When Guardian Australia launched, just over three years ago, we decided to put the country’s immigration system at the heart of our coverage. As a new launch with a tiny staff, we asked ourselves: which stories matter most that aren’t being told? What needs to be exposed? The compulsory detention of people arriving in Australia by sea, and the broad political consensus around it, seemed like a good place to start.
This week we have revealed one of the most important stories in the history of detention in Australia: the Nauru files, containing 2,000 leaked incident reports from Australia’s detention camp for asylum seekers on the remote Pacific island of Nauru.
Which is why I want to ask you, our readers, to help us fund this journalism — through a one-off or a monthly contribution — so we can continue this important work of holding power to account.
The Nauru files lifts the secrecy surrounding Australia’s hidden detention regime for asylum seekers through vivid reporting and the words of the guards and officials on the island themselves. It is the single largest cache of documents to be leaked from within Australia’s asylum seeker detention regime and details assaults, sexual assaults and self-harm.
It has been a huge collaborative effort, with 16 reporters, editors, production staff and video and data journalists spending several months reviewing, redacting and reporting on the 8,000 pages of documents. The series uses a variety of digital storytelling techniques including a database interactive, a powerful video story on the children of Nauru, detailed explainers about the lives of the young people in detention, and an image gallery featuring 12 of the most harrowing incident reports.
I want to make sure that the Guardian’s excellent journalists in Australia, under the new editor, Lenore Taylor, can go on telling these stories that matter. The global movement of displaced people, many of whom end up in detention without hope, is one of the most pressing issues of our times. This is why Guardian Australia has a dedicated immigration reporter, Ben Doherty, and why the Guardian was the first newspaper in Europe to appoint a migration correspondent, the award-winning Patrick Kingsley, author of a new book on the refugee crisis, The New Odyssey.
Readers are turning to Guardian Australia in greater numbers than ever before: in just three years our monthly audience has grown to more than 3 million. But Guardian Australia – like the rest of the media – is operating in an incredibly challenging commercial environment. Producing independent, investigative journalism is difficult and expensive. Supporting that work isn’t. You can do so through a one-off or a monthly contribution. If everyone who valued our coverage chipped in, our future would be more secure.
Thank you.
Katharine Viner
Editor-in-chief
• Give a one-off or recurring contribution to Guardian Australia
