The tragedy is that so many people are so desperate that they’re prepared to die in an attempt to find a safe place to live. And our response is so blinkered that all we can think of is building higher fences.
“Never be afraid to raise you voice for honesty and Truth and compassion against injustice and lying and greed. If people all over the world would do this, it would change the Earth.”
— William Faulkner
A Darwin paediatrician says he would “absolutely” consider flouting laws which could see people jailed if they speak out about what they see in asylum seeker detention centres.
His comments came after dozens of young Northern Territory doctors protested against the Border Force Act, which came into effect on Wednesday.
The new legislation could see workers at onshore and offshore detention facilities risk up to two years in jail if they speak out about what they see.
It was passed with the support of the federal Coalition and Labor.
Dr Paul Bauert, an Australian Medical Association spokesperson for children held in detention and a member of the Australian Paediatrics Society, said he would still speak out.
He said he was opposed to the “secrecy and size of the punishment for speaking out and trying to protect our patients”.
“In the Northern Territory, if you feel that a child is being abused or subjected to emotional abuse through being in a detention centre, you are obliged to report that to the Office of Children and Families,” he said.
“We have paediatricians who have reported many, many times … that these children are being abused, they are being damaged.”
He said treating asylum seekers put doctors and other professionals in an “uncomfortable ethical dilemma”.
“We diagnose these people to be damaged, to be suffering from ongoing damage through abuse in the detention centres, and we have to return them to the same place of abuse,” he said.
Dr Bauert said the Border Force Act would result in worse treatment of asylum seekers.
“It puts extra onus on anybody who really feels they need to do the right thing by these people to keep quiet and keep a secret as the rest of the whole immigration business is about, or risk the prospect of ruining their careers and ending up in jail,” he said.
I certainly will not be keeping quiet about it. I have an ethical and a moral duty to do the best thing by my patients.
Dr Paul Bauert
“This is a Government that is prepared to put people in jail for attempting to assist them by doing their professional work.”
Dr Bauert said he would “absolutely” flout the law and continue to speak out.
“I’m ethically obliged to do that, particularly in the area of paediatrics, where I am seeing children who are being damaged and continue to be damaged because of the abuse going on … in these detention centres,” he said.
“I certainly will not be keeping quiet about it. I have an ethical and a moral duty to do the best thing by my patients.”
Junior doctor Stefanie Pender, who participated in the protest organised by junior doctors working in the Northern Territory on Wednesday morning, said she was opposed to the legislation.
“I think it’s very concerning when a government threatens jail time for the release of information that should be for the scrutiny of the Australian public and is necessary to protect asylum seekers,” she said.
Another protestor, Dr Phillipa Sleigh, said doctors had a responsibility to care and advocate for patients.
“Gagging doctors from speaking about the asylum seekers we treat diminishes our ability to care for a particularly vulnerable group,” she said.
Newly appointed Border Force commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg said the laws were aimed at protecting classified information and would not override existing whistleblower protection laws.
“This is about the leaking of classified information that can compromise operational security or our sovereignty,” he said, indicating that anyone who shared such information illegally would be prosecuted.
“It’s not about people having a right to be outspoken in the community.”
Mr Quaedvlieg also added that he considered it highly unlikely those who had spoken out to date would be prosecuted and said he not believe conditions in detention camps would be considered classified information.
New Matilda has gained access to an email sent by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP), stripping asylum seekers of basic rights: the right to Freedom of Information (FOI) requests.
Previously, everyone in Australia had the right to request from the government documents relating to them. When making claims for asylum, asylum seekers who came by boat would send in FOI requests, seeking information about things like entry interviews they did with the government from when they first arrived.
For this article, I conducted an email interview with my former supervisor Katie Wrigley, the Principal Solicitor at Australia’s premier provider of legal advice to asylum seekers, the Refugee Advice and Casework Service (RACS). I know Katie from the six months I spent doing my Practical Legal Training at RACS.
She explains that the record of the entry interview is “really useful for any lawyer helping that person in completing an application for asylum in the future: person’s name, date of birth, family structure – the names and dates of birth of all family members, travel history, citizenship, ethnicity, religion, work history, education history. It tells you whether they have rights to enter and reside in any third country.”
These records contain “a brief indication of their claims, but what’s more valuable is the data that will help you assess what’s likely to be relevant for that person to now address to flesh that out in the future with a lawyer to properly address their claims more fully. Ask a person to remember every place they’ve ever lived, worked and the months and years that they started and finished each of those including the months and years they started primary school, high school and any tertiary education is very difficult. Having the document that sets out what they said last time is invaluable.”
In the past, these documents were provided by the Department to a person’s migration representative, when legal assistance was available, without requiring any request under FOI.
Now, not only is legal assistance not available, but the government has announced a new policy, whereby asylum seekers who are not currently allowed to make protection visa claims will not have their FOI requests processed and will have those requests returned to them.
In the email sent to stakeholders, the FOI Section of DIBP observes that not all asylum seekers are currently eligible to validly apply for protection visas. The Gillard government implemented a “no advantage policy”, whereby asylum seekers who arrived after August 12, 2012 would not have their claims for asylum processed.
This built up a backlog of perhaps 30,000 asylum seekers who had claims for asylum which were unprocessed.
When the Coalition was elected into power, without lifting this bar, it passed a raft of legislation, slanting the process against asylum seekers, and introducing a “fast-track” process.
This process is “fast” because it has dispensed with the kind of processes, delays and reviews that a fairer process would inevitably include.
With the new legislative framework in place, the government has started inviting asylum seekers who were previously barred – those who arrived by boat on or after August 13, 2012 – to apply for asylum.
On the DIBP website, it says: “Applicants who think they need personal information that we hold should wait until it is close to their turn to be processed to seek that information.”
At this point in time, there is no indication if, or when, asylum seekers will be informed that it is “close to their turn” to have their claims for asylum processed.
What this means is that there are perhaps tens of thousands of asylum seekers who overnight have lost a very basic right: the right to seek documents held by the government about them.
These documents are often of fundamental importance in making a claim for asylum, and in understanding fully what elements need to be proven.
Once people have these documents, they can begin the process of chasing the various bits and pieces of evidence that may mean the difference between being allowed to stay in Australia as a refugee, and being deported back to danger as a supposedly illegal immigrant without valid claims of persecution.
Denying asylum seekers FOI rights adds to the many assaults the Coalition government has made in making the process of seeking asylum more unfair on asylum seekers.
The Coalition has slashed funding to legal representation to asylum seekers, and even slashed funding to interpreting services for asylum seekers.
Te Refugee Advice and Casework Service (RACS) anticipated the huge rush of claims of asylum seekers that it would have to work through once the bar on applications was lifted. As an organisation with a small staff and an impending massive workload, it started doing the preliminary work of dealing with these claims.
It lodged their FOI claims, read through the documents when they arrived, and took statements in preparation for when the bar was lifted and these asylum seekers were able to make their claims.
The effect of the new policy will be to sharply limit the window of when work on a claim by an asylum seeker can be done.
Once the FOI requests are lodged, and then received, lawyers can then translate them and put them to asylum seekers, take their statements, and help them draft a claim for protection.
Once the bar is lifted on an asylum seeker, they have 28 days to lodge their claim for a protection visa. This is already a very short process, for people who usually don’t speak English and who will need translators.
Many will have special vulnerabilities – they may be children, they may have mental health issues, they may be deeply traumatised – which may make it difficult to get a calm, factually precise and convincing statement of why they need asylum.
This is yet another hurdle the government has placed in the way of asylum seekers getting a process which will give them a fair and reasonable chance to plead their case.
Wrigley explained that asylum seekers denied this right “are now to be treated much less favourably than any other person wanting to make an application under FOI to the Department in terms of an unprecedented change to longstanding principles of freedom of access to personal information.”
Everyone else has “a right to seek access to personal information held by the DIBP at any time under freedom of information laws”.
Wrigley observes that DIBP “doesn’t provide any information about when it is close to a person’s turn to apply, so it is impossible for a person to know that in order to make an FOI application with reference to when permission will be granted.”
This means that the 28-day period in which asylum seekers will be expected to make asylum claims will now include the process of making an FOI request and then reviewing the documents.
Wrigley explains that “FOI requests must be processed within 30 days”. This means that asylum seekers might not be able to get their FOI documents back before their protection visa claims are due.
According to Wrigley, “Before FOI documents arrive – a person can write down their own statement draft,” but generally lawyers and migration agents, who help asylum seekers in making claims, would not “want to meet with a person to conduct an interview addressing their claims until they had access to their previous documents, as you would be working blind from their memory rather than having the benefits of what they have previously spent time providing to the Department in the past.”
The likely effect will be to create more work for underfunded legal services for asylum seekers, and to produce weaker applications, due to a lack of time, resources, and access to information held by the government.
None of this is a necessary part of the process – the Coalition government has intentionally chosen these policies, though their effect on asylum seekers are readily apparent.
Even if DIBP did give notice to asylum seekers that they would soon be able to apply for asylum, this would probably be of little help. Wrigley notes that “Given that legal services have been cut, it’s unlikely that many asylum seekers will understand what happens if their form is returned to them or what any accompanying letter means. With no service funded to provide them with advice in their own language, returning the forms is likely to cause more chaos.”
It should be noted that if asylum seekers could lodge FOI requests before their bars are lifted, they would be able to be better prepared for the process. Wrigley notes that this is “in the Department’s interests because it will create less delay once they are allowed to apply and the information they provide in their applications will be more complete and accurate.”
Wrigley characterises these changes as “outrageous and unprecedented”. She explained that, “Yet again the rights of boat arrivals are being flat out denied. It’s another hurdle for these people to overcome.
“First we made them wait in detention for months, then we didn’t give them work rights. Now something as simple as being given access to their own documents is being restricted.
“When we’re denying people access to lawyers, access and early access to information is critical to a person being able to prepare for when they need to make out their claims and fill out the forms.”
This story may lack the sensationalism of reports of people smugglers being paid by Labor and Coalition governments to send boats back to Indonesia.
Yet the grim truth is that dry and technical changes to law and policy affecting asylum seekers – the kind that is hard to explain – is the kind that will ruin thousands of lives.
Quietly making the process of seeking asylum harder and more unfair might have disastrous effects on possibly tens of thousands of lives.
Refugees who have fled utter horrors from countries like Syria and Afghanistan might be sent back to their persecutors, simply because we instituted a process that didn’t give them a fair chance to be heard.
These measures may seem minor and technical, yet that is precisely when we should be the most vigilant, because that may just be the most effective way to whittle away at fundamental human rights and freedoms.
– See more at: https://newmatilda.com/2015/06/17/asylum-seekers-lose-freedom-information-rights#sthash.D8E4tYGp.dpuf
How we portray ourselves to the world.
Papua New Guinea: The camps where Australia sends asylum seekers – BBC News.
U.N.: Australia paid migrant smugglers to turn around – CNN.com.
The Abbott government deserves condemnation for its cynical response last year to allegations about rape, sexual assaults and intimidation at Australia’s immigration detention centre on Nauru. First, for denouncing and denigrating Save the Children staff for raising the alarm – as any reasonable person would expect the staff to do. Indeed, it is their obligation.
It also deserves condemnation for releasing Philip Moss’s substantial report into those abuse allegations on a day the government’s spin doctors well knew was already flooded with news of the death of former prime minister Malcolm Fraser. It received the report six weeks ago.
But this government, which so nonchalantly plumbs moral lows at almost every turn, properly deserves condemnation for failing to provide the standard of care and oversight at the Nauru detention centre that Australians would expect.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton is entirely correct when he says his government inherited this system from Labor. And in The Age’s view, those who served in the Gillard and Rudd governments should be ashamed by what they devised: a process of shipping all boat-borne asylum seekers to centres on Nauru and Manus Island, where they will idle indefinitely.
Yet the Abbott government, which has been in power for 18 months and which claims success in stemming the flow of asylum seekers to Australia, continues to preside over this unsound system of outsourcing the care of asylum seekers to other countries. At the very least, it must move swiftly to implement, as it says it will, Mr Moss’s practical suggestions for change in the supervision of the Nauru centre.
In particular, Mr Moss has urged Immigration Department head office to ensure it is more closely involved with what is actually happening on Nauru and to tighten the co-ordination between the various organisations that work there on its behalf. He has also recommended better training and supervision of Nauruan staff employed by Wilson Security and Transfield Services, and he has suggested the Nauruan police force take on a higher profile at the centre and adopt a “community policing” role.
Mr Moss noted some of the rape and sexual assault allegations had not led to formal complaints to police or authorities, possibly for family or cultural reasons. But he also pointed to fears of reprisal, and concerns among some asylum seekers that nothing would be done even if they did file a complaint.
That is a dreadful indictment of the government’s supervision, or whatever it might call it. The offshore detention regime reflects a poverty of compassion by successive governments and a woeful lack of imagination in finding other solutions. By paying other countries to house thousands of asylum seekers over the past two years, the Gillard, Rudd and Abbott governments have offloaded a level of responsibility. That must end.
At times the government has falsely blamed asylum seekers for disturbances, when such violence, for example on Manus Island early last year, was perpetrated by security staff and outsiders. It has sought to discredit asylum seekers, who complained of assaults or abuse, and others who relayed their claims.
Most egregiously, it sought to discredit and lambaste the president of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, over the timing of the commission’s investigation into the circumstances of children being held immigration detention.
No person detained should be in fear of their personal safety. They should not be subjected to sexual assault or harassment, and certainly not at the hands of staff whose duty it is to care for them. The ultimate duty of care, though, rests with the federal government. That duty is not diminished, either by distance or by handing de facto control of the centres to other countries.
DAVID MARK: A report by the former integrity commissioner, Philip Moss, has recommended a string of changes to the way the Nauru detention centre operates.
He was investigating allegations of sexual and physical assault on asylum seekers, including children, at the centre.
He’s also investigated allegations that staff on Nauru employed by the charity, Save the Children, encouraged refugees to self-harm or manipulate abuse allegations.
The Moss Review says there’s no information to prove those allegations.
Stephanie Smail reports.
STEPHANIE SMAIL: The Moss Review looked at a string of allegations about sexual and physical abuse against asylum seekers on Nauru.
They included claims of rape and forcing women to expose themselves in return for access to showers and other facilities.
The report says many asylum seekers living in the detention centre are apprehensive about their personal safety and have privacy concerns.
It also found some cases of sexual and physical assault aren’t being reported.
Philip Moss says when staff at the detention centre are made aware of issues, they have, in the most part, dealt with them appropriately and referred issues to police on Nauru when necessary. But he says there is room for improvement.
He wants the Nauruan government and the Immigration Department to overhaul how abuse claims are handled.
The Immigration Department has accepted the Moss Review’s 19 recommendations.
Mike Pezzullo is the secretary of the Immigration Department.
MIKE PEZZULLO: You don’t want to place anyone in a position where, for instance, a child is the subject of unwarranted and indeed completely depraved sexual attention in response, in relation either to someone’s gratification or in some cases, getting preferred access to things like showers or the ability to have a longer bath so you can shampoo someone’s hair.
I mean I find it abhorrent, and we’re going to crack down on the behaviour in partnership with all of the stakeholders I mentioned earlier.
STEPHANIE SMAIL: He says there are a couple of dozen allegations that warrant further attention.
The Immigration Minister Peter Dutton says he believes people on Nauru are safe.
PETER DUTTON: It was a very difficult environment, I think people need to understand the pressures on the staff, on the Nauruan government, on people within my own department at that time, and in the preceding months and years before that, because the boats had come freely and we had many, many people in held detention.
STEPHANIE SMAIL: The other substantive part of the report deals with allegations that staff working for the charity Save the Children encouraged asylum seekers to self-harm and fabricated claims of abuse.
Ten of the charity’s staff were removed from the island after those claims surfaced.
Philip Moss reviewed intelligence reports and interviews from Wilson Security, the security provider at the centre. But he says none of the information indicated conclusively that Save the Children staff had engaged in those activities.
Mr Moss acknowledged there is still an Australian Federal Police investigation into the case, but he has recommended the Immigration Department review its decision to remove the staff from the island anyway.
The department secretary says he accepts that recommendation and he met with Save the Children last week.
MIKE PEZZULLO: The contractual point in time decision to remove the staff, or to seek to have them removed, because they had to be removed both contractually but also in terms of their visa status by the government of Nauru, is something that should be reviewed in the context of looking at all of the circumstances that led up to that point in time decision.
So I’ve already agreed with Save the Children. I met with their CEO last week, that was one of the preparatory matters that we were engaged in, in preparing the action plan to respond to the Moss Review.
STEPHANIE SMAIL: Mike Pezzullo has set his department a two month deadline to work on fulfilling the recommendations.
The Immigration Minister Peter Dutton says the report shows why the Government is so determined to stop asylum seeker boats reaching Australia.
PETER DUTTON: Twelve-hundred people did die at sea when these boats were coming and do I want to see anyone in detention? Of course I don’t. But I also can’t allow a situation again where we see a flotilla of boats coming, and we end up with the sorts of things that we’re talking about today. That’s what I don’t want to return to.
DAVID MARK: The Immigration Minister Peter Dutton ending Stephanie Smail’s report.
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Rapes, sexual assault, drugs for favours in Australia’s detention centre on Nauru: independent Moss review
The Moss Review found compelling evidence that at least three women have been raped inside the Nauru detention centre.
The Moss Review found compelling evidence that at least three women have been raped inside the Nauru detention centre. Photo: Angela Wylie
The full Moss Review report
Analysis: Taking out the trash but too clever by half
Someone owes someone an apology
An independent review into sexual abuse inside Australia’s detention centre on Nauru has found evidence of rape, sexual assault of minors and guards trading marijuana for sexual favours from female detainees.
The review, conducted by former integrity commissioner Philip Moss, found no evidence that Save the Children staff on Nauru had coached detainees to embarrass the Abbott government.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton shrugged off criticism that the damaging report was released under the cover of former prime minister Malcolm Fraser’s death on Friday.
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton shrugged off criticism that the damaging report was released under the cover of former prime minister Malcolm Fraser’s death on Friday. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Former immigration minister Scott Morrison called the Moss review in October 2014 after he removed Save the Children staff, based on the advice of his department, amid suspicions they had encouraged self-harm, facilitated protests and fabricated assault allegations.
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New Immigration Minister Peter Dutton shrugged off criticism that the damaging report was released on Friday afternoon under the cover of the death of former prime minister Malcolm Fraser but acknowledged the contents of the review were “concerning”.
Mr Moss found compelling evidence that at least three women have been raped inside the detention centre and raised concern that sexual assault is likely to be under-reported due to a climate of fear and detainees worrying about their future refugee status.
“The review became aware of three allegations of rape (two female and one female minor), one which the Nauruan Police Force is investigating and two which the victims do not want to pursue by making a complaint. These allegations are concerning. They are also concerning because two of the victims do not feel able to bring forward these allegations to relevant authorities,” the report states.
The report confirmed that one of the suspected rapists, a male detainee, has been given refugee status and settled on Nauru.
Many of the complaints by female asylum seekers revolve around Nauruan guards employed by Australian contractors Wilson Security and Transfield Services, with allegations of drunkenness and lechery. Twelve guards have been sacked by those companies for misconduct.
Female detainees live in an environment of fear, according to the review. It details instances of guards spying on women as they lie inside their tents in their underwear due to the tropical heat of Nauru.
A female detainee reported a guard “drunk and on drugs” stopping her in front of a tent. “Then he suddenly grabbed my arm and he said ‘you are so sexy and you’re so beautiful’,” she told Mr Moss.
An incident in which a guard demanded to see a female detainee naked in return for allowing her an extra two minutes in the shower with her young child was confirmed.
Mr Moss found evidence of “sexual favours being exchanged for marijuana is possibly occurring” based on interviews with detainees.
A Wilson intelligence report of June 2014, obtained by the review, suggested that “organised prostitution … in relation to trading of contraband” was happening.
The review obtained information from intelligence reports authored by Wilson Security staff, highlighting possible “subversive” activity by Save the Children staff.
“None of this information indicated conclusively to the review that particular contract service provider staff members had engaged in these activities,” it found.
Mr Moss has proposed that the department find a way to resolve the unfair deportation of the staff.
Save the Children chief executive Paul Ronalds said the charity was sure from the start its staff had done nothing wrong.
“The idea that they could do anything to put children in harm’s way is absurd. We have said this right from the very beginning. The Moss Inquiry shows beyond a doubt that there was and is no basis to these claims,” he said.
“What’s deeply troubling is the evidence uncovered by the Moss Inquiry supporting allegations of sexual and physical assaults on Nauru including allegations of rape, one of which was against a child.
“There was never any need for fabrication or exaggeration by Save the Children staff – the evidence is clear.”
Mr Dutton said the government accepted all 19 recommendations of the Moss Review and said Nauru would work to solve problems highlighted.
“They don’t have a tolerance for illegal behaviour, including in particular sexual assault. I find the thought of anybody, in particular children, being sexually assaulted completely abhorrent,” he said.
“It’s not something that we would accept in Australia and it’s not something that the Nauruans accept in their community either.”
The Australian Lawyers Alliance said the Commonwealth cannot outsource care of asylum seekers and could be liable for a “swathe of future compensation claims”.
“The nature of allegations raised in the Moss Review of sexual harassment, rape, trading sexual favours for marijuana and cigarettes and children being touched inappropriately, if proven, show that the Commonwealth has failed in its duty to take reasonable care of asylums seekers.”
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Allegations that Save The Children staff working on Nauru encouraged asylum seekers to self-harm to get off the island have been further undermined, after a key former Department of Immigration employee Gregory Lake denied ever coming into contact with evidence supporting such claims.
Lake, who formerly served as a Director of Offshore Processing for the Department, was drawn back into the public spotlight on Monday night when a Lateline investigation linked him to the Moss Review – a government inquiry into allegations of ‘self-harm coaching’ and sexual assault on Nauru.
Speaking to New Matilda yesterday, Lake said he was not aware of any instances in which Save The Children staff had encouraged self-harm.
“I can say unequivocally that I have never had any experience which suggests Save The Children staff coached people to self-harm,” he said.
“There’s never been any evidence to suggest that, that I’ve ever seen.”
According to Lateline, key witness and Wilson Security employee Lee Mitchell was unable to provide “specific evidence” that Save The Children staff had coached self-harm. So instead, he pointed to reports prepared by Lake to back his claims.
“I’m feeding back to Lake’s comments in July. He says he knows this goes on. Coaching absolutely does go on,” Mitchell reportedly told the Moss review.
But as Lake pointed out to New Matilda, he left the Department in April 2013 – well over a year before the allegations surfaced – and when he worked on Nauru there were no children held in the detention centre, and Save The Children, therefore, had no presence on the island.
Lake has previously aired allegations that asylum seeker advocates have coached self-harm, allegations he reiterated to New Matilda.
But he said the investigation into Save The Children couldn’t possibly rely on him for evidence.
“I have no idea if it took place in this instance,” he said.
Lake’s statements cast the situation in a new light, when the broader context of the Moss Review is considered.
The review was sparked after months of reports indicating serious instances of sexual assault had taken place in the Nauru detention centre.
But the day former immigration minister Scott Morrison announced the review, The Daily Telegraph published a story alleging Save The Children staff had been assisting detainees on the island protest, and coaching self-harm.
The Telegraph reported that an intelligence document provided to the government stated it was “probable that there is a degree of internal and external coaching and encouragement to achieve evacuations through self-harm action”. It did not provide any evidence to support the claim, however, and Save The Children rejected the allegations outright.
It now appears clear that the report which the Telegraph relied upon was prepared by Mitchell.
New Matilda understands that transcripts from the Moss inquiry record Mitchell telling Philip Moss – the former Integrity Commissioner heading the review – that he authored a September intelligence report relating to the allegations against Save The Children.
The report the Telegraph quoted was dated September 26.
These links were connected after Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young managed to get a hold of the intelligence report, and read it into Hansard last week.
Like the Telegraph article, the report contained an allegation of self-harm coaching, but no evidence to support that claim.
According to Hanson-Young, the lack of evidence in the document and the testimony of Mitchell aired on Lateline indicate the claims of self-harm are part of a witch-hunt which has led to the more serious allegations of sexual assault and abuse of detainees being thrust aside.
“The more we find out about this ridiculous witch-hunt, the worse it looks for the government,” she told New Matilda.
“This so called ‘Intelligence Report’, that was used to fire Save the Children workers, clearly isn’t worth the paper it was written on.
“It’s deeply concerning that the Abbott government is willing to invest this sort of effort into a witch-hunt while disregarding claims of abuse and assault in the centre.
“The Moss Report should be released, in full, immediately.”
The Moss Report is expected to be released any day, however, the Coalition has not guaranteed a full copy of the document will be made available, let alone the transcripts of interviews conducted by Moss.
In a letter to the Clerk of the senate, Assistant Minister for Immigration, Michaelia Cash wrote: “The Review Team spoke with a number of people, some of whom did so on the grounds that their identity would be protected. It is important that the Department consider those wishes in the context of any public release of report material.”
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