Australia is holding people in immigration detention for an average of 689 days, the highest on record and more than 12 times longer than the United States, according to Human Rights Watch, which has renewed calls for an end to the “harsh and unlawful policy”.
The brief detention of tennis star Novak Djokovic in Melbourne’s Park hotel recently brought global attention to Australia’s harsh immigration policies, but more than one month on, 32 refugees and asylum seekers remain in the same facility.
Home affairs department figures suggest 1,459 people are being held in various immigration detention facilities in Australia, including more than 70 refugees and asylum seekers transferred from Nauru and Manus Island.
The average length of detention has increased to 689 days, vastly longer than comparable countries like the United States and Canada, where the averages are 55 days and 14 days respectively, Human Rights Watch says.
Eight people have now spent more than 10 years in Australian immigration detention, and 117 have been detained for longer than five years.
“It just shows how completely alone Australia is in the world, in terms of how absolutely horrific indefinite detention is, that there’s no end date,” Human Rights Watch Australia researcher Sophie McNeill said. “Other like-minded countries don’t do anything like us.”
One of those still trapped in Melbourne’s Park hotel is Mehdi Ali, who fled Iran as a child of 15, arriving by boat in Australia seeking sanctuary. Ali’s family, part of the persecuted Ahwazi Arab minority, urged him to flee in the hope he would find freedom in Australia.
He was recognised as a refugee, meaning Australia owed him protection, but has since been detained for almost a decade across facilities on Nauru, in Brisbane and now Melbourne’s notorious Park hotel.
“The residents of this building are desperately in need of freedom,” Ali said. “Some of them think about committing suicide every night before they go to sleep.”
The joint standing committee on migration is examining a bill to end indefinite and arbitrary immigration detention.
Human Rights Watch has made a submission to the committee arguing community-based alternatives have been used across Europe with success. They also greatly reduce the costs to government.
The government recently revealed it was costing more than $56,000 a night to house 32 refugees and asylum seekers in the Park hotel in Melbourne. Labor said the government would save $19m by shifting the detainees into community detention, describing the ongoing cost as “an unbelievable waste of taxpayer money”.
Elaine Pearson, Australia director at Human Rights Watch, said dismantling indefinite detention and shifting to community detention would bring Australia into line with its international obligations.
“Detaining people solely due to their immigration status is harmful, expensive and ineffective as a deterrent to migration,” Pearson said. “The Australian government should stop punishing those who may have fled violence and other injustices and offer rights-respecting alternatives to detention.”
