Chasing Asylum - Inside Australia's Detention Camps Storyville

This programme contains some strong language

and some scenes which some viewers may find upsetting.

We will decide who comes to this country

and the circumstances in which they come.

APPLAUSE

You just can't continue sending a signal to the rest of the world

that this is a nation of easy destination.

This house today can send a very clear message to asylum seekers

who are contemplating risking a voyage at sea.

And that message very clearly is - don't risk it, don't give

your money to a people smuggler, because you will not be better off.

I make absolutely no apology whatsoever for taking

a hard line on illegal immigration to Australia.

What the Australian people elected us to do was to stop the boats.

This is a national emergency. We've got to treat it as such.

This is a border security operation.

Our resolve to implement what we have promised

the Australian people, to stop the boats, is absolute.

-Thank you.

-You're welcome. Enjoy your day.

Thank you.

-How are you?

-Good. How are you?

-Good, thank you.

'I knew it was a detention centre.

'I didn't know there'd be so many high fences.

'That people would be so restricted in their movements.

'That they would live in tents.'

That people have already been there for over 400, 500 days.

I didn't know there'd be so many security personnel.

It feels militarised.

A friend of mine called me and told me,

"Hey, they're hiring people to go to Nauru.

"You should go, you're interested in asylum seekers."

And I thought, "Yeah, yeah, I guess I am."

So she gave me this number and she got the number off a Facebook ad,

believe it or not, and I called this number and said,

"I'd like to go to Nauru,"

and the woman said, "Sure, when can you leave?"

I was a student at Macquarie Uni in Sydney

and I joined the Salvation Army Society on Facebook

and they posted an ad about going to work on Nauru.

And at the time they made it sound like a really nice, like...

They made it sound like it was just a two-week kind of holiday,

you could bring your friends along.

Yeah, I called the number that was listed on the website,

and two to three days later I was in Nauru

with two of my best friends from school.

My friend that came with me, he was a manager at McDonald's,

and my other friend packed boxes in a factory.

A wide range of people were hired and they were,

you know, 18-year-olds, university students, retirees,

and the only thing that we had in common was that none of us

had experience working with refugees before.

I can't stress enough the remoteness of the location of Nauru.

It's in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.

It's an island of 10,000 people.

It takes 20 minutes to drive around the island.

It's extremely hot.

You immediately notice how poor the island is.

When the Australian government comes to the Nauruan government and says,

"We're going to offer you several billion dollars over the next

"however many years to house a few thousand asylum seekers,"

for a failing economy like Nauru,

I can imagine it would seem like a very good option.

On my first day, we moved up to the camp.

The Salvation Army gave us a very small briefing and said,

"Go out and help them, and be their friends."

The lady that took us in there, she said, "OK, now,

"we want you to get in pairs.

"I'll be back in a couple of hours.

"Go and mingle," and then she just left.

I went up to a group of men who were sitting under the only tree

in the whole centre.

I asked them how they were and they said to me,

"Why are you here?" and, "Why are we here?"

"How long will we be here for?"

And all we'd been given as instructions

was go out and help the men.

And so at that point I realised, what the hell am I doing here?

A lot of people were really confused when they first arrived in Nauru.

I remember one particular intake, a lot of the men were saying to me,

"Where are we? I thought this was part of Australia."

So it was up to us to tell them that no, you're not in Australia,

you're in Nauru.

One of my most vivid memories was a sign being on the wall that said

staff would have to be trained how to use a Hoffman's knife.

When I asked what a Hoffman's knife was,

it was the knife used to cut people down when they're found hanging.

Quite quickly, I started to realise that I had sent myself to

a place which I never would have gone.

I don't think anybody wakes up and says,

"I've decided that I want to run a detention centre."

I grew up on Sydney's North Shore in a fairly comfortable upbringing.

Upper middle-class white guy

in a place with very few migrants at all,

and frankly didn't care about immigration,

didn't care about asylum seekers.

It wasn't something that I'd confronted in my life

and didn't feel it was something I was passionate about.

It wasn't something that my friends talked about and I just

didn't really care. It just didn't feature.

I suppose for me, my story is about coming across this policy issue

completely naive to the problems.

Initially it was about looking after people in detention,

and it shifted to a policy of deterrence.

So you go from looking after people to saying if you come here,

we're going to make it worse for you than if you'd stayed you came from.

The idea was to say,

we don't want you and your families coming to Australia by boat,

"and so we're going to make this place as horrible as possible

to convince you to tell the people back in your countries

not to come by boat.

What that means for the people in offshore detention centres

is that they're stuck there with no idea of what will happen to them.

The threat of asylum seekers has been blown up to create

a huge political storm around the issue, which then needs an answer,

and the answer is to stop the boats coming.

And you'd be naive to think that the hard-line policies

of the Australian government have not done that.

They have attacked the people smugglers' business model,

as they call it, successfully,

they've stopped the boats successfully.

But there is a human cost to that.

Today, the Prime Minister of Papua New Guinea and I are announcing

a major initiative to combat the scourge of people smuggling.

From now on, the asylum seeker who arrives in Austria by boat

will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees.

If they're found to be genuine refugees,

they will be resettled in Papua New Guinea.

Australia will continue with cooperative arrangements

on people smuggling with the Republic of Nauru and looks forward

to furthering those arrangements in the future.

There were daily planeloads of detainees coming in.

Manus was to become the camp for single men.

G4S Management approached me to go up there in a training role

to train expert staff

in the position of safety and security officer.

I'd spent eight or nine years as a prison officer.

The only people that I had experience with

was the criminal world.

It was not what I'd thought a detention camp would be.

One of the worst accommodation -

a World War II hut made of tin on a concrete floor.

122 double bunks in this shed.

Manus Island is tropical,

and these guys were housed in a tin shed.

It was disgusting.

The odour was disgusting.

I just couldn't believe what I was looking at.

It was amazing.

Manus looked like a jail to me.

The men were padlocked in behind gates.

There was faeces, open faeces on the ground.

Men didn't have enough clothes,

men didn't have shoes.

They didn't have enough drinking water,

there was malaria,

there was sickness, disease, infection.

The message is simple -

if you come to Australia illegally by boat,

there is no way you will ever make Australia home.

The act of seeking asylum is not illegal because it's a right.

It's a right that arises

under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights

and it's also a right that arises under a range of

international human rights treaties, such as the Refugees Convention.

The Refugee Convention is one of the most humane

international understandings on the planet.

It's the world's apology for what was done to the Jewish people

in the 1930s, for the doors closed in the faces

of the Jewish people trying to flee the Holocaust.

It was an understanding between countries that when people

were seeking protection from persecution

that they could cross a border, they could seek protection.

And Australia signed up to it.

Australia said,

look, yes, we decide who comes into this country and we decide,

by signing this convention, that we'll let refugees come here.

And we'll let them come as they come everywhere else in the world -

we'll let them come by sea.

It's quite obvious that the camps were set up to send people home.

I know that it's not supposed to be a holiday,

but it took about six weeks, I think,

for them to start to degrade mentally.

The whole concept of indefinite detention is this idea

that there is no progress.

If you have a criminal in Australia, you say,

you've committed a crime, your punishment is two years in jail.

For these men, they don't know what crime they've committed.

Under the Refugee Convention, they've got every right to

come here and ask for protection,

at least to have their stories heard.

When you've got this two-year sentence as a prisoner,

you can count down the days.

For these men, they didn't have that.

Day two is the same as day five, which is the same as day 100.

Except that by day 100, you've spent 100 days in this camp with

no idea of if you're progressing any closer to your future goal.

On Nauru I was seeing daily self-harm.

Up to four a day.

There was no hope to give them.

I'd be lying if I told them I knew and I could make their life better

because I couldn't.

I saw men cut their stomach open with glass,

one man take a fluorescent light tube

and beat himself across the head

and stab himself.

Men suffocating themselves,

men stitching their lips, men...

One man stitched his eyelid.

A lot of cutting,

sometimes superficial, sometimes deeper.

Swallowing Rid, swallowing washing powder,

swallowing razor blades.

People trying to hang themselves with rope,

fan cords,

knitting wool.

They're incredibly traumatised from where they're coming from,

what they're seeking asylum from,

and they're being re-traumatised by their current situation.

Their families are separated

and they see no prospect of them ever being reunited.

They see no hope for the future.

A young Sri Lankan man that I was working with,

he was Tamil.

He was about 24, 25 years old,

so we were about the same age.

He was living in an area in Sri Lanka,

there was a strong presence of the Tamil Tigers.

One day, they came to the family's house

and they shot his father in front of him and he died.

He and his brother decided to flee the area,

so they left for Colombo, the capital city.

They were caught there

and he was kept in prison for about one year, he said.

And he told me that he was tortured throughout the entire time.

He was highly distressed when he was on Nauru.

He had a lot of symptoms of severe trauma.

He was complaining of burning all over his body all of the time

and he had a lot of cigarette burns all over his back,

and he said that they had burnt his genitals as well.

The last time I saw him, he was really upset.

He was crying.

He said, "My life, why is this my life?

"If tonight I'm in bed and I just slip a plastic bag over my head

"and die, no-one would know, no-one would care."

I had nothing to say.

I didn't know what to say.

INTERVIEWER: Was that kind of situation common?

Yeah. Yeah.

The deterioration amongst all the asylum seekers,

no matter what their age is, is probably what's hardest to see.

People are having...have really, um,

severe mental health issues now, which they didn't have before.

People are talking to themselves, people have psychotic episodes.

Most adults will be on a range of medications.

They'll take sleeping tablets and still won't be able to sleep,

and they're walking around like zombies, essentially.

And they will be on antidepressants

and still have thoughts every day of suicide and self-harm.

The main thing you're doing for people is keeping them alive,

asking them not to harm themselves, asking them not to kill themselves.

Do you tell them you know things will get better?

I tell them that, yes.

But I don't know how and when.

And they know I don't know that.

By the end of my time at the department, we were fully aware

of the impact on someone's mental health of detention.

And so it was a lot less of a reaction to someone self harming.

It was more seen as, well, that was inevitable.

I found that really difficult.

I found it difficult to work in a portfolio and in a job

where our job was to implement a deterrence strategy

and we knew that doing so would mean people were damaged.

Children have to be in detention,

according to the government's policies,

because it's part of the deterrence.

In detention over time,

they develop again a range of disorders.

It's measurable.

They are not given opportunities to participate in normal activities

that children require for development.

Like opportunities to play, even.

And then they have parents who are made sick as well,

who end up not being able to parent them.

There are some very young babies in detention,

who are not feeding properly, who are not gaining weight.

Failing to thrive is the medical term.

So all of it is really harmful for children.

But it is considered the price that is required to stop boats.

What's your name?

-Who are you looking for?

-INAUDIBLE

They are growing up on white phosphate rock,

in mouldy, damp tents

where they have no privacy and no space.

You can't develop age appropriately in a place like that.

There's lots of behavioural issues.

You see kids throwing rocks, throwing chairs,

fighting with each other, isolating themselves.

You see kids self-harming.

You see kids banging their heads on walls

and banging their heads on rocks.

Sarah Hanson-Young, the Greens senator in Australia,

she collected so many toys for kids.

Finally, they approved all these toys and the toys arrived in Nauru.

They gave the kids a little number and they said,

"You have a surprise tomorrow."

The kids lined up after school,

they give them a bag and they ripped up the bag and one of the kids,

she was Sri Lankan, she grabbed this toy

and it was a soft toy and you know,

after like months and months and months, she grabbed the soft toy

in her hand and she didn't know what to do with it.

She just like rubbed it all over her neck and face

and she was screaming with joy

and we - me and Save The Children - we were just behind the counter,

we burst into tears.

We could not believe it that after one year of being

in the detention centre, she finally grabbed a soft toy

and she could hold it and it was hers and then it just felt like,

what the hell?

Why have we kept these kids in this condition?

Do you feel any guilt or any guilt at all

about children being dealt with in detention?

-None whatsoever, Neil.

-There are 10-year-olds on suicide watch.

Neil, the most compassionate thing you can do is stop the boats.

We have stopped the boats.

For some time now,

there have been persistent allegations of serious physical

and sexual abuse of children and women incarcerated in Nauru.

After a very long time, this led to the government setting up

an enquiry which ultimately ended up with what's called The Moss Report.

You see sexualised behaviours amongst the kids there.

INTERVIEWER: Like what?

Like kids touching themselves...

..or touching other kids in a sexualised manner.

How old are those kids?

They're young. They're like under five.

Sexualised behaviours in kids of that age

suggest that they've had exposure to...

..sexual behaviour at an inappropriate age.

The Nauru police force aren't trained to investigate

or work with kids or interview kids around disclosures.

The Nauru police force work very slowly

and you often see no results.

Yeah, so there's been no repercussions that I know of.

We recognise that our border protection policy is tough.

We recognise many would see it as harsh.

But it has been proven to be the only way

to stop those deaths at sea.

The argument is that we have got a right

to put refugees through hell,

and their children through hell

because it will stop people dying.

Better that they be mashed up in Nauru and Manus Island

than die at sea.

And the deaths are appalling.

But I think it is profoundly hypocritical -

profoundly hypocritical - to claim that the policies

that are being pursued at the moment by the Australian Government

are fundamentally humanitarian

because they stop these deaths.

There was a room change one afternoon.

One of the tranferees was outside.

It started to rain.

The room change had taken hours and his possessions were getting wet.

I was standing at the door of his room.

He walked in briskly and I wasn't afraid, I wasn't worried,

I didn't think anything of it,

but two expatriate New Zealand and Australian security guards

walked over to where he was in the room and beat him against the wall,

and twisted his back over a metal bed frame

and punched him

to unconsciousness.

I went and talked to the managers and they said,

"Don't talk about it.

"It's not your problem."

Eventually, I was interviewed by PNG Police.

They shut the door behind me and they threatened me and told me

that I should change my statement.

They gave me all the other witness statements that were by G4S

and Salvation Army managers who saw exactly what I saw

and had written something completely different.

So I changed my statement to say that G4S only pushed him.

I didn't know what to do at that time to get out of that situation.

I was really scared.

Security guards, when for example,

when asylum seekers are in the computer room, would aim

their hands like this and pretend to shoot at the back of their heads.

I saw guards say they were going to urinate in the drinking water

if the asylum seekers wouldn't stop complaining about dirty water.

They'd be racist,

they'd call them names and tell them to go home.

There were a group that had served in the Australian Defence Force

in a lot of the countries that asylum seekers were actually coming

from, so Afghanistan was probably the main one,

and then there were a few others that had worked as bouncers,

you know, in nightclubs on the Gold Coast and things like that.

They were very on edge and hypervigilant.

That was really noticeable.

-NEWSREADER:

-The large riot broke out in a processing centre on Nauru.

15 security guards were injured as 300 detainees

broke out of the facility.

-NEWSREADER:

-More than 100 asylum seekers have been transferred

into police custody after the violence

which caused 60 million damage.

-NEWSREADER:

-For two nights running,

there has been chaos and disorder on Manus Island.

The government says last night's unrest began with demonstrations.

We have very strong suggestions from refugee advocates

that this was an attack from outside.

The detainees inside were attacked

by PNG Police is the assertion and also angry locals

with machetes and other weapons and that maybe even someone was shot.

The veil of secrecy over the Manus Island Detention Centre

was partially lifted today with a report released by the government

into the February riots at the PNG centre.

Immigration Minister Scott Morrison joins us.

When you read the account of Reza Barati's death,

it's very detailed.

His skull was shattered, he was beaten with sticks

and kicked in the head by more than ten officers - Australians and locals.

Did you have even a moment of doubt about the morality

of offshore detention centres?

What occurred that night was criminal.

There was a terrible, tragic and distressing incident

that took place that night, as you said in your introduction.

-NEWSREADER:

-A 24-year-old Iranian asylum seeker has died

in a Brisbane hospital tonight after his family agreed to have his

life-support machine switched off.

Hamid Khazaei was pronounced brain-dead earlier this week

after reportedly suffering blood poisoning from an infected foot.

The asylum seeker was flown from Manus Island to Brisbane last week.

Scott Morrison says the Immigration Department

will review the medical treatment he received.

-SCOTT MORRISON:

-I have asked to review the medical treatment...

Myself and two of my colleagues wrote explicitly

about medical concerns.

In particular, infections starting in the feet.

Then, a couple of months later, Hamid Khazaei still died

of an infection starting in his foot

and we had already told them months before and that is documented -

date, time and everything, what we had said is transcribed.

We had a Senate enquiry into the death of Reza Barati

and I don't see anything changing.

We are telling the people what's happening there

and nothing's changing.

-NEWSREADER:

-Australia is now in a refugee partnership with Cambodia.

In Phnom Penh, the deals are being done.

Australia has provided a 40 million down payment and additional aid.

Refugees from Nauru will be voluntarily sent here

in the months ahead.

Those who do come will be moving to one of Southeast Asia's

poorest nations,

where the average wage is less than 100 a month.

The current options for refugees on Nauru are either to live in

the community there, temporarily,

to go to Cambodia or to return home to the real prospect of persecution.

-NEWSREADER:

-The Nauruan government has declared that the detention centre

will become an open centre, 24 hours per day, seven days per week,

from today.

It says all asylum seekers are now free to move around the island

at their will.

Can the Australian government guarantee the safety of these people

as they are released into the Nauruan communities?

Particularly given that women and children... 67 allegations

of child abuse, 33 claims of rape and sexual assault on Nauru?

Can the Australian government guarantee these people's safety?

Emma, the Australian government, the Queensland

or New South Wales, Victorian government, can't provide you with

that guarantee for people coming out into the Australian society.

People are returning home more now than they ever were.

Returning to their country of origin and then attempting to seek asylum

again in a different country.

Nothing has changed for them in their home countries,

often they'll state that they are returning to extreme danger.

It is really hard to hear that they feel that is their only option.

Operational-wise, everything I was trying to bring

to the attention of management, nothing was being done about it.

I got to a personal level of, this has got to stop and I can't stop it.

I found a handwritten note by my bed suggesting that I should shut up

or some harm would come to myself.

And then I received a message that I continued on,

the great possibility that I would be found floating alongside

the HMS Choules at some stage.

That scared the shit out of me, it really did

and I pulled the pin.

I said, enough is enough. If I didn't speak out, who was going to?

I've got a conscience

and I was brought up the right way.

And I don't understand how we can do this to each other.

People need to talk up, we need to tell each other what is going on.

I think Australians are pretty sick of being lectured to, I really

think Australians are sick of being lectured to by the United Nations.

Particularly, particularly given that we have stopped the boats.

-NEWSREADER:

-The Prime Minister has ruled out resettling any Rohingya

asylum seekers in Australia,

despite pleas from Malaysia and Indonesia for the load to be shared

among the region.

The United States has offered to take a lead role

in resolving the crisis.

We simply don't know how many people are out there

and they are drifting at sea.

JOURNALIST: If it was up to you now, which country would you head for?

I think all of us in the boat now want to go to Australia.

It was the right thing to do.

We didn't have an option.

The fact that we had been fighting in Vietnam

added to the sense of obligation that I felt.

With others, we persuaded Malaysia to establish a processing centre.

People were processed, often quite quickly in a month or two.

If they were coming to Australia, they were flown to Australia.

So there was no danger of people drowning at sea

once they had got to the processing centre in Malaysia.

As a consequence of accepting Vietnamese refugees,

we have a very vigorous,

very loyal Australian-Vietnamese community,

which adds to our culture, adds to our wealth,

adds to the diversity of Australia

in very productive and beneficial ways.

Well, what we do, we stop the boats by hook or by crook,

because that is what we have got to do and that is what we have

successfully done and I just don't want to go into the details

of how it is done.