We need kids out of detention right now

How did we get to this stage?  Who would have believed that under an ALP Government we would see the number of kids in detention to go from 25 to 651 in the space of 3 years, as is did on the 22^nd of July 2010?

It seems like a lifetime ago that the ALP made a core election promise that no child would be kept in detention.  This promise led us to believe that the detention values of the ALP would result in a more humane dawn for asylum seekers.  Unfortunately, the reality is that this promise has now become merely words which are hollow and meaningless in the cold light of day. The promise that no child would be held in detention has not been upheld.

The Gillard Government has tried to massage the language and fool the public that kids are no longer in detention but rather ‘just’ in places of detention.  While the razor wire may be gone, everything else remains intact. No freedom of movement, locked buildings and guards monitoring their every move.

We know only too well the harm that detention causes in children. It causes mental health trauma, ill–health and harms child development.

When you realize that 386 of the children are unaccompanied minors, one is again left to ask how it got to this.  It is a failure of leadership to have allowed us to, once again, return to such a shameful and inhumane situation.