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Centacare Newcastle is the official welfare arm of the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle. The service was established in 1961 and is one of the longest standing welfare agencies in the Hunter. Centacare aims to provide high quality services concerned with the alleviation of conditions which lead to injustice or misery through poverty, alienation, unemployment, marital disharmony, child abuse, neglect and rejection, helplessness or other forms of suffering and distress.

The Commission would like to thank the children and young people who participated in the project and demonstrated great courage in allowing us to hear and tell their often painful and traumatic stories, in a hope that things would change for the better.

According to National Ethnic Disability Alliance (NEDA) as of 5 February 2002 there were 16 children with disabilities such as vision impairment, acute dwarfism, trauma, Perthes disease, cardiac, asthmatic and genetic disabilities residing in detention centres (Port Hedland and Woomera). This number does not include any of the detained refugees on the Pacific Islands like Nairu, Christmas Islands and other Australian detention centres in third countries.

The Mercy Refugee Service is part of the relief and development cross-cultural work of the Institute of Sisters of Mercy Australia. Mercy Refugee Service is entrusted to serve without discrimination the uprooted and displaced people in our world. It was established in 1983 to respond to the plight of refugees in south-east Asia. At that time volunteers were called on to provide health care, education, social welfare and counselling support to refugees in camps in Malaysia, Thailand, Hong Kong, the Philippines and in Cambodia.

This submission will comment on the Mental Health and development needs of child asylum seekers from an analysis of the interview transcripts from nine refugees who have an experience of detention in Australia. 12th March 2002

Lutheran Community Care, South Australia is pleased to use the opportunity to make a submission to the above Inquiry, based upon extensive experience and expertise in working with families, including refugee families.

I felt so bad staying in a place surrounded by razor fence. I can’t understand and I always asked ‘Why did they take me here?’ … It was scary.

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) welcomes the release of the 2008 Immigration Detention Report by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) and acknowledges the important independent scrutiny of the immigration system provided by the AHRC.

Click here to return to the Submission Index Submission to the National Inquiry into Children in Immigration Detention from Ms Terry Zeeher, Clinical Psychologist Sumission lodged by: Terry Zeeher (Ms), Clinical Psychologist May 9, 2002 I wish to provide background information to support the submission from the Australian Psychological Society, based on my experience of working as a psychologist ...

This report makes disturbing reading. It documents numerous breaches by Australia of both the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. As a nation that is understandably anxious that the rights of our own children should be respected when they come into contact with the authorities of other countries, it is troubling that between late 2008 and late 2011 Australian authorities apparently gave little weight to the rights of this cohort of young Indonesians.

1. The Committee considered the tenth, eleventh and twelfth periodic reports of Australia, submitted as one document (CERD/C/335/Add.2), at its 1393rd, 1394th and 1395th meetings (CERD/C/SR.1393, 1394 and 1395), held on 21 and 22 March 2000. At its 1398th meeting, held on 24 March 2000, it adopted the following concluding observations.

The International Labour Organisation Convention 111 deals with discrimination in employment and occupation. Australian adherence to this Convention provides that all people have the right to equal treatment in employment and occupation without discrimination on the basis of:

Throughout the course of the Inquiry, a number of serious disturbances occurred in immigration detention centres, including riots, fires, hunger strikes, protests, self-harm and suicide attempts.

This report covers my final year as the Race Discrimination Commissioner, a position I have occupied for five years alongside my position as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner.

The Commonwealth has some statutory obligations to set standards: eg, under the Quarantine Act 1908 (see below), and the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 (to provide a national framework for the regulation of therapeutic goods in Australia and ensure their quality, safety and efficacy).

The Sabean Mandaean Association in Australia was founded in 1982. The Association’s financial and non-financial membership is around 2,000 persons. Inter alia, the Association looks after the humanitarian, spiritual, and social needs of Mandaean asylum seekers who have settled or who wish to settle in Australia.

The Commission’s vision is of and for an Australian society in which the human rights of all people are respected and promoted. Our task is to find practical, pragmatic ways to turn the rhetoric of human rights into an everyday reality for all Australians and build a more tolerant and inclusive community. As this report indicates, this past year has been a period of substantial achievement as we strive towards this goal.

Over the past year increasing trends of prejudice and harassment of particular groups in our community has continued to be an area of significant concern for me. As noted in the 2002-03 annual report, I launched the Isma project in March 2003 in response to increasing concerns expressed by Arab and Muslim organisations about the rise in anti-Arab and anti-Muslim prejudice in Australia.

Whilst employed as a registered nurse at the Woomera detention centre, it came within the parameters of my duties to treat all detainees, men, women, and children. I would like to share some anecdotes of some of those patient contacts that occurred between myself and specifically the children (or child related contacts). The dates of my employment at the WIRPC were early August 2000- mid February 2001, 3 x 6 week contracts. Each of these contracts were for 6 x 12 hour shifts per week, i.e. 72 hours per week.