norrie mAy-welby, Sydney
People imprisoned in the Villawood Immigration Detention Centre (IDC) are banned from talking to journalists, so what the immigration department and the private company GSL (Global Security Limited), which runs the centre, have to hide is mostly kept hidden. However, visitors usually discover a raft of complaints, particularly about the quality of food and dental care.
I've been told that the dentist, employed by GSL to see regular prisoners in the privatised Victorian jails, travels up to Villawood once every six weeks. Inmates with a tooth abscess can wait up to 12 weeks while being treated with nothing but Panadol. Like any private company, GSL is geared to maximise profits for its shareholders. So it is not surprising that detainees with dental problems are more likely to be offered tooth extraction rather than repair.
GSL is paid $130 per day, per resident. Many asylum seekers have trouble reconciling this sum with the poor standard of food. One person, on a vegetable diet, was served nothing but corn and peas, when Australian standards mandate a mix of at least five different vegetables.
Another example of lack of nutritious diversity is the serving of fish and chips and potato salad (two servings of potato with no other vegetable). The fish is usually basa, a bottom-of-the-ocean feeding variety, imported cheaply from Indonesia and which Australian Health Authorities warn against eating due to its high levels of toxicity. Asylum seekers in Villawood were fed what was alleged to be tuna salad — five tins between 350 people, stretched out with basa.
The main catering supplies — from basa to shampoo — are of "economy" variety, bought in bulk, from the cheapest supplier. Until recently, GSL was saving a fortune on breakfast because it ended at 8am. It has now been extended to 9am, and supper may be taken from the kitchen.
Other casual cruelties I've been told about include the minimalist exercise area, 10 by 17 metres, in one of the three compounds and the fact that refugees from China are often physically bullied by GSL staff in the knowledge that they will often not complain given their poor English language skills.
Apparently about half of those who are here "illegally" are British backpackers. But the only people of European origin I observed in Villawood were from central Europe.
The federal government's mandatory detention policy allows for taxpayers to fill the coffers of GSL. Imagine the improved services to schools and hospitals if this money was not being wasted on the pointless detention of people.
From Green Left Weekly, March 22, 2006.
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