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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Paul Farrell

Threat of an Australian Snowden terrifies immigration department

Department of immigration secretary Michael Pezzullo appeared in front of the Senate committee on Tuesday. He has referred stories by journalists to the police in an effort to prosecute whistleblowers.
Department of immigration secretary Michael Pezzullo appeared at the Senate inquiry on Tuesday. In the past, he has referred stories by journalists to the police in an effort to prosecute whistleblowers. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

For many who have worked in Australia’s immigration detention centres, silence is no longer an option.

On Tuesday a Senate inquiry into serious allegations at Nauru detention centre heard from those who have worked within Australia’s immigration system.

Dr Peter Young, Viktoria Vibhakar, professor David Isaacs, Alanna Maycock and Kirsty Diallo have, along with many others, taken the opportunity under parliamentary privilege to speak out about what they have witnessed and the events they say point to a systemic, institutional failure of our immigration detention system.

In evidence to the committee, Diallo said former immigration minister Scott Morrison was made personally aware in December 2013 of serious allegations of sexual abuse at Australia’s detention centre on Nauru, almost a year before a full review into allegations was commissioned. Vibhakar told the inquiry that children in Nauru were “left in situations of ongoing harm”.

Her submission to the Senate inquiry details 30 documented case studies of serious abuse of children as young as two, which include emails and incident reports to support her findings.

Young told the inquiry the immigration department regularly interfered with medical assessments on Nauru and asked medical staff to change reports.

Many others have made submissions to the inquiry, and the committee is still deliberating over their release. Many have done so anonymously, including one guard who raised serious allegations – now confirmed by departmental secretary Michael Pezzullo – that Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young was spied on while on the island.

Even with the protection of parliamentary privilege, however, whistleblowers from the immigration detention system who speak out publicly – even only in generalities – face great threats for doing so.

Quite recently the federal government, with the support of Labor, introduced a new offence relating to the operations of the Australian Border Force that would render disclosures from routine activities of many doctors and contractors potentially illegal.

Disclosures of commonwealth information have for a long time already been an offence under the Crimes Act and several stories by journalists have been referred to the police by departmental secretary Michael Pezzullo in order to prosecute whistleblowers under this section.

But the new offence gives the secretary a broader discretion to determine what kind of “protected information” would be subject to the offence, and also greater powers in determining who it could be applied to. The new offence does not just prohibit disclosure, but also criminalises the the making of “a record” of information that is protected.

These new offences pose particular difficulties for medical staff. Clinical consultations and mentoring with peers outside an organisation are common and important parts of professional development for medical practitioners. All of these could constitute disclosures under the act. These basic parts of a doctor’s work are rendered extremely difficult with such measures in place.

Although there are some exemptions to disclosures, much of this needs to be done at the discretion of the secretary. Without his express or delegated permission, detention staff could be subject to the offence.

We can already begin to see how such provisions could be used. Young himself was recently contacted by the Australian federal police about a presentation he was giving to the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Physicians to remind him about his disclosure obligations in giving his talk.

These offences could also be used to restrict reporting to other external oversight bodies. Guardian Australia reported on Tuesday that the immigration department delayed the transfer of medical files of a doctor who had allegedly sexually assaulted asylum seekers to the Australian health regulators.

The immigration department and the government clearly fear an Edward Snowden-style leak in Australia’s immigration detention network. The prospect of an immigration officer taking years of incident reports and ministerial briefings and bringing all that has occurred in our detention centres into the public domain terrifies them. Their response, though, is not to target the problem itself, but to introduce more punitive measures to deter would-be whistleblowers.

But it is unlikely to work. The risks may be greater, but the disclosures won’t be stopped.

From all we have come to understand about the motives of whistleblowers, it appears that there comes a time when the need to speak out outweighs the fear of possible consequences. When overwhelmed by the despair that arises from working in a system that is unaccountable and unable to police itself, the best hope for some is to shine a ray of light on the issue.

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