Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about children in immigration detention. The facts as presented in the recently released Human Rights Commission report entitled The Forgotten Children chillingly speak for themselves. In a 15-month period, commencing January 2013, 128 children engaged in self-harm. There were 233 assaults against children and 33 reported incidents of sexual assault against children. The report demonstrates unequivocally that children in our care, children who have come seeking refuge, have instead experienced physical, mental, emotional and sexual abuse while in our effective custody.

This tragedy, this failure of responsibility, has occurred across current and former governments and should certainly lead to a royal commission as the commission has recommended. However, the Prime Minister has chosen to respond only by shooting the messenger. He said:

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

That is an absurd and despicable attack on a respected public institution and is part of a calculated campaign against the head of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, whose qualifications and character are beyond reproach. It is we the political class who should be ashamed of ourselves—all of us.

The commission's report is clear that immigration detention is a dangerous place for children, that Australia is unique in its harsh treatment of asylum seeker children and that holding children in detention does not deter either asylum seekers or people smugglers. We therefore cannot accept that violence, severe mental and emotional distress, assaults and sexual abuse of children are an acceptable part of Australia's a approach to asylum seekers. This is Australia's shame, and we need to confront it and begin to atone for it.