Aust court reserves judgment on Pacific detention centres

Transcript

Australia's highest court has reserved its judgement in a case challenging the constitutionality of Canberra's offshore detention of asylum seekers in the Pacific.

The two-day hearing was brought by the Human Rights Law Centre on behalf of 150 asylum seekers who were temporarily moved to Australia from Nauru for medical treatment.

The Centre's director of legal advocacy, Daniel Webb, says Nauru's recent move to open the detention centre there was a significant development in the case, but doesn't address its fundamental aspects.

Mr Webb told Patrick O'Meara that the families involved face significant uncertainty while they await the court's judgement.

DANIEL WEBB:  We know that under the Australian constitution the Australian government has some powers to detain some people in Australia and we know that it's also got some powers to remove people from Australia but it's quite extraordinary and another thing altogether to then spend Australian taxpayer money indefinitely detaining those innocent people in the territories of other nations.  It's that spending and the that sort of Australian government involvement in offshore detention, that this case challenges.

PATRICK O'MEARA:  So you have been in court, what's happened so far?

DW: A significant issue in the case was the effect of some recent changes on Nauru.  Sort of more than three years after the first people were locked up on Nauru and less than two days before the highest court in this country was to assess the lawfulness of this detention, Nauru announced that it was going to transition to an open centre.  The effect of those changes was a significant of the discussion over the last few days.  I should say, it is pleasing that this case has been the catalyst for some of those improvements but those improvements in no way address the fundamental injustice of warehousing families indefinitely on tiny islands.

PO:  How long is this case scheduled for?

DW:  It's been a two day hearing and it's finished so the court has reserved its decision and we now await a judgement.  In the meantime the family that's involved in this case, as you said in the introduction, a woman from Bangledesh with a ten-month old baby, they live with the uncertainty of one day being uprooted and being sent back to an offshore environment that has already caused them a great deal of harm.  Quite aside from the outcome of this case, Australia should not as a matter of basic decency, warehouse anyone on a remote island but especially not a ten-month old baby.

PO:  If you do win this case what would you expect to happen next?

DW:  The case challenges the power of the Australian government to fund and participate in offshore detention.  Now Australia funding and participating in offshore detention is obviously a fairly central component of the current arrangements with Nauru and Papua New Guinea where several thousand people have been detained for about three years.  I don't want to speculate on the implications of a decision that hasn't yet been made, but it is fair that the outcome in this case has the potential to have a big impact going forward.