Children who do not feel safe

Howard Glenn pointed to the cost of detention: DIMIA’s current estimates (April 2005) indicated that per year the average detention estimates were $A87 million for accommodation, staff and other administration costs.

He told the commission he believed “Even Australians with the hardest hearts surely cannot sleep easily knowing that their government insists we condemn stateless people - men, women and children - to live out their lives behind locked gates, walled in forever”.

Apparently the government can. An 800-bed immigration facility is being built on Christmas Island, apparently to house future asylum seekers who arrive in Australia by boat. Christmas Island first attracted world attention as a result of British and US nuclear tests.

The 9 children, 8 women and 18 men currently at Christmas Island Immigration Reception and Processing Centre have videos, DVDs, playstations, gameboys, music system and karaoke to amuse them. Sports include fishing and swimming, and sewing machines and computers are available, according to DIMIA.

On May 11, there were 68 children altogether in Australian detention. On May 23, DIMIA statistics stated 58 children are in detention. So the count is going down further. The children include those held on Christmas Island, 8; in Villawood, 28; Maribyrnong, 1; Baxter, 2; and Port Augusta, 19.

Even if they were all released tomorrow, what are the long-term effects of the incarceration of children?

Dr Louise Newman, director of the NSW Institute of Psychiatry, said on the ABC recently that detention was a very abnormal environment for child rearing, and that the majority of children the institute had clinically and developmentally assessed had shown signs of emotional and psychological trauma and stress, and their development had been affected.

Dr Newman, speaking subsequently, said among the children her institute had seen, some were born in detention, some had lived in detention for three or four years, and some had experienced the Woomera riots.

As a result, children were receiving treatment for psychological problems and post-trauma stress disorder. Effects manifested themselves in depression, isolation, and a fear of separation. She said even very young children could sense the anxiety of their parents, who, as a result of their own experiences, could become withdrawn and not emotionally available for their children.

Under detention there were not enough opportunities for the children to play and not enough facilities for their education, she said. There was inadequate stimulus for the children and, in addition, they often had to deal with depressed parents. It was a combination in which the children could not thrive.

When the children were eventually released, she anticipated, “Some will need intensive treatment and psychological support, as well as remedial education to get them up to where they should be”.

Both parents and children in the community on temporary protection visas continued to suffer anxiety about their future. “It is especially important for adolescents to feel they belong,” she said.