This article is more than 10 months old

This article is more than 10 months old

A man who waited 18 months for hepatitis C medication to be approved while in detention was transferred interstate before it arrived, leading to another two-year delay in receiving it.

The case has been brought to light by the Public Interest Advocacy Centre (Piac), as the home affairs department continues to maintain that decisions to transfer detainees between mainland facilities prioritises medical needs.

Last week Guardian Australia revealed a seriously ill young man was transferred interstate without warning, amid plans for him to be admitted to a youth mental health facility for specialised care. It took almost a month for him to be returned from Perth to Melbourne.

The Department of Home Affairs is under increasing scrutiny over the arbitrary nature of many transfers, which have also prompted coordinated campaigns against the Australian airlines, including Qantas and Virgin, which carry the transferees.

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Piac told Guardian Australia the medication for their client, Sam*, had been recommended by his doctor to cure the hepatitis. It took a year and a half for it to be approved and ordered for the detainee, only for him to be transferred to another state before he could start it.

“The medication was not delivered to the new detention centre,” Piac said, adding that Sam repeatedly raised the issue but it was not provided.

“The lack of continuity in his care led to a further two-year delay before Sam could receive the medication. During that time, Sam’s liver cirrhosis worsened and he was deeply distressed at the prospect of developing liver cancer or liver failure due to the lack of treatment.”

In a Senate estimates hearing on Monday, Stirling Griff said it seemed “unnecessarily cruel” when people were transferred away from family and community links.

“We certainly don’t move people to be cruel or for no good reason,” the Australian Border Force commissioner, Michael Outram, replied, noting that the detention centres had different security and service capabilities and the 1,300 or so detainees were a constantly shifting mix of demographics.

“We are limited for space in our detention network,” he said. “It’s about managing the network.”

Kaylene Zakharoff, the group manager of immigration detention, said the department had “a consistent approach in the way we make placement decisions.

“We prioritise around medical needs and family and community links are also taken into consideration,” she said.

Piac, which is working to secure basic standards of medical and mental health care for asylum seekers in onshore detention, said arbitrary transfers were leading to major breakdowns in health care and unacceptable delays in medical treatment.

“The constant threat of being transferred without warning only compounds the considerable anxiety and insecurity already faced by people living in detention,” said Piac’s chief executive, Jonathon Hunyor.

“Repeated transfers also prevent people from developing supportive and protective relationships with service providers, advocates, other people in detention and in the community. This is just another damaging feature of an environment that is already toxic for mental health.”

The Australasian Centre for Corporate Responsibility (ACCR), which holds shares in Qantas, is lobbying the airline to review its participation in involuntary transportation of detainees.

In a resolution filed ahead of Qantas’s AGM on Friday, ACCR said Qantas “has noted that it does ‘not receive detail relating to the immigration status of an individual’ being transported on behalf of the department, and has confirmed that it does not request this information, even though it is entitled to do so under the department’s guidelines on carriage of persons in custody”.

In recent weeks Qantas updated its due diligence guidelines, to note that the Department of Home Affairs is amending the paperwork it gives the airline about a deportee, to make it clear if the person has any pending court proceedings.

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The ACCR’s director of human rights, Dhakshayini Sooriyakumaran, said the updated guidelines “failed to address the bulk of the cases they would see and completely fails to address the issue of transfers”.

Human rights lawyers and advocates have said there are so few attempts to deport people with pending cases that Qantas’s update is almost irrelevant.

“Forcibly deporting people before they know the outcome of their court case is just one part of the Australian government’s internationally-condemned refugee processing system,” said Hollie Kerwin, a senior lawyer at the Human Rights Law Centre.

“We know that many men and women are forcibly deported, often at very short notice, in stressful and frightening conditions, precisely when they do not have an outstanding court or tribunal case.

“An airline which profits from and actively facilitates forced deportations needs to know much more than what Qantas is offering to be sure that they are not putting lives at risk or returning people to harm.”

The home affairs department has been contacted with questions. Qantas declined to comment.