September 10, 2004 - Who cares? We do!
91 days after the HREOC deadline.
Standing in Pitt Street Mall you'd be excused for confusing us with David Jones' employees. Dressed in black, we 20 or so volunteers from ChilOut (Children Out of Detention) mark the three-month passing of a deadline to release children from detention.
Our walking numbers attract the attention of lunch time shoppers
It's been 91 days and the children in immigration detention are still imprisoned. Eighty-one children whiling away their lives behind bars. As Merlin Luck, our MC of Big Brother fame, reminds us "there are no ifs or buts, children don't belong in detention".
Our first guest, country and folk's master lyricist,
Pat Drummond, sings to
the passersby a song about three famous refugees 2000 years ago - a baby, his
mother and father - fleeing from Herod. He reminds us that the issues over the
last 2000 years haven't changed, people are still being persecuted and people
still have to run for their lives. Whether we accept them into our homes is as
relevant today as it was in that innocent child's time.
John Valder, ex-president of the federal Liberal Party steps up to the microphone and yells out to the people passing by "Wherever you are, just stop!" People in their afternoon flurry continue to walk and shop, but some stop to hear what he has to say. He speaks about a time 20 years ago when he and John Howard used to be friends. Now, as Valder runs his campaign to oust the Prime Minister from his own seat in Bennelong, they are friends no longer.
Reese Malcolm, from Meg Lees' party (the Australian Progressive Alliance) reminds us that children on average spend 18 months in detention, of imprisonment that puts Australia in breach of the human rights treaties it signed and ratified over the past four decades.
Democrats Senator Aden Ridgeway speaks of the shame he feels when he hears the government say that letting children out of detention is encouraging people smugglers. With mounting anger, he speaks of a similar shame when New Zealand welcomes people from the Tampa crisis, who we in Australia have rejected for so many years. With a raging fury he roars to the gathering crowd, "Close detention centres… open the gates and tear down the fences!"
Greens Senator Kerry Nettle speaks to us about Peter Qasim, now Australia's longest serving immigration detainee. She speaks of a day in July 2004 when she first met Peter at Baxter and the anger she felt when she read Senator Vanstone's press release this morning, defending the Liberal government's right to imprison him for as long as it pleases. Peter started his seventh year in detention yesterday.
Merlin, before he introduces the next guest, speaks with mounting passion, "I have a four-year-old brother and if he was in detention I'd do a hell of a lot more than stick tape across my mouth to help him!"
Sen. Aden Ridgeway, Merlin Luck, Dr. Carmen Lawrence, John Valder.
Dr Carmen Lawrence, national president of the Labor Party, reminds us of the special responsibility we have to children.
And with that, the crowd disperses. Several young girls whisper and between them gather up the guts to talk to Merlin.
People sign the Free Them Books and talk to volunteers. If only one person learns about the truth of children in detention it will have been worthwhile.
We'll keep going until the Migration Act is changed and the children are free.
Background information
Three months ago the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC) published its report, 'A last resort?', that was the result of two years of investigation. In its 900-page report HREOC found that there was overwhelming evidence that holding children in detention centres was cruel, inhuman, damaging and absolutely contrary to our international obligations under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Jessica Perini