Immigration minister says it is 'common practice' in hospitals for mothers to be parted from their newborns overnight

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The immigration minister, Scott Morrison, says it is “common practice” for asylum seekers to be separated from their newborns overnight when the babies are in hospital.

The minister released a statement following a Fairfax media report on Thursday that an asylum seeker from Burma had been separated from her baby boy at night and forced to return to a Brisbane detention facility.

"The baby remains in a special care unit at Mater hospital, Brisbane and the mother is being transported to the hospital daily," the minister said in a statement.

"She is able to, and has been staying with the baby throughout each day.

"Doctors at the hospital advise it is common practice for mothers not to stay overnight with babies in special care units due to bed restrictions."

The Rohingya woman from Burma, who was flown from Nauru on 11 October, gave birth by caesarean section last week. However, Fairfax news reports say the 31-year-old mother, named Latifa, was moved back into detention on Sunday when her sick baby was just four days old.

She is currently being detained at an immigration centre in Brisbane with her husband and two other children, aged four and seven.

The family had been held in the offshore processing centre on Nauru and are set to return there.

The hospital said the baby was due to be discharged on Thursday afternoon.

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said there was “no reasonable excuse” for the separation of an asylum seeker from her newborn child overnight.

"It is inhumane and senselessly callous," she told reporters in Canberra.

"Would this be something that any of us would wish on our sisters, on people's wives, on their own mothers?"

Last month, Morrison denied that a pregnant woman with twins was being held at the Nauru detention centre.

“The suggestion there is a pregnant woman with twins on Nauru is simply not true,” he said in his 18 October briefing. It was later revealed that the woman had been transferred from Nauru just days before the briefing, and that she was only expecting one baby.