Asylum-seeker children are being driven to harm: inquiry

Photo / Thinstock

Children as young as 9 are among regular cases of attempted suicide by asylum-seekers, a parliamentary inquiry into Australia's mandatory immigration detention system has heard.

Peter Morris, of the Australian Medical Association (AMA), condemned the detention of asylum-seeker families and their children as "a form of child abuse".

Morris, from the AMA's Northern Territory branch, told a sitting of the inquiry in Darwin that he knew of a 9-year-old boy who had recently tried to kill himself, and he was not an isolated case.

"Mandatory detention is medically harmful, violates human rights, has no known beneficial effects and is a waste of money," Morris said.

A federal select committee is conducting hearings into the treatment of asylum-seekers around Australia.

Although the Labor Government has allowed more women and children to be housed in the community while their refugee claims are assessed, there are still about 800 minors among the more than 4700 people held in immigration detention.

Morris, who works at the Royal Darwin Hospital, said one-third of those children were suffering from depression, and he called for minors to be detained for no more than three days.

According to the hospital, 33 children under 16 were admitted last year from Darwin detention centres, some of them after harming themselves or attempting suicide. An average of two adults from the centres turn up at the emergency department daily.

The Darwin sitting coincided with news that 75 unaccompanied children are to be transferred this week from Christmas Island to a detention centre in Leonora, in the Western Australian goldfields.

Refugee activists have condemned the decision to move the boys, aged 14 to 17, to such a remote location, and one lacking mental health care facilities. The Leonora shire president, Jeff Carter, said the teenagers were welcome in the town, where they would attend the local school. But he said he was concerned about them being isolated.

"I just don't like the idea of juveniles being locked up," he told the Australian. "It's wrong. They haven't committed a crime, asking for refugee status in Australia. I just reckon the federal Government and all sides of politics really want to have a good look at themselves. This is just ridiculous, what they're doing."