Antony Loewenstein

Placing tortured asylum seekers into immigration detention in Britain – where private companies “take care” of aspects of this process – is shameful. Britain’s Channel 4 has the story:

Meanwhile, in Australia Serco is loving the increase in asylum boats. The more the merrier. Yesterday’s Australian records the screams of joy from the Serco board-room:

The private contracting company that runs Australia’s immigration detention centres has reported record profits, as the number of asylum-seekers rises to levels not seen in more than a decade.

New figures show Serco’s revenues reached $692 million last year, up from $369m in the previous calendar year.

While many companies in Australia are doing it tough, Serco reported a $59m profit after tax, close to a 50 per cent increase on its $40.5m profit in 2010.

Serco Australia is part of the global Serco Group, which is listed on the London Stock Exchange.

The company renegotiated its contract with the Department of Immigration late last year after an increase in the number of detention centres.

It signed a $370m five-year contract in June 2009 to manage seven immigration detention centres and provide transport services.

There are now more than 20 centres and Serco’s contract is worth $1 billion.

With reports yesterday that the number of asylum-seekers was returning to the levels last seen in 2001, Serco is likely to further profit from the surge in arrivals.

Rivalling the $1bn detention centre contract is Serco’s $1.3bn contract with the West Australian Department of Health to provide services to the Fiona Stanley Hospital in Perth.

The company employs 3564 people and as well as running immigration detention centres also provides “systems engineering work and related services” and “equity investment management”. It has $81m in cash and cash equivalents on its books, borrowings of just $7.6m and net assets of $157m.

Serco also has a five-year contract with the Queensland Department of Corrective Services managing the new South Queensland Correctional Centre in Gatton. Serco values that particular deal at $100m.

The company also has a $500m contract with the Royal Australian Navy.

The only people really benefitting from the steady stream of asylum seekers to Australia are the heads of multinational Serco. Sydney’s Sun Herald reports:

A surge in asylum seeker boats has delivered an explosion in profits for the private company operating Australia’s detention centres.

Serco Australia, a division of a British multinational, enjoyed a 45 per cent rise in net profits to $59 million last year.

The revenue of the company, which has the mandate to run the immigration detention services on behalf of the federal government, almost doubled from $369 million to $693 million.

Serco Australia’s compliance with local laws on reporting financial statements has been less impressive. Once again, in contravention of the Corporations Act, its financial statements were filed late this year.

And the disclosure in its accounts, according to a leading academic in the field of accounting and regulation, failed to comply with Australian accounting standards.

”Rules are rules,” said Jeffrey Knapp, a senior lecturer at the University of NSW. ”Serco has broken them. Serco Australia Pty Ltd is a reporting entity and should do a general purpose financial report like BHP or Telstra, including full disclosures of related-party transactions and balances.”

Serco’s high cash flow, low debt levels and 35 per cent profit margins would make it the envy of the corporate elite. Few of Australia’s top 100 companies matched the profit rises or margins of Serco when they last reported. Serco’s profits had also doubled the year before.

The rise in the number of asylum seekers since the breakdown of the government’s Malaysia plan has led to an increase in detention centres from 12 to 20 across the mainland, Tasmania and Christmas Island. In the 2010-11 financial year, a total of 8874 people were taken into detention. It has also meant a lucrative new $1 billion contract for Serco, in a deal renegotiated with the government last December. A contract to manage the immigration residential housing program had blown out from $44.5 million to $85.6 million.

It is difficult to tell from Serco Australia’s financial statements how profitable is the outsourcing of immigration detention.

If more evidence was needed of the global menace that is British multinational Serco (via Salon):

On April 4, Barbara Harms’ boss forced her to attend a meeting about why she shouldn’t join a union. The two-hour, on-the-clock meeting was run by Michael Penn, a professional anti-union consultant. Harms says Penn told workers that “you’re going to sign your life away if you sign a union card … the union would tell you to go out on strike … the place could close down.” The meeting left Harms and other pro-union workers frustrated and angry. Especially because their taxes made it possible.

Harms works at the National Benefits Center (NBC) office in Lee’s Summit, Mo. She’s not directly employed by the federal government but is, instead, a contractor. She is one of about 800 workers there employed by the British company Serco, or Serco’s subcontractors, to process immigration paperwork under Serco’s contract with the federal government ($190 million a year, as of 2009). Penn, meanwhile, is a partner at the anti-union firm Crossroads Group. According to the most recent contract he filed with the Department of Labor (for a different client), his services cost $350 an hour. Serco presumably paid for Penn’s time out of its own pocket. But taxpayers paid for the facilities — from office space to audiovisual equipment — he used to campaign against the union.

Like Harms, many Americans would resent the prospect of taxpayer dollars, or taxpayer-funded resources, being deployed to bust a union drive. President Obama once seemed to be against it, as well. In his first month in office, President Obama signed an executive order apparently aimed at similar situations. Obama’s order forbids government reimbursement for “the costs of any activities undertaken to persuade employees … to exercise or not to exercise … the right to organize and bargain collectively.”

But as Serco and its subcontractors fight to stay union free at the NBC, workers and union staffers say the order has meant less than they’d hoped. And despite Obama’s order, the government says that Serco can use government facilities to fight unionization without breaking the law. Now, some union activists are questioning whether Obama’s support for them is as firm as it once seemed. “We have an executive order that sounds good,” says Chris Townsend, the political action director for the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (UE). “But I am yet to be convinced that [it] amounts to anything.”

Serco isn’t the only company to aggressively combat unionization while reaping a taxpayer-funded windfall. A 2010 report from the Government Accountability Office found that the federal government had awarded over $6 billion in contracts in fiscal 2009 to contractors that had been cited for violating federal labor laws, from wage and hour rules to organizing rights. Earlier in 2010, the New York Times reported that the White House was planning to implement a “high road” contracting policy that would direct more government contracts to companies with better labor and environmental records. But by 2011, Obama OMB nominee Heather Higginbottom told senators in a confirmation hearing that there were no such plans afoot.

Back in late 2011, journalist Paul Farrell and yours truly released in New Matilda, via Freedom of Information, the secret contract between the Australian government and Serco with the details of imprisoning asylum seekers in Australia. It showed the lack of training required by Serco staff when working around vulnerable refugees. Both parties imposed a regime that reminded one of a maximum security prison. When I visited Christmas Island and Curtin detention centres last year I saw evidence of this mentality in practice.

Now Crikey has released another document that also paints Serco in a terrible light:

A prison-style training manual produced by the company contracted to run Australia’s detention centres contains explicit instructions on how to “hit” and “strike” asylum seekers.

The 400-page, illustrated 2010 and 2009 Serco induction training documents, obtained by Crikey, shows how prison staff are trained to kick, punch and jab their fingers into detainee limbs and “pressure points” to render them motionless.

Serco, which has a $1 billion contract with the Gillard government to run nine asylum outposts, has repeatedly fought the release of similar documents, claiming other versions are not in the “public interest” and could cause commotion inside lockups. (Read the full manual here).

The “control and restraint” techniques included in the 2009 training course manual recommends the use of “pain” to defend, subdue and control asylum seekers through straight punches, palm heel strikes, side angle kicks, front thrust kicks and knee strikes.

“Subdue the subject using reasonable force so that he/she is no longer in the assailant category,” it explains.

“If justified, necessary force is to be used to bring the subject to cooperative subjective status whereupon they respond favourably to verbalisation.”

Under a section headed “principles in controlling Resistive Behaviour”, guards are told to cause pain, stun, distract, unbalance and use “striking technique” to cause “motor dysfunction”.

Guards are told to target specific “pressure points” in the manner of riot squad police to squeeze nerves as ” a valuable subject control option”.

“They enhance your ability, to compel compliance from unco-operative subjects,” it explains. The “expected effect” is “medium to high level pain”.

In one instance, guards, referred to by the government and Serco as “Client Services Officers”, are taught to attack detainees’ jugulars to cause them to fall over.

In another, they are told to employ a “downward kick” to the “lower shin” to cause “high level of pain and mental stunning” lasting up to seven seconds.

Batons are a useful weapon for guards to cause “medium to high tensity [sic] pain” and “forearm muscle cramping”. “Strikes should be delivered by a hammer fist,” it says.

Underpinning the kicking and punching and baton instructions is “two forms of strikes”. The “cutting strike” using a baton, “impacts” the detainee, “continuing through in one fluid motion … this could be equated to following through when swinging a bat”.

The Fluid Shock Wave principle is employed to “…generate optimum fluid shock with a hand, baton or knee”.

Of course the Federal Labor government is embarrassed that its dirty little secret is out and simply claims things have changed:

A 2010 Serco training manual detailing the force to be used by staff on hostile detainees is no longer relevant because it has been superseded by other manuals, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship Chris Bowen says.

The manual which was yesterday leaked online by Crikey had chapters that explicitly outlined how staff could use pain as a means of restraining and controlling aggressive detainees, including the infliction of straight punches, palm heel strikes, side angle kicks, front thrust kicks and knee strikes.

Mr Bowen said the manual was no longer in use “and does not reflect very clear guidelines agreed to by Serco and the Department of Immigration on engagement with people in detention facilities”.

“I am advised that the 2010 manual contained errors and has been superseded by other manuals, most recently the 2012 training guide,” he said.

“Any use of force or restraint in any detention environment is used strictly as a last resort.”

The theory behind the strikes was to “create temporary motor dysfunction” and “temporary muscle impairment” through the “fluid shock wave” that gets sent around detainees’ bodies, but only leaves bruising, the manual explained.

It also suggested that to “generate optimal fluid shock with a hand or baton” it was best to put a person’s whole body weight behind the strike.

Mr Bowen said Serco staff in immigration detention facilities did not carry weapons and the manual contained errors.

But a spokesman for Serco revealed that batons were present at the detention facilities and could be used defensively by “a very limited number of specially trained staff, along with other personal protective equipment”.

Today Crikey follows up the story and shows that secrecy is how this government operates and Serco is happy to assist:

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen responded to Crikey’s publication of the 2009 and 2010 Serco training manual — calling the manual “out-dated” and “no-longer in use”. Yet Bowen, the Immigration Department and Serco have refused to detail how the British-owned multinational has altered or updated it.

A spokesperson for Bowen told Crikey this morning the Minister would not be “discussing further the contents of the current manual for matters of operational security”.

When asked how many Serco guards trained in combat techniques to hit, strike and jab asylum seekers remain employed in the detention system, a Serco spokesperson responded that “staff receive refresher training at least annually, based on the most recent training materials”.

Serco didn’t explain what has been altered or updated in its induction documents, despite Department spokesperson Sandi Logan asserting there has been “at least four iterations” of the Serco training manual since 2009-10, including a 2012 version.

Having spent extensive time in Australian detention centres across the country, this news, via the Sydney Morning Herald, is sadly predictable but shows the utter contempt by authorities towards a free press.

Following America’s lead in Gitmo for media? What cretins. And what role, if any, has British multinational Serco played in these restrictions?

The Immigration Department developed its new, highly restrictive policy on media visits to detention centres with reference to US military arrangements governing media access to the Guantanamo Bay terrorist detention centre.

Documents released under freedom of information show the ”deed of agreement” that Immigration insists journalists and media organisations visiting detention centres must sign was ”informed by … the current US Department of Defence media access policy for its detention facility at Guantanamo Bay”.

The department also justified extremely tight media control and censorship to the Immigration Minister, Chris Bowen, as ”the right balance” in circumstances that included ”the current climate associated with media ethics, media ‘phone hacking’ [in Britain]”.

In an email to a reporter who was consulted on the policy, Immigration’s national communications manager, Sandi Logan, said, ”I reckon while the phone hacking scandal is all the rage, what else would the media expect of us? Trust you say? Gimme a break, sorry!”

The Greens’ immigration spokeswoman, Sarah Hanson-Young, said yesterday ”the idea that [media access] guidelines have, even in part, been inspired by Guantanamo Bay is absolutely appalling – it really shows the attitude of Immigration and [the] government – they have forgotten that they are dealing with asylum seekers, not criminals or terrorists.”

The policy requires that journalists visiting detention centres must be escorted at all times by Immigration officers. There is a bar on any ”substantive communication” with detainees, a right for officials to censor recordings, and the right for Immigration to immediately end any visit.

The chief executives of the largest media organisations, including Fairfax Media’s Greg Hywood, News Ltd’s Kim Williams and the heads of all TV broadcast networks last month condemned the agreement as ”unacceptable censorship”.

Documents released to the Herald under FOI show the agreement was drafted with reference to past departmental policy and present practice at NSW, Victorian and Queensland prisons.

 …

In his submission, Mr Logan justified tight restrictions on media access to safeguard the privacy of detainees, prevent publicity that could affect refugee claims and to manage ”risks that during any media visits detainee clients would use the media’s presence as an opportunity to protest their continuing detention”.

…

Mr Logan privately consulted 12 journalists. More responses were negative than positive, with the proposed arrangements being described as ”incredibly restrictive”, ”draconian and heavy-handed”, ”a shocker” and ”a lawyer’s picnic.” However Immigration made no further submission to Mr Bowen who endorsed new arrangements without amendment on October 6.

Since October, the ABC, SBS, Channels Seven, Nine and Ten, The Australian and The Daily Telegraph have signed the deed of agreement for visits variously to detention facilities at Villawood, Maribyrnong, Inverbrackie and Wickham Point.

In their letter to Mr Bowen last month, media CEOs argued the fact media organisations have signed the deed ”should not be taken as agreement to its terms”.

All power to these people, highlighting to the public the reality of the rapacious British multinational Serco:

Opponents of the privatisation of government services today took their concerns to the door of the Perth office of multi-national provider, Serco.

About 60 people under the banner of Occupy Perth – the same group that held a multi-day sit-in last year – vented their anger at the state government’s repeated use of Serco to provide services in public hospitals, detention centres, juvenile detention centres and for corrective services.

Similar protests are expected to take place in Melbourne, Sydney and London, where Serco also is prominent.

The group, including community activists, refugee rights, unionists Aboriginal deaths in custody activists, are concerned by what they say is a poor history of privatised government services.

Numerous deaths and serious illness from hospital infections had been caused by poor quality privately provided services, they claimed.

The issue has become increasingly prominent following the death in custody of Aboriginal man Mr Ward, who died in the back of an un-airconditioned prison van while being transported by private company G4-S.

Public outrage led to the company losing the contract to provide transport for corrective services.

…

Other protesters claimed the privatisation of hospital services would reduce the quality of care.

“Any corporation is there to make a profit,” one protester Dave Hume told the crowd.

“Any deal with Serco is a bad deal, be it prisons, be it detention centres, be it hospitals – Serco is a bad company to deal with. They’re an international company and they’re in bed with our state government.”

How many more breaches will it take for global governments to realise that Serco aren’t fit to run prisons, detention centres or the local chicken shop? (via the Guardian):

The unlawful use of restraint was widespread in privately run child jails in Britain for at least a decade, a high court judge has ruled for the first time.

Mr Justice Foskett said statutory agencies had failed to take action to stop the unlawful use of force against the large numbers of children held in the network of secure training centres run by G4S and Serco.

He singles out the youth justice board for its “apparent active promotion” until 2007 of restraint techniques which were subsequently banned.

The high court judge stops short of legally ordering the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke, to inform hundreds, if not thousands, of potential victims of their right to claim compensation. But he does say that ministers need “to consider whether something ought to be done”.

In a damning ruling, Mr Justice Foskett, said: “The children and young persons sent to [secure training centres] were sent there because they had acted unlawfully and to learn to obey the law, yet many of them were subject to unlawful actions during their detention. I need, I think, say no more.”

The judicial review case was brought by the Children’s Rights Alliance for England (CRAE) to challenge Clarke’s refusal to contact former detainees dating back to 1998 when the first privately run secure training centre opened in England.

The judge said the legal action had shone a light into a corner that might otherwise have remained in the dark and described the decade-long abuse of children in custody as “to say the least, a sorry tale”.

The legal battle follows a second inquest last year into the death of 14-year-old Adam Rickwood, who was found hanging in his room at Hassockfield secure training centre, where he was on remand, in 2004. The inquest concluded that a serious system failure had given rise to an unlawful regime at the jail.

But here in Australia, Serco continues to turn on governments and bureaucrats with sweet talk about “efficiency” (via the West Australian):

The private company set to operate WA’s new youth offender centre has been criticised by the British High Court in a decision which found young people had endured a decade of unlawful abuse while in its care.

In a judgment handed down this week, High Court Justice David Foskett said youths held in the “secure training centres” had been restrained by staff inflicting a sharp blow to the child’s nose or ribs or yanking back their thumb.

The disciplinary techniques were outlined in a 2005 manual, which suggested they could be used to control fighting juveniles.

Judge Foskett said the techniques were used on as many as 350 children a month over the decade, and about 25 per cent of the time were used unlawfully.

This week’s revelations of the full extent of the abuse at the Serco and G4S facilities come after a previous British inquiry into the suicide of a 14-year-old who had been subject to unlawful restraint at a Serco unit.

The Community and Public Sector Union yesterday called for Serco to be disqualified from its bid to run Perth’s young adults centre.

Serco was given preferred tender status two months ago and was expected to win the contract next month.

The 80-bed facility for 18 to 24-year-old men will operate on the same site as the Rangeview Juvenile Remand Centre.

The Department of Corrective Services said the successful bidder would be tied to key performance measures and other controls to ensure standards.

A Serco spokesman said the firm took its responsibilities “very seriously” and that British centres had stopped using the physical controls in 2008. A court accepted the officers believed they were acting lawfully when using the techniques.

Fairfax reports on a company, Serco, whose primary aim is to punish refugees in its care:

The private company that runs immigration detention has been forced to back off an arbitrary ban on children using crayons and coloured pencils in their rooms.

Serco Group’s officers in Darwin had decided on the ban, even though crayons are not listed as controlled or prohibited substances in the detention services manual. The Immigration Department could not point to any official reason for the ban yesterday.

Serco officers told a group of Darwin people, including three children, who had wrapped 80 art packs to give to 200 children at the Darwin Airport Lodge detention centre on Christmas morning, that the presents could not be distributed because ”the children might draw on the walls”.

It is believed that Serco had stopped child detainees from using crayons and pencils other than in group classes, and said they could not be used in family rooms, even under parental supervision.

The Greens and refugee groups said yesterday such a restriction would impair the development of young children, and was in breach of Serco’s contract. ”Preschool children learn how to write by first learning how to mark paper with crayons,” said Kate Gauthier, chairwoman of ChilOut (Children Out of Immigration Detention).

”It is a necessary part of the early childhood education process.”

Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said: ”This is another classic example of why children should not be in immigration detention. Serco is under a contractual obligation to provide early childhood materials to children in detention.”

After protests to the Immigration Department by the Darwin residents, the Christmas presents, which included 100 individually wrapped gifts that Serco had unwrapped, were distributed on Thursday, 12 days after Christmas.

A Serco spokesman yesterday apologised for the delay, and admitted its process for checking the gifts ”did not work well in this case”.

Said Ms Gauthier: ”It shows Serco are not just heartless buggers for interfering with Christmas presents, but are breaching their contractual obligations.”

A department spokeswoman said: ”The department is very appreciative of the gifts delivered to clients by the Darwin Asylum Seeker Support and Advocacy Network, ChilOut and the wider Darwin community. We regret there has been this slight delay in this single incident, and understand most of the 200 children have now received their gifts.”

”Safety procedures” were in force when goods entered a detention centre, she said.

The Immigration Department’s detention services manual lists controlled items, including alcohol, vitamins, phones with camera capability, computer modems, knitting needles, scissors, sporting equipment and religious candles, but does not mention crayons.

Despite the “best” efforts of the Australian government and Serco, refugees are treated with a combination of suspicion and punishment.

Here’s a good piece in yesterday’s Australian by Paige Taylor which outlines the reality of the attitude towards the media by the political and bureaucratic establishment:

The Department of Immigration and Citizenship objects to the identification of asylum-seekers for a range of reasons that it has outlined repeatedly since it launched a controversial new media policy in October.

For the first time, the department is allowing media outlets into detention facilities, but on the proviso the journalist and camera operator or photographer accompany a department official, follow the official’s instructions at all times and hand over images for vetting before publication.

The department is also putting pressure on media watchdogs to rein in media outlets that continue to show the faces of asylum-seekers. It has written to the Australian Communications and Media Authority, which sets standards for the telecommunications, broadcasting, radio and online media, urging it to use new privacy guidelines to crack down on the use of footage of asylum-seekers. The Immigration Department considers many of the images broadcast of asylum-seekers to be gratuitous and unjustified.

The broadcasting watchdog has posted the privacy guidelines on its website and concedes they could be used to force television stations to blur the faces of asylum-seekers. The Immigration Department says it may use the guidelines, which create a protection of “seclusion” even in a public place, to pressure broadcasters to do just that.

The department also has its sights on newspapers’ use of images of asylum-seekers. An Immigration Department spokeswoman confirmed yesterday that it was considering a similar submission on restricted use of images to the Australian Press Council.

The debate has drawn in refugee advocates, human rights lawyers and media bosses. Opinions are not black and white. Even those who believe some sections of the media have misused images of asylum-seekers have acknowledged that, in the right context, such images can promote understanding and empathy.

…

The West Australian’s editor-in-chief Bob Cronin told the federal government’s media inquiry last month that the Immigration Department’s access terms were so outrageous that “no editor worth two bob would agree”.

Even human rights lawyers with stated concerns about detainees’ privacy have acknowledged the benefits of media coverage sometimes outweigh the risks.

Sydney solicitor George Newhouse of Shine Lawyers, who took up Seena’s case last year, says asylum-seekers should be, and are, entitled to the same rights to privacy as any other person.

“I’m not criticising The Australian in any way. Ironically, the reporting has probably helped a lot of asylum-seekers on Christmas Island,” he says.

“Some (asylum-seekers) will want their images to appear in the media and others won’t.

“The critical issue is to obtain the relevant asylum-seeker’s informed consent.

“What is disingenuous about DIAC’s concern about the personal privacy of detainees is that the department, Customs and (DIAC’s contractor) SERCO make it difficult, if not impossible, for the media to contact asylum-seekers. That approach means that the department, Customs and SERCO are effectively censoring all images of detainees by denying them the ability to consent.”

Late last year I visited Christmas Island and Curtin detention centre in the Kimberley to investigate the role of British multinational Serco in controlling and managing asylum seekers. The picture was grim; isolation and long spells inside maximum security prisons are how we treat refugees fleeing persecution.

This front page today in today’s Australian newspaper confirms that both Canberra and Serco are simply incapable of humanely handling the relatively small numbers of people arriving here on our shores. Punishment is all they know:

The Immigration Department and its contractor, Serco, are stepping up a system of reward, incentive and punishment as they seek ways to manage a fractious detainee population that has grown by more than 2300 since the collapse of Julia Gillard’s Malaysia Solution in August.

Detainees deemed low-risk are being allowed to leave the scorching heat of Curtin in Western Australia’s far north for the low-security and temperate detention centre near Hobart, while “troublesome” asylum-seekers on the mainland are increasingly being flown to Christmas Island to be locked down in cells and isolated from other detainees.

Remodelling at the Christmas Island’s main detention centre is increasing the number of high-security cells from seven to more than 50. The Immigration Department is converting twin accommodation blocks, known as White 1 and 2, into a fully caged compound for detainees charged with offences or considered violent or likely to harm themselves.

The block has a capacity of 236 but The Australian has been told it will hold far fewer in its role as a behaviour management unit. The centre’s Red Block remains the most punitive of any compound in the immigration detention network, with seven cells monitored 24-hours a day by closed circuit TV.

Last night, an Immigration Department spokeswoman acknowledged the changes at Christmas Island were intended to manage poor behaviour.

“The immigration detention network needs to provide a range of accommodation options for detainee clients, from very secure to a more relaxed and open-planned environment,” the spokeswoman said.

“Some of the accommodation at Christmas Island Immigration Detention Centre has been changed to provide a more secure and supportive environment for detainee clients whose behaviour has deteriorated to such a point where it threatens the safety of others and themselves.”

The detainee population at Curtin, the nation’s largest detention centre, has been scaled back by more than 200 to less than 1000 amid concerns that extreme heat and crowding could increase the chances of a repeat of the hunger strikes and protests of early last year.

…

Serco, the company managing Australia’s immigration detention centres, has introduced community activities and volunteer work for detainees to try to keep Curtin calm.

Low-risk detainees are now regularly taken on excursions to the town of Derby, 50km from the centre. Since June, they have played cricket against Derby residents at the town’s sports oval, put on an art exhibition at a local cafe, landscaped the town’s retirement village and taught sewing to Aborigines at the local women’s centre. A soccer/cricket pitch for detainees is almost complete at Curtin.

Derby has experienced highs of up to 42.8C in the past fortnight, while Hobart’s temperature has peaked at 25.5C.

Curtin detainee Amir Rafiee told The Australian excursions and games did nothing to ease his angst after 11 months in detention.

“We are not children in here, you know someone you just give candy and make us quiet and happy,” he said.

“When you are locked up with no answers, your problems do not go away when you get taken on a bus ride or to the swimming pool.”

The introduction of bridging visas in November gave many detainees hope they would be allowed to live in the community while their claims were being assessed, Mr Rafiee said. But instead there was stress for those left behind each time someone left the centre on a bridging visa.

So far, 107 people have been let out of detention on bridging visas, many from Curtin.