Tony Abbott labels Human Rights Commission report into children in detention 'blatantly partisan politicised exercise'

Updated

Prime Minister Tony Abbott has attacked the Human Rights Commission (HRC) over its damning report into children in immigration detention, saying it should be ashamed of itself for conducting "a blatantly partisan politicised exercise".

The HRC report, titled The Forgotten Children, has found immigration detention is a "dangerous place for children" and has called for a royal commission into the practice of putting asylum seeker children into mandatory detention.

From January 2013 to March 2014 the HRC found there were 233 assaults in detention involving children, 33 incidents of reported sexual assault, with the majority involving children, and 128 children who harmed themselves.

Some 330 children remain in indefinite detention and more than 167 babies have been born in detention within the last two years.

But Mr Abbott has told Parliament the Government will not set up a Royal Commission into the issue, telling the Opposition he was doing it a favour.

What is the Human Rights Commission? Set up in December 1986 as Australia's national human rights watchdog

Has the authority to investigate possible breaches of federal human rights and anti-discrimination laws

Operates independently from the Federal Government

President Gillian Triggs is a former barrister who was appointed to the job in 2012

"There won't be a Royal Commission into children in detention, because if there were a Royal Commission into children in detention, it would condemn them," he said of the former ALP government.

"It would condemn them. Madam Speaker, frankly, they stand condemned already."

Earlier he had said he felt no guilt "whatsoever" about holding children in detention.

And he questioned why the HRC did not launch an inquiry when the previous Labor government was in power and the number of children in detention reached a peak of almost 2,000.

"Where was the Human Rights Commission when hundreds of people were drowning at sea?" he said on Macquarie Radio.

"Where was the Human Rights Commission when there were almost 2,000 children in detention?

"This is a blatantly partisan politicised exercise and the Human Rights Commission ought to be ashamed of itself."

Triggs 'totally' rejects suggestions of bias

HRC president Gillian Triggs "totally" rejected the suggestion the report was biased and said both sides of politics are responsible for breaches of Australia's international obligations.

"The commission is doing its job, we are doing our job under our statute and according to the law that underpins our work," she said this morning.

"This is not a politicised exercise. It is a fair-minded report.

"The evidence on which we rely is evidence which covers the period of the former government as well as the nearly 18 months of the current Government.

"The facts frankly speak for themselves."

In the report, Professor Triggs said she made the decision to hold the inquiry last February because the release of children had slowed down over the first six months of the new Coalition Government.

The report has made 16 recommendations, including calling for all children and families currently in detention in Australia and Nauru to be released into the community within the next four weeks.

It also wants the immigration detention facilities on Christmas Island closed, an end to indefinite detention, and an independent person to replace the Immigration Minister as guardian for unaccompanied children.

Mr Abbott said "of course" he wanted to release the children from detention but said "the only way to ensure we don't have children in immigration detention is not to have any boats".

He said the Commission should be praising former immigration minister Scott Morrison for stopping the boats.

"I reckon that the HRC ought to be sending a note of congratulations to Scott Morrison saying 'well done mate.. because your actions have been very good for the human rights and the human flourishing of thousands of people'," he said.

Mr Morrison, who was immigration minister until last December, cast doubt on some of the report's findings.

"I don't think we should go to the point of calling it evidence," he told the ABC's AM program.

"The report contains many allegations and these allegations particularly in relations to issue of abuse, these are things which are routinely referred to the authorities because they relate to potential crimes."

Current Immigration Minister Peter Dutton indicated this morning that a royal commission was unlikely.

He said the Government had long-standing, fundamental differences with Professor Triggs, but said there was no political witch hunt.

"I'm not going to be lectured to by people who want to misinterpret the current situation," he told Radio National this morning.

"We can release children from the detention centres now and let me tell you, the boats start up again, the detention centres will be reoccupied and that is not something that we are going to tolerate."

'An awful culture of institutionalised child abuse': Hanson-Young

The Greens backed the HRC's call for a royal commission, with spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young saying the report "unveils an awful culture of institutionalised child abuse".

"We saw, a decade ago, a very similar report, which talked about the damning effects of detention on children and we had politicians blame each other and saying no one wanted to see children in detention, and yet fast forward 10 years on, 15 years on, it's all happening all over again.

Obviously things need to be done better so that kids can be taken out of this situation as quickly as is practicable. Labor immigration spokesman Richard Marles

"A royal commission is absolutely warranted."

Labor's immigration spokesman Richard Marles said the Federal Opposition would not respond to the specific recommendations until it had properly considered the report, but he said it was clear changes were needed.

"I think what comes from this report is a sense that the system can be improved, it needs to be improved, obviously things need to be done better so that kids can be taken out of this situation as quickly as is practicable," Mr Marles told AM.

But Mr Marles said the confronting sections in the report, detailing the distress of children sent to immigration detention on Nauru, would not cause Labor to abandon its policy of sending all asylum seekers who arrive by boat offshore.

"Offshore processing is playing a vital role in seeing an end to the deaths at sea, and that is obviously a good thing," he said.

Topics: immigration, government-and-politics, federal-government, community-and-society, law-crime-and-justice, rights, human, australia, cambodia, papua-new-guinea, nauru

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