Prominent Australians, including Bryan Brown and Ita Buttrose, highlight the plight of incarcerated children with song We’re Better Than This

A group of more than 30 high-profile Australians, including actors Bryan Brown, Claudia Karvan and Deborah Mailman, businesswoman Ita Buttrose, author Thomas Keneally and former Wallabies captain George Gregan, have come together to record a song that highlights the plight of child asylum seekers in detention.

The recording brings together noted figures from a diverse range of fields, including business, the arts, academia, sport, religion and media, who together condemn the conditions in which children are being detained, particularly on the islands of Nauru and Christmas Island, highlighting an unsafe environment and lack of schooling.



Brown, who has been instrumental in the project, told Guardian Australia he had no difficulty finding participants. “We’ve all read a lot [about this issue] over these last few years and been very troubled by it and not really known what to do,” he said.

The actor decided that recording a song might help attract attention to the issue. We’re Better Than This Australia was recorded in a Sydney studio, with musical direction by Darren Percival from The Voice.

In a video recorded on the day, Buttrose says: “I think when you lock a child up, you lock up their imagination, and when you do that, you destroy their childhood.”

Professor Gillian Triggs, president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, also took part in the recording and said: “No other country in the world holds children in the way we do, and the United Nations is very, very concerned about Australia’s policies.”

On Christmas Island, visiting doctors found children showing serious signs of both physical and mental deterioration. On the island of Nauru, UN inspectors deemed the conditions inhumane and unsuitable for children, while a Transfield Services intelligence report detailed several cases of child abuse and self-harm.

There are currently around 700 children in Australian detention centres both on the mainland and offshore.

The issue of asylum seekers has become highly politicised in the national arena, and Brown says the group is actively avoiding “political point-scoring”, instead calling on both sides of politics to address the issue.

“These children are being held in detention, under our name, by an Australian government who should reflect us. We do not believe we are looking after these children as we should, as we would any child.”

The song is the first in an ongoing campaign by new non-profit alliance We’re Better Than This, with proceeds going back to the campaign. People can also contribute by sending a message to their local MP.



It follows just a week after the release of another celebrity charity song, Do They Know it’s Christmas?, in which Bob Geldof led a group of British and Irish pop stars to raise money for Ebola victims, in the fourth iteration of Band Aid.

Full list of participants

Arts and entertainment: Bryan Brown, Rachel Ward, Claudia Karvan, Rebecca Gibney, Marta Dusseldorp, Deborah Mailman, Imogen Bailey, Glenn Shorrock, Marcus Corowa, John Williamson, Darren Percival, Mahalia Barnes, Thomas Keneally, Anita Heiss and Rosie Scott.



Journalists: Andrew Denton, Jennifer Byrne, Ngareta Rossell and Margaret Pomeranz.

Sports: Ian Chappell and George Gregan.

Business: Ita Buttrose, Janet Holmes a Court, Mark Carnegie and Peter V’landys.

Indigenous activists: Gail Mabo and Marcia Langton.

Religious leaders: Peter Comensoli, Peter Smith and Myung Hwa Park.

Politics and public service: Professor Gillian Triggs (president of the Australian Human Rights Commission), Anne Henderson (deputy director of the Sydney Institute), John Brown (former federal minister), Bruce Haigh (political commentator and former diplomat), Nicholas Cowdery (former NSW director of public prosecutions and UNSW lecturer), and Elizabeth Evatt (the first chief justice of the family court of Australia).