BY SARAH STEPHEN
On May 19, ABC television's Four Corners program presented a damning expose of the horrors that went on behind the razor wire of the Woomera immigration detention centre before its closure in mid-April.
In the first half of 2000, when the centre held close to 1500 asylum seekers, Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) was making a profit of at least $1 million a month. At the same time, sewerage at the centre was leaking badly, the women's toilets had no lighting and women weren't getting any sanitary pads. There were only three washing machines.
Four Corners interviewed a number of former Woomera staff, including three nurses, a welfare officer, two psychiatric nurses, a psychologist, a doctor and an operations manager.
They described how the situation at the centre deteriorated rapidly six months after the centre opened in November 1999.
Allan Clifton, former operations manager in 2000 and 2001, explained that the Woomera centre was badly understaffed, threatening the safety of detainees and staff. He described how he was instructed to fudge the figures on staffing levels.
The Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) paid ACM according to the services delivered, the number of detainees and an "adequate" number of staff. According to Clifton, staff were sometimes "40, 50, 60 below the number we were supposed to have".
Clifton said he had raised his concerns with ACM's managing director in Sydney, who told him that the figure for adequate staff "was a number that he'd pulled out of his arse to satisfy DIMIA".
In a May 19 letter to Four Corners, ACM managing director said the company could not disclose information about the operations of its facilities because of "security implications".
According to the former ACM staff interviewed by Four Corners:
* ACM had little incentive to avoid riots and demonstrations because all facilities and equipment were provided and maintained by DIMIA.
* Staffing levels were insufficient to oversee all the detainees who were suicidal and put on high risk assessment. Psychologist Lyn Bender told Four Corners it was a miracle no-one died.
* There was at least one case of a detainee who was suicidal and self-harming being given an unsafe dose of the anti-psychotic drug Largactil. The detainee became ill, lost consciousness and had to be resuscitated. He was sent to hospital in an ambulance. Mark Huxstep, a nurse who witnessed the incident, wrote a report about it. The report disappeared. He printed it again. Altogether, it disappeared three times. "If there's no documentary evidence of a breach of duty of care, you can't be held accountable for it", Huxstep told Four Corners.
* ACM was paid to run recreational activities for children and adults, but organised very few. According to Clifton, staff and management were pressured to report that the activities had happened when there weren't the resources to carry them out.
On May 20, a group of former ACM staff lodged a class action against the company seeking compensation for pain and suffering and loss of income. Many suffer from post-traumatic stress and depression, and some have had great difficulty continuing with their nursing careers.
In a May 20 media release, their lawyer Peter Humphries stated: "Nursing staff were directed to administer drugs without the required doctor's authority. Their working environment had no infection control protocol, they were required to mix baby formula and handle faeces samples at the same sink, food items were stored with pathology samples in the same fridge. They were also prevented from treating detainees who had been injured in the course of riots."
The next day, immigration minister Philip Ruddock dismissed the Four Corners report as a collection of "rehashed allegations... To continue to recycle these unsubstantiated stories time and time again does not make them correct."
A broad range of organisations — including the Greens, Democrats, ALP, Ethnic Communities Council of Western Australia, Royal Australian College of Psychiatrists, Royal Australian College of Physicians and the Australian Medical Association — have issued calls for a judicial inquiry into the operation of immigration detention centres.
From Green Left Weekly, May 28, 2003.
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