,000 people that the UN Committee against Torture says that we have detained in the last 16 years. We detain them all, and there are those who will not be getting out in one or two months??In three months we?ll review it; in two months we?ll review it; in 30 days we?ll trigger it and the health and identity checks will go quickly.?

It will be those who are the most vulnerable and who have suffered the worst who will not be able to establish their identity for the purpose of a security check, like those two Afghan men in Maribyrnong. They are into their fifth month and likely to be there for a year, possibly longer.

We know that identity checks regarding their country of origin are a nightmare. Most Afghans do not even know their date of birth. So we sit there and say, ?Well, once they have done their security check, we?ll let them out.? What if they cannot demonstrate their identity? Who are we protecting here? This idea that undocumented arrivals are a threat to our national security or a threat to our country is a lie. There are no facts to support this. This is just the politics of fear.

This is the most debased of policymaking and panders to the lowest common denominator. It is a lie that we need mandatory detention for health, security and identity.

Finally, there is an alternative. Imagine this system: a person arrives undocumented to this country. If they have a fixed address they are allowed to go and reside there. That is what they do in Denmark and Sweden. If they do not, they are placed in a community hostel. That also happens in Canada and New Zealand. Let us say we ask that person within 48 hours to present to be interviewed by an immigration officer so they can get necessary information to start their health, identity and character check process. There are lots of other ways of proving identity, such as asking questions about where that person is from that you could not otherwise ascertain.

I need to just stop and mention one other thing. When we work with community based asylum seekers who are found to come on fraudulent travel documents, that is the passport is fake and it is not their real name. We have had 10 like that in the last year. We have not done health checks or character checks and their document is not real, but not one of those has been detained, because there is no need to. With character checks that people are asked to like police checks with form 80s to get police clearances, they are given two to three months to do that because this government and this department knows that asylum seekers are not a threat to our country.

I would like to go back to the alternative. Within 48 hours they are seen by an immigration officer and get the information to start. They are then giving a living allowance to support them until they apply for protection. They live in a community hostel or at a fixed address that they have to provide and demonstrate. Let us say we give them 28 days in which to apply for protection. We provide them with a lawyer. We can bring an end to dodgy migration agents by IAAA funding, the provision of asylum assistance, by not allowing private agents to charge for it and to have a legal aid funded model that could be shared among the community to ensure quality assistance. People lodge within 28 days. They are then given the right to work, health? care or a safety net if they cannot, and the process is humane and fair. This is what all other western countries have a variation of. This system that I am imagining could happen tomorrow.

It could happen right now. Mandatory detention is unworkable, unnecessary and unjustifiable. This alternative could work. The community sector has been doing this alternative for the last seven or eight years. This government needs to have this policy. It does sit in your hands with the recommendations you make. Any period of mandatory detention is unacceptable, immoral and is going to damage people. It is the cost to them, our country and our international standing. You cannot trust this system to umpire itself because it is unworkable. We ask for it to end. Thank you.