On Wednesday night the shadow attorney general, Mark Dreyfus, stood up in the House of Representatives and shared a terrible story. The story involved an Iranian family – a mother, her young son, an adult son and his wife.
The group was transferred to Nauru in 2014. Four years later, in May 2018, the mother was assessed by doctors and judged as being at moderate risk of self-harm. In June, the woman’s adult son killed himself. His wife found the body. The Iranian man was 26.
The next month, the man’s mother tried to end her own life. Dreyfus described in some detail the violent way she did this.
The younger boy then also attempted to harm himself but security intervened. He tried again a few days later but was intercepted again.
According to facts presented to the federal court, and by Dreyfus’s account, not disputed by the Morrison government – legal representatives then attempted to get the family off Nauru to access urgent high-level medical treatment.
As their condition deteriorated, five separate appeals were made to the government to remove the family from Nauru.
Five appeals. But there was no response.
On 20 September 2018 legal proceedings were launched in the federal court and less than a day later the court ordered the transfer of the family so they could secure proper medical attention.
While I am unaware of the backstory of this particular family, whether there are complexities that complicated the picture, the moral of the terrible story was clear to anyone who listened.
Dreyfus told the chamber on Wednesday night it should not take many months, a suicide, multiple suicide attempts, countless medical reports and an application to the federal court of Australia for vulnerable people in Australia’s care to receive urgent medical assistance.
He’s absolutely right.
It should not.
Now, I’m sorry to have to share this story, it rattled my composure when I heard it, so I’m very aware of its power. But this story, and others like it, is the background sitting behind the effort by the crossbench in the last federal parliament to overhaul the previous medical evacuation procedures for the asylum seekers and failed asylum seekers languishing offshore; stories of illness, despair and desperation.
This is a horror of Australia’s creation, part of a deliberate effort to deter would-be asylum seekers from coming here by boat.
We can’t see it, because it is playing out daily in remote places far from Australia, but we are responsible – all of us – for the consequences of the harsh deterrence regime that has been established in our name.
The day before Dreyfus told his story in the House, Guardian Australia published new statistics about the scale of mental health problems on Nauru and Manus Island. The information surfaced because of the reporting requirements of the medevac regime the Morrison government is currently trying to repeal.
The independent health advice panel now overseeing medical transfers for asylum seekers languishing offshore reported there were 73 admissions covering 43 people at the RPC Medical Centre on Nauru in the first quarter of 2019.
In addition to the 73 admissions, with stays ranging between one and 44 days, there were also 8,260 medical consultations provided to people on Nauru in the quarter – mostly for mental health problems.
I’ll repeat that. Mostly for mental health problems.
The first quarterly report of the independent panel did not have the input of a psychiatrist. The president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, John Allan, on Thursday urged the parliament to maintain the medevac regime.
“Given the high number of presentations and admissions of asylum seekers and refugees for mental health reasons, we believe the panel is an imperative safeguard for the government, the people being held offshore, and the medical specialists and other health practitioners providing care offshore,” Allan said.
According to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, the medevac regime has, as of 3pm Wednesday, seen 96 people approved for transfer for treatment since it was legislated, with 88 of those recommended transfers also approved by the minister.
The independent health panel has been involved in reviewing cases on 21 occasions. On eight occasions, the process was contested, and the panel overturned the minister’s decision to decline transfers on medical grounds. On the other 13 occasions, the panel upheld the minister’s view that the appropriate medical threshold had not been reached to necessitate a transfer.
No credible evidence has been presented to date that I am aware of that demonstrates this system isn’t working – evidence that would justify scrapping procedures that allow clinicians scope to safeguard physical and mental wellbeing.
But despite this, the House of Representatives passed a bill repealing the medevac procedures on Thursday.
The Coalition has dug in, apparently determined to secure the repeal, and whether the government succeeds in its objective later this year will ultimately come down to one vote.
Jacqui Lambie’s, in the Senate.
