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Children are still being held in immigration detention facilities for unacceptable periods in Australia, Human Rights Commissioner Graeme Innes says. Although no longer kept behind razor wire in high-security detention centres, they are still detained in low-security facilities where their movement is restricted and monitored. In one case, he said, a child who flew to Australia unaccompanied late last year was kept in "transit accommodation" for illegal airport arrivals in Brisbane for nearly a month. "It's a pretty scary thing for a teenager or an 11 or 12-year-old to do, and then they are kept in these centres for way too long," Mr Innes said. In another case last year, a baby was kept in residential detention housing in Sydney for "quite some period of time". Under changes to the Migration Act in 2005, children were to be held in detention only as a measure of last resort. The Howard government moved children out of detention centres in 2005. The Immigration Department has said children are kept in low-security detention facilities only until community housing is found for them. "It is simply not feasible to be instantly able to identify a community housing option for families," Immigration Department deputy secretary Bob Correll told a Senate estimates committee last year. An Immigration Department spokesman said yesterday: "The prompt placement of children and their families in community detention remains the department's priority but there will be occasions when children are still accommodated in low-security facilities … like immigration residential housing and transit accommodation." Residential housing is housing in the community that is monitored by a guard. Immigration transit accommodation is motel-like accommodation, which is also guarded. Mr Innes said children should be kept in these facilities only while the department carried out health, identity and security checks — for a few days, as opposed to weeks "We have to be careful … that kids are held in any detention only as a matter of last resort, because that's Australia's international obligation under the Convention on the Rights of the Child," he said. In his annual report on Australia's detention system, Mr Innes said an independent guardian should be appointed to protect detained children's welfare, particularly those on remote Christmas Island and those who arrived unaccompanied. "At the moment the minister is the guardian for those children and he delegates that (responsibility) to immigration officers," he said. "It's not appropriate for the minister or the department to perform that role." A spokesman said the Immigration Department had a framework and guidelines for protecting the welfare of children. "Australia is a signatory to the Convention on the Rights of the Child and takes its obligations very seriously," he said. In his report, Mr Innes called on the Government to close the $400 million maximum-security detention centre on Christmas Island. He said detainees on the island, thousands of kilometres from mainland Australia, had little access to support groups and basic services. Further information
pdf: http://www.theage.com.au/national/children-held-too-long-in-detention-fa...