The Australian government maintains that it does not detain children in immigration detention centres (IDCs). Instead, children are detained in Alternative Places of Detention (APODs) which can be motels or mining camps which SERCO, a global security company, runs. The Asti Motel in Darwin is one such APOD, as are the Leonora Mining Camp, two
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As of the 25th of June 2010, there were 4116 people in immigration detention. This included 1662 in immigration detention on the mainland and 2454 in immigration detention on Christmas Island. Of the total people in immigration detention, there were 566 children being detained. Five-hundred and seventy five of all individuals had been in detention
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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.
Read moreTony Abbott has promised as his first order of business if elected at the Federal Election will be to re–open the Nauru Detention Centre in order to ‘stop the boats’. Such promises exist in a historical vacuum, disconnected from the past horrors and suffering caused during Australia’s ‘Pacific Solution’ when Nauru was used as a place of detention.
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