Labor will move to establish a parliamentary inquiry into allegations of sexual assault and child abuse at Australia’s detention centre on Nauru following the Guardian’s publication of more than 2,000 leaked incident report from inside the immigration regime.



On Wednesday the Guardian published the Nauru files, a cache of leaked reports which set out as never before the assaults, sexual abuse, self-harm attempts, child abuse and living conditions endured by asylum seekers held by the Australian government.

The revelations have thrust into the spotlight the response of the Australian government and the private companies that manage the centres to reports of abuse and assaults, and has drawn strong international and domestic condemnation of the state of the Nauru detention centre.

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But Australia’s immigration minister Peter Dutton has sought to dismiss the dossier of files, claiming that they contain false reports and have mostly been reported before.

Shadow immigration minister Shayne Neumann told the Guardian on Saturday that Dutton’s response to the revelations was “dismissive and disgraceful”.

He said Labor would move swiftly to establish a senate inquiry in the new parliament to independently investigate the reports, as well as the response from the government and the private companies that manage the detention centre.

Neumann said: “The veil of secrecy around what’s happening must be pulled away and that’s why we need a senate inquiry.”

“In broad terms what I would envisage is looking at the allegations contained in the reports, looking at the responses and looking at what could have been done better,” he said.

“As a former police officer the minister should be ashamed of his responses. You don’t blame the victim and that’s exactly what the minister has tried to do ... the government can’t be trusted to investigate this themselves, so we need a senate inquiry to examine what’s occurred.”

He said Labor would approach crossbench senators as soon as possible to discuss the terms of reference for the inquiry. He stressed that Labor’s policies towards offshore detention hadn’t changed, but said that the asylum seekers on Nauru could not continue to languish on the island without any clear resettlement plan.

Labor’s move to establish the parliamentary inquiry is likely to succeed. Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young earlier on Saturday flagged she would move to re-establish an inquiry examining Australia’s offshore detention regime. Some cross-bench senators have already raised their concerns about the slew of allegations contained in the Nauru files, and have indicated they would support Labor’s other plans to re-introduce mandatory child abuse reporting and an independent children’s advocate for the detention regime.

The files have also drawn a response from some members of the government. Liberal MP Russell Broadbent said the government needed to consider whether there were adequate checks and balances to ensure the safety of asylum seekers in immigration detention.

Hanson-Young said once the new parliament was resumed at the end of this month, she would move to re-establish a previous Senate committee investigating Australia’s offshore detention regime.



“As members of parliament we each have responsibly to ensure that the government is kept to account and when we know children are being abused there is no excuse for turning a blind eye,” she said.

She also said she would seek to recall Wilson Security and Broadspectrum, the companies that manage and provide security at the centre. The Guardian’s analysis of the Nauru files revealed that Wilson Security did not disclose up to 16 allegations of sexual assault and child abuse in an earlier inquiry into Nauru in the senate. The company said it had fully cooperated with the inquiry based on the information it had at hand at the time.