Sarah Stephen
Over the July 29-30 weekend, the immigration department (DIMIA) released the last remaining families from detention, including 42 children. This was one significant outcome of the passing on June 29 of the Migration Amendment (Detention Arrangements) Act 2005, which stipulates that children were to be detained only as a last resort.
Now, children and their families are detained "in the community, under a residence determination". They are not under 24-hour guard, as families held in the Port Augusta Residential Housing Project were, but they must report regularly to DIMIA.
The Australian Red Cross has been contracted to provide money for rental payments and a living allowance of around $250 a fortnight. Refugee advocate Ngareta Rossell told Green Left Weekly that the families "are technically still in detention".
Rossell said one of the most worrying things was that they had no identification. "What if they have to get a prescription? They can't pick up a registered letter, drive a car, open a bank account. They can't even go back to Villawood to visit people, which is such an irony since all the guards recognise them and know who they are."
Pamela Curr, campaign coordinator for Melbourne's Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, told GLW that not having ID "freaks some of them out". "Some former detainees come from countries where it is a criminal offence not to carry your identification. They worry about what to do if someone stops them on the street and asks them for ID."
"There has been so much tinkering", Rossell said, referring to the recent changes in immigration policy. "But", she added, "we still have indefinite mandatory detention. If the boats started coming again, it would all start happening again!"
From Green Left Weekly, October 26, 2005.
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