Serco guards employed by the Department of Immigration have barred an asylum seeker advocate from visiting Baby Asha and her mother at a Brisbane hospital.

Doctors at Brisbane’s Lady Cilento children’s hospital are refusing to discharge the one-year-old baby, known as Asha, who was being treated for burns sustained at the Nauru offshore processing centre, because they do not believe the centre provides a safe environment for a child.



Natasha Blucher, a former Save the Children worker who is now advocacy coordinator for the Darwin Asylum Seeker Advocacy and Support Network (Dassan), has been supporting the family, but said her permission to visit with them has been revoked without explanation.

Blucher told Guardian Australia she had applied to visit Asha and her mother earlier this week. She had been granted permission by the Department of Immigration to visit the mother and baby on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, citing their relationship of two years.

Blucher met with the pair on Tuesday morning, but upon returning in the afternoon she was approached by a “quite rude” Serco guard who told her approval had been revoked and she had to leave.

Subsequent repeated phone calls to the Department of Immigration have been ignored or fobbed off, according to Blucher.

Serco referred questions from Guardian Australia to the immigration department, which said visitation rights were decided on a case by case basis with a number of considerations, “primarily in relation to the ongoing security and welfare of the people they are seeking to visit”.

The spokesman said the department was in contact with a number of people and authorities, including the family.

“Decisions are being made in the best interests of the child and family and where visitation refusals are made they are for good reasons, which may not be able to be shared publicly,” he said.

“Authorised legal representatives and caseworkers for detainees are not impeded in their visitation applications. This individual is not an authorised caseworker for this family and does not deliver services on behalf of the department or its service providers.”

In response Blucher said it didn’t make sense for the department “to state that these decisions are made in the best interests of the family, when it’s the family themselves who are so upset that I’m not allowed to see them”.

Blucher said Asha’s mother had not been allowed to receive calls from her on Tuesday night. She questioned the government’s recent promise of compassion towards asylum seekers currently in the custody of Australian authorities.



“The government has made statements that they are going to treat people with compassion and on a case by case basis,” said Blucher.

“When Malcolm Turnbull was asked about Asha specifically he said he wouldn’t comment on individual cases but that we’ll be treating all people with compassion. Not allowing a mother with a sick child in hospital to be visited by someone she’s known for two years when she has no other friends around is not compassion.”

Asha was born in Australia to her asylum-seeker parents. In June she was removed to Nauru at the age of five months, against the advice of Save the Children. She developed gastroenteritis within a week.

A protest and vigil outside the Brisbane hospital supporting Asha and her doctors has entered its seventh day.

Refugee advocates keep a vigil outside the Lady Cliento children’s hospital in Brisbane where Baby Asha is being treated for burns suffered while in detention on Nauru. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

When asked about the case on Monday, Turnbull told media the government would not make any decisions which would “imperil the health or security of any individual”.

“We’re managing this policy with great care and with great compassion, and at the same time doing everything we can to ensure that we do not do anything or say anything which will be used by the people smugglers to get more vulnerable people on to those boats,” he said.

The government is also under pressure from community groups, churches and state and territory leaders to grant amnesty to 267 asylum seekers who are set to be deported back to offshore processing and detention following the high court decision which ruled the system legal.

On Wednesday human rights lawyers said the government had agreed to give at least 72 hours’ notice of any attempt to deport Asha and her family back to Nauru. At the same time it was revealed the government had withdrawn its assurances to do the same for the 267 other asylum seekers facing transfer.