The Australian government must admit it controls the offshore processing centres on Manus Island and in Nauru and has a duty of care to the asylum seekers and refugees it detains, a Senate inquiry has found, declaring that “to suggest anything else is fiction”.

On Friday the Senate standing committees on legal and constitutional affairs delivered damning findings from a seven-month inquiry into allegations of abuse on Manus Island and Nauru, sparked by the Guardian’s publication of the Nauru files.

Its publication coincided with the release of fresh evidence about the December death on Manus of a Sudanese refugee, Faysal Ishak Ahmed, who waited 12 hours for an air ambulance after suffering a seizure.

The committee’s majority report, written by Labor senators and supported by the Greens, labelled the federal government’s offshore processing policy as “disturbing” in its lack of accountability and said the Department of Immigration and Border Protection had clearly failed to deliver the policy in a transparent and safe manner.

In a foreword to the report, the inquiry’s chair, the Labor senator Louise Pratt, said significant changes had to be made to the administration of offshore processing policy if it was to continue.

“First and foremost” the Australian government had to acknowledge that it controlled the regional processing centres, the report said.

The government routinely dismisses questions about incidents and operations inside the centres by declaring it a matter for the Papua New Guinean and Nauruan governments. But the report noted that the Australian government paid for all associated costs, engaged contractors, owned all major assets and was responsible for negotiating third-party resettlements.

Additionally, the department was the final decision maker regarding specialist health services and medical transfers. “Incident reports are also provided to the department so it cannot claim that it was not aware of incidents that occurred in RPCs outside of Australia.”

The government clearly had a duty of care to the asylum seekers it transferred to the Pacific islands, the report said, and “to suggest otherwise is fiction”.

The committee also called for an end to the secrecy, which it said exacerbated the vulnerability of refugees and asylum seekers, and prevented proper scrutiny.

It made 12 recommendations to improve the conditions inside the two island centres, but stopped short of calling for their closure, as the Greens’ report did.

The committee’s recommendations included an increase to Australia’s refugee intake, greater funding to the United Nations high commissioner for refugees, a regional processing framework and an immediate external review of the department’s medical transfer procedures.



The committee also recommended an independent assessment of the impact of detention on physical and mental health, and an external audit and investigation into all incident reports over the life of Transfield and Broadspectrum contracts to run both centres, including:

Incidents that were downgraded in severity, as the Nauru files revealed Wilson’s Security officers did regularly

Any inconsistencies in relation to incidents being downgraded in severity

Evidence of follow-up activities after reported incidents.

The Greens said the establishment and operation of the regional processing centres was “a shameful chapter in Australia’s national story” and recommended they be immediately closed, with the detainees brought to Australia. They called for a formal apology and reparations, as well as a royal commission or, failing that, a standing inquiry that reports every six months.

‘Clear failures by the department’

The Senate inquiry was launched in September after the Guardian’s publication of the Nauru files, a cache of more than 2,000 documents containing reports and allegations of assaults, acts of sexual abuse of children, self-harm and suicide attempts in the Nauru detention centre.

Pratt said the evidence provided by the Nauru files was “deeply concerning” and it was the first time such volume and detail of information had been made public.

“Some of the reports are recordings of allegations made by refugees and asylum seekers, and many contain information which workers have observed first hand,” she said. “Even more troublingly, these reports only record those incidents which have actually been reported to workers, or which workers have themselves observed. Undoubtedly, they do not reflect the true prevalence of such incidents.”

Australia’s offshore processing policy was “deeply affected by structural complexity” and a reliance on the private sector, the report said.



“Despite the efforts of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection, its contractors and subcontractors, and other related stakeholders, there are clear failures by the department in administering the current policy in a safe and transparent manner,” it said.

“This structural complexity has led to a lack of accountability and transparency in the administration of the policy, and a failure to clearly acknowledge where the duty of care lies in relation to those asylum seekers and refugees.”

It said Australian taxpayers and the Senate were entitled to greater transparency about the cost of administering the policy, and the lack of accountability was “disturbing”.

Coalition: report a ‘public-relations stunt’

In a dissenting report the Coalition senators dismissed the inquiry entirely as “a politically motivated public-relations stunt on the part of Labor and the Greens designed to tarnish the success of the Coalition’s strong border protection policies by inference and hearsay”.

The report, written by the Queensland senator Ian Macdonald, praised the Coalition government’s success at stopping boat arrivals, closing mainland detention centres and contributing to budget savings. It disagreed with all recommendations by the majority committee, noting improvements in health services and rejecting the cost of further investigations, which it said were not needed.

The suggestion the government was not taking all third-country offers seriously was “mischievous and false”. It also said there was already a regional framework in place. It accused the report of being “highly speculative” and relying on anecdotal evidence and second- and third-hand reports, as well as on unsupported allegations presented as fact.

It said the inquiry should have been permanently abandoned if media reports were the basis for the allegations. The Guardian’s Nauru files were primary documents – largely written by staff and many from eyewitness accounts – and were distributed to at least 19 government email addresses and stored by the department. The Senate report also criticised the government for clear obstructionism and refusing to provide requested information to the inquiry.

During one of the inquiry hearings, Macdonald dismissed the Nauru files as mostly “trifling at best” while also admitting he had not read them.



Refugee waited 12 hours for ambulance

The report’s release coincided with the publication of answers to questions on notice by the department.

They revealed that Faysal Ishak Ahmed waited 12 hours for an air ambulance after suffering a seizure on 22 December 2016. Ahmed had sought medical attention 13 times in the two months before the seizure, which caused him to fall and hit his head.

The department’s timeline shows an air ambulance was recommended by its health contractor, International Health and Medical Services, at 1.10am. The request was approved at 2.32am but the ambulance did not leave nearby Port Moresby until 2pm.

The ambulance eventually arrived at Manus at 3.15pm and left for Brisbane at 6.07pm. Ahmed was eventually admitted to hospital in Brisbane just after midnight on Christmas Eve.

His death is being investigated by the Queensland coroner.

The department refused to disclose the turnaround times for other medical evacuations, saying it would be an “unreasonable diversion of resources” to provide that level of detail.

Further evidence to the inquiry also confirmed the extent of a dengue fever outbreak at Nauru in February, revealing that 41 people had dengue on 27 March, and four had been airlifted to Australia for treatment.