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“If such a thing as hell exists, it would be very similar to Nauru,” a 23-year-old Tamil asylum-seeker told ABC Television last week, after slashing her body in a failed suicide attempt.
Written submissions to the Australian Senate Committee inquiry told of rape and sexual assault, of children self-harming, of guards trading hot water and drugs for sex, of women and children wetting their beds rather than risk walking to the toilet block at night, and of crowded, mouldy tents infested with mice and cockroaches.
Transfield Services has a A$1.2 billion ($1.3 billion) contract to manage the centre on Nauru.
Appearing before the Senate committee, the company’s executive general manager of logistics and facilities management, Derek Osborn, was unable to give specific information about how allegations of the sexual assault of a young boy in 2013 were handled.
Nor could he say how many serious assaults or incidents of self-harm had occurred on Transfield’s watch.
Transfield’s director, Angela-Margaret Williams, was similarly flummoxed when asked about the gender breakdown of the 500 staff.
Like Osborn, she replied that she did not “have that information at hand” – a gap in knowledge that the committee chairman, Labor Senator Alex Gallacher, described as “extraordinary”.
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News category: Asia Pacific.
