Australia Hall of Shame

Acacia Prison
Wooroloo, Australia
AIMS (Sodexho formerly CCA)
November 26, 2004 The West Australian
A drug dealer is suing the company that runs WA's only private prison over an injury he sustained while working in the prison workshop. Pasquale "Peter" Mancini has twice been operated on at Hollywood Private Hospital while serving a 10 1/2-year jail term resulting from police operations that netted big amounts of heroin, cocaine and speed. He launched legal proceedings against Australian Integration Management Services this month over the rupturing of his pectoral muscle. His writ alleges he was exposed to danger while working as the leading hand at the Acacia Prison workshop and wasn't given prompt medical treatment, exacerbating the injury. He claims AIMS failed to maintain a safe system of work, required him to lift boards alone, and did not provide mechanical or other assistance.

April 7, 2004
GUARDS at privately run Acacia Prison in Wooroloo remained on strike last night in a stand-off with prison management over the guards' claim of dangerously low numbers of staff and the suspension of a union delegate. About 100 guards on strike claim that Australian Integration Management Services does not put enough staff on each shift to ensure safe working conditions. The union wants at least 32 guards on a shift to supervise about 740 inmates. Spokesmen for the company did not return phone calls yesterday. The strike began on Monday when the company suspended a union delegate who had called an Acacia Joint Unions meeting, then escorted from the jail about 40 guards at the meeting and locked them out. Jail guards on the next shift voted not to work. Community and Public Sector Union branch secretary Toni Walkington said the union wanted the suspended delegate reinstated and an opportunity to discuss staffing and other issues with management. "They just don't appear to be prepared to sit down and discuss in a meaningful way," she said. Before the strike, guards had met at the start of each shift to make sure there were enough staff on it. "Basically, Acacia has paid less than rates payable in public prisons and staffing levels have not met the same standards and we have tried bargaining processes and a whole range of different avenues to meet what are adequate standards, not necessarily the same as public standards, but adequate standards," Ms Walkington said. "We have managed mostly to be able to talk that through but what has become evident is that Acacia need to make savings in their operations. "Basically, we think that they can't return a profit as a privately operating prison so they're just squeezing their workforce to make the difference between a profitable operation and an operation running at a loss." The jail was being run by a skeleton staff, mainly of management. "Without a doubt, the normal activities of the prison cannot occur at the moment so prisoners will have to be spending most of their time locked up in the cells," she said. "There will be no programs addressing issues of why people first offended, no education, their activities, rehabilitation programs won't be happening." (The West.com)

April 6, 2004
The union representing prison officers at the Acacia Prison east of Perth says workers will continue to press their claim for increased staffing levels. The Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union says officer numbers at the private prison are simply inadequate. (ABC.net)

October 4, 2000
The Victorian Government has taken control of one of its prisons away from CCA claiming it failed to act on security issues. However, CCA has the contract to run West Australia's new Acacia at Wooroloo. Labor's spokesman for justice, Jim McGinty, says the situation will have to be closely monitored.

Arthur Gorrie Correctional Center
Wacol, Australia
GEO Group (formerly Wackenhut Corrections)
January 19, 2008 ABC
Prison guards who walked off the job at Queensland's biggest remand centre yesterday are now back at work. Brisbane's Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre had been locked down since Friday afternoon, with only a skeleton management team running the centre and police patrolling the perimetre. The guards began their strike after being ordered to stop handcuffing prisonners with their hands behind their backs. The remand facility operators, Geo, had requested a hearing before the Industrial Relations Commission this morning, but Geo spokesman Pierre Langford says Geo and the Miscellaneous Workers Union representing the guards will instead continue their talks on Monday. "I suppose I would like to say on behalf of Geo Group Australia that we appreciate the assistance that the commission has provided us with today," he said. "At this point in time the parties have agreed to get back together early next week, to have further discussions and our employees have returned to work today, so we're pleased with that."

October 25, 2006 Townsville Bulletin
A TENDER for the state's two privately-run prisons is not a criticism of the current operators, the Queensland Government said today. Corrective Services Minister Judy Spence said new tenders to run Borallon and Arthur Gorrie correctional centres, valued at a total of $200 million, would ensure taxpayers got value for money. "It is not about the performance of the current operators,'' Ms Spence said. The Arthur Gorrie jail has been under fire in recent years over a number of deaths in custody, security failures and assaults on prisoners by staff. Borallon made headlines four years ago when a report showed it had the highest rate of illicit drug use in the state, with almost one in three prisoners using drugs. Four companies will be invited to tender: GEO Group Australia Pty Ltd, GSL Australia Pty Ltd, Management and Training Corporation Pty Ltd and Serco Australia Pty Ltd. GEO currently operates Arthur Gorrie, and Management and Training Corporation operates Borallon. Ms Spence said the contracts would be for five years, with an option for Queensland Corrective Services to extend them for a further five years. The tenders will be evaluated in the first half of next year with new contracts to start on January 1, 2008. An independent probity auditor has been contracted to oversee the entire project.

November 30, 2005 Australian
THE bonus and penalty system on which private prisons in Australia are run has been accused of encouraging operators to cover up riots and drug abuse by prisoners. Queensland Prison Officers Association secretary Brian Newman yesterday accused private prison operators of covering up incidents in their facilities that could threaten performance bonuses worth up to $500,000 a year. "Nine years ago I worked at Arthur Gorrie (Correctional Centre at Wacol, west of Brisbane) and I would make drug finds but the drugs would be flushed down the toilet in front of me by senior officials," Mr Newman said. "You were powerless to do anything about it. "Anecdotal evidence given to me is that it still goes on today. There is no incentive for privately run prisons to report incidents." The management contract of Arthur Gorrie operator, the GEO Group, formerly known as Australasian Correctional Management, with the Queensland Government provides a $500,000 performance bonus to prevent crime, drug abuse and riots. The Arthur Gorrie contract, a copy of which has been obtained by The Australian, says the $500,000 bonus will be reduced by $100,000 for each escape, "loss of control (riot)" or death in custody. Penalties of $25,000 are also imposed for a string of problems such as discharging a prisoner in error, assaults by prisoners resulting in injury or a case of self-harm or attempted suicide. Other incidents that incur the $25,000 penalty include serious industrial injuries, deliberately lit fires, major security breaches such as attempted escapes or hostage-taking and loss of high-risk restricted articles. If random urine tests disclose that drug use in the prison is higher than 9 per cent and does not reduce towards the target of 4per cent, the penalty applicable is also $25,000. The bonuses and penalty provisions are the same for the contracts the GEO Group, the Australian subsidiary of the Miami-based Wackenhut, has with the Victorian and NSW governments to run the Melbourne Custody Centre and the Fulham and Junee prisons. Mr Newman said his association had asked the Queensland Government to conduct an inquiry into allegations by staff at Arthur Gorrie that "incidents" had been covered up "to avoid financial penalty to breach of contract". GEO Group is paid almost $800 a week for each of the 710 prisoners housed at Arthur Gorrie. A spokesman for Queensland Corrective Services Minister Judy Spence yesterday confirmed that contracts for privately run prisons did provide for performance bonuses. "However, we are not able to confirm amounts or any details on payments or deductions regarding the bonuses as these matters are commercial in confidence," he said. Col Kelaher, GEO Group executive manager of operations, said he could not comment on the contract with the Government.

January 26, 2005 South-West News
WORKERS at the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre at Wacol staged a strike from noon Friday to 5pm on Saturday over a wages and conditions dispute. The Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Union accused correctional centre owners GEO Group of not meeting its obligations under the Queensland Industrial Relations Act. Union prisons organiser David Pullen said the centre's 700 prisoners were locked down in cells during the strike. GEO group managing director Pieter Bezuidenhout said the action ended after an IRC officer recommended a return to work.

December 24, 2004 Courier Mail
QUEENSLAND'S prisons are overcrowded and urgently require more funding to stop the growing number of inmate deaths, a report by a state coroner has found. The findings came at the end of an inquiry into the suicide of prisoner William Mark Bailey in November 2002 at the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre. Deputy state coroner Christine Clements found no one else was responsible for Bailey's death and recommended no further action. Arthur Gorrie, a remand and reception centre that temporarily holds prisoners awaiting court hearings, can hold up to 800 people. It is managed by GEO Group Australia but owned by the Queensland Corrective Services department. "Evidence was given that there are 250 cells at Arthur Gorrie but at the time of the inquest there were 750 prisoners being held at the facility," Ms Clements said.

October 28, 2003
SEVERAL serious security flaws have been uncovered at Brisbane's privately run Arthur Gorrie prison, which houses Queensland's most notorious inmate, Postcard Bandit Brendan Abbott. An internal report conducted after an assault on a prisoner in the jail's maximum security unit found major deficiencies including prison doors jamming and staff being unaware for up to 90 seconds that doors were open. The revelations will put further pressure on jail operator Australasian Correctional Management, a subsidiary of US giant Wackenhut. Corrective Services Minister Tony McGrady put the company on notice that it might lose its contract after staff failed to report the alleged assault within the required time. The assault led to the resignation of the prison's general manager, the suspension of four maximum security unit prison officers and a correctional manager being stood down. The jail houses some of the state's most dangerous prisoners including convicted killer Jason Nixon. An internal investigation was launched at the jail after Mr McGrady found out about the incident through The Courier-Mail and issued ACM with a non-compliance notice. Mr McGrady is yet to view the report of the investigation, which has been obtained by The Courier-Mail. The report was prompted by an alleged assault on serial rapist Troy Burley on October 11 in the MSU of the Arthur Gorrie Remand and Reception Centre after a bungle enabled an inmate to get through a door in the exercise yard to a common area and bash him. The report found: • The doors in the exercise yard tended to bounce away from the magnetic hold and were not constructed specifically for the electronic security system. • Electronic failure did not contribute to the alleged attack on Burley and a prison officer had not waited for confirmation a door had closed. • The closed-circuit television which monitors prisoners was obsolete and inadequate for a such a high-risk area. • The practice for prisoners to open doors under intercom direction from staff had led to an "undue familiarity". Prison sources said the intercom system was used because there was not enough staff in the MSU. "The crims are escorted at all times for the first few weeks they are in the MSU, after that they can buzz the main controllers to get in and out of their cells," a prison source said. The internal report recommended the four officers in the MSU be disciplined over the Burley incident, console operation training be reviewed and the surveillance and electronic security door control be upgraded. The breach at the jail came three days after inmate Mark Day was killed in the exercise yard at the nearby Sir David Longland jail's MSU. State Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg accused Mr McGrady of double standards for not taking action against staff at Sir David Longland over Day's murder. "Mr McGrady jumped up and down demanding answers from Arthur Gorrie. We didn't see that when a prisoner was murdered in a state-run prison," Mr Springborg said. The Queensland Prison Officers Association said the report's findings showed ACM was more interested in profit and cost-cutting than rehabilitation of prisoners. "It's an example of human warehousing – locking criminals away and moving them around by remote control rather than them having one-on-one interaction with prison officers," spokesman Brian Newman said. (The Courier-Mail)

October 23, 2003
A QUEENSLAND private jail being investigated over security failures is again under scrutiny over an alleged assault. A Department of Corrective Services spokesman said today an investigation was under way into a maximum security prisoner's claim that he was assaulted by staff while being handcuffed. Operators of the Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre, Australasian Correctional Management, were issued with a non-compliance notice after they failed to notify authorities of an alleged assault between two prisoners in the maximum security unit last week. (News.com.au)

October 14, 2003
STATE Prisons Minister Tony McGrady has put a Brisbane jail on notice and warned its private operators they may lose their contract after the company failed to report an assault on an inmate in a maximum security unit. The attack in the Arthur Gorrie Remand and Reception Centre at Wacol on serial rapist Troy Burley last Friday follows the murder of an inmate in a similar unit at a nearby state-run jail. It also emerged last night the attack on 28-year-old Burley was the second major security breach in the jail's MSU since July. The first breach also involved Burley. The second incident happened when a staff bungle enabled an inmate to get through three doors into the common area and bash Burley. The most dangerous prisoners are housed in Queensland's two maximum security units. They are allowed to move outside their cells only while handcuffed and under escort. An angry Mr McGrady last night served a non-compliance notice on Australasian Correctional Management after he learnt of the assault through The Courier-Mail. "Indeed, had they been issued with a prior non-compliance notice, termination of the contract would have been a likely outcome today," he said. ACM has seven days to respond to the Corrective Services Department with a new MSU strategy. Mr McGrady declined to comment on whether he was still confident of their ability to operate the jail. (The Courier-Mail)

January 13, 2003
GUARDS at Arthur Gorrie Correctional Centre fear the maximum security prison could be severely under-staffed for up to 48 hours, placing staff and prisoners ar risk. About 300 prison officers are expected to walk off for 24 hours after meeting today about failed negotiations on an enterprise bargaining agreement. Their union expects Australasian Correctional Management, which operates the prison, to retaliate by locking out the guards for another 24 hours. Prison officers have made a claim for a 7.5 percent, or $52-a-week, pay rise. ACM has offered 1 percent less than the CPI, or 2 percent, whichever is greater.

February 12, 2003
Prison guards at Brisbane 's privately-run maximum security Arthur Gorrie jail will walk off the job for a three-day strike from Sunday, in an attempt to force a pay rise. The Liquor, Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union (LHMU) warned the dispute would continue until the jail's employer, Australasian Correctional Management, matched the guards' pay to that of public sector prison employees. "The wages of private prison officers are already behind those of public sector officers, therefore if we accept any less we will forever and a day be going backwards," LHMU Queensland secretary Ron Monaghan said. Mr Monaghan warned the prison operator not to use untrained staff to do the guards' work during the upcoming strike - the third in as many weeks. "It's a maximum security reception and remand centre so you have all sorts including hardened criminals - it can be volatile," Mr Monaghan said. (AAP Newsfeed)

Auckland Central Remand Prison
New Zealand
GEO Group (formerly known as Wackenhut Corrections)
July 19, 2005 Stuff
An inmate in Auckland's former private prison who stowed away in a shipping container to depart New Zealand should be sent back here to face rape charges, says a Fiji court. The Suva Magistrate's Court recommended that Shumendra Nilesh Chandra, 30, a computer operator, of Auckland be sent back to New Zealand. Australasian Correctional Management, which managed Auckland Central Remand Prison until its contract expired recently, had to pay the Government $50,000 for the escape, under the terms of its contract. The company said at the time that its investigation into how Chandra allegedly slipped his handcuffs and fled guards was unable to find out how he did it.

July 13, 2005 Scoop
The return today of New Zealand's only privately run prison to public sector management is an opportunity for the Corrections Department to prove it can deliver a first-class service, Green Party Justice Spokesperson Nandor Tanczos says. The Department took over management of Auckland Central Remand Prison from the GEO Group at midnight last night. "The Green Party welcomes the handover today of the management of the Auckland Central Remand Prison to the public sector," Nandor says. "I call on new Corrections Department CEO Barry Matthews to use this as an opportunity to deliver best prison practice. There is no reason why the public sector can't provide a better service than the private and now is the time for Mr Matthews to demonstrate this. "International experience shows widespread abuse and poor conditions in many privately run prisons. ACRP was clearly a loss leader designed to be a foot in the door for the private prison conglomerates. It is extremely unlikely that any further private prisons here would all be run as well as ACRP was by Mr Karauria and his team. "But the principle issue is that prisons must be run by the public sector. As one of the most tangible manifestations of state power, they must be fully accountable to the people of New Zealand. A profit-driven service is ultimately only accountable to its overseas shareholders. "There have been some clear cases of this lack of accountability in Australia. For example ACM, the predecessor to Geo, placed a contractual obligation upon some of their staff to not provide information to the judiciary, which would have the effect of inhibiting the investigation of abuse and mismanagement. "It must also be remembered that private prisons can have a corrupting influence on the political system, in that they create a profit motive to the lobby for longer custodial sentences. "The Green Party have taken a number of steps to increase accountability in the public sector through changes to the Corrections Act and a written commitment to the establishment of an independent prison inspectorate from the Labour-led Government," Nandor says.

July 13, 2005 Scoop
The Public Service Association (PSA) is welcoming the return of the Auckland Central Remand Prison to the public prisons service. The Public Service Association (PSA) is New Zealand’s largest state sector union, and has a growing membership at the Department of Corrections. The contract between the Department and Australasian Correctional Management Limited to run the remand prison expired overnight. It will now be run by the Department of Corrections. PSA National Secretary Brenda Pilott said workers employed by the private prison operator had, in effect, made the operation profitable since they were employed on poorer terms and conditions than the rest of the nation’s prison staff. “Imprisoning people for the crimes they have committed is a core role of the state and it should never be hived off to a private operator for profit. “The ACRP experiment proved that the exercise was a simple cost-cutting exercise of the type imposed across the public sector during the 1990s. “It employed fewer officers per inmate and paid them less than staff employed by Corrections at all the other prisons across the country. “At a time when Corrections is finding it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain quality staff it beggars belief that National would advocate greater use of private prison contracts. More private prisons would inevitably drag down pay and conditions for all prison staff and make recruitment even harder. “National’s advocacy of tougher, longer sentences for a wider range of offences means it must be planning to employ many more prison staff. We have to ask who they think is going to staff them?,” Brenda Pilott said.

July 13, 2005 New Zealand Herald
Prisons run by private companies are not an option, Corrections Minister Paul Swain says. Opposition parties have said that ending private participation in the prison system is a triumph of ideology over commonsense, but Mr Swain said the simple issue was that private companies should not make profits out of prisoners. However, Auckland Central Remand Prison (ACRP) was well managed before it was handed back to the state today. "In the end, we have a public prison service, a public police force, a public courts system," he said on National Radio. "This is a role the Government or the public should be involved in, not the private sector."

July 12, 2005 Scoop
The GEO Group, holders of the private management contract for the Auckland Central Remand Prison, said today that although they were extremely disappointed that the contract had come to a close they would like to thank all of those people who have supported them during their time in New Zealand. The contract ends at midnight on July 12.

January 25, 2004
An investigation into how an inmate from Auckland's private prison slipped his handcuff and fled guards has been unable to find out how he did it. Nilesh Chandra was due to appear in court on sex-related charges, including rape, when he escaped during a hospital visit last May. He was being escorted by two guards from the Auckland Central Remand Prison. An internal report by the prison found insufficient evidence to say whether the cuffs were incorrectly applied. It says the prison would have to examine Chandra's wrist to determine whether the handcuffs were incorrectly applied "or whether some deformity, peculiarity or abnormality in the prisoner's hand/wrist enabled him to slip from the restraint". Chandra, a Fiji-Indian, later stowed away to Fiji inside a container on a ship and was arrested by police at the port. New Zealand police are seeking legal advice on his extradition. Australasian Correctional Management paid the Government $50,000 for the escape, under the terms of its contract to manage the prison. (NZ Herald)

December 4, 2000
A violent inmate placed a dummy in his bed, changed into new clothes and walked out the front door of the privatetly run prison during visiting hours. The escape is the first from the privately run prison in New Zealand. Under ACM's contract with the Department of Corrections the company must pay $50,000 for every escape. (AAP News Feed)

Australian Federal Government
November 24, 2007 The Age
THE State Government has made it more difficult for independent observers to monitor what goes on in jails, lawyers claim. "It's getting harder to get information about the way the prison system operates," said Hugh de Kretser, executive officer of the Federation of Community Legal Centres. "The Government, instead of increasing scrutiny, is going the other way," he said. This week, Brimbank Melton Community Legal Centre was told it could not set up a legal clinic at Port Phillip Prison to give advice on issues such as prisoners' treatment in jail, according to the centre's principal lawyer, Philip Cottier. In the past three months, the Government had moved to restrict prisoners' rights to make freedom of information requests and given jail governors overly wide discretion to restrict prisoners' mail, Mr de Kretser said. The laws about mail were badly drafted and could potentially capture even innocent mail exchanges, he said. Corrections Victoria had recently made secret key operational procedures about how guards should deal with force and firearms, Mr de Kretser said. These procedures were previously open to public scrutiny. "If we cannot access the rules Victoria's prisons operate under, how can we hold our prisons accountable to complying with them?" he said. The criticisms follow the release of a report this week by the State Ombudsman, George Brouwer, into a violent incident at the Melbourne Custody Centre earlier this year. Mr Brouwer found that guards used excessive force against a prisoner and called for a review of the centre, which is run by a private company, the GEO Group, under the supervision of Victoria Police. Deputy Ombudsman John Taylor told The Age that the custody centre was "a closed shop" with limited public scrutiny: "It's a place that no one can go. It's a de facto jail, but it's a police jail, and it's very hard to go there unless you are a lawyer or are from the Ombudsman's office." Mr de Kretser said Government monitoring of assaults by prison officers in privately run prisons was weak. "The private prison contractor and the Government have a common interest in burying the issues," he said.

October 31, 2006 Sidney Morning Herald
THE Federal Government is winding back private management of immigration detention centres after years of controversy over the compromised health and psychological care of detainees. The Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, said yesterday the Government was relieving a private company of its responsibility for health and psychological services, which would be transferred to the direct control of her department. The move follows the recommendations of a review triggered by the Palmer report into the deficiencies of care in detention highlighted by the case of Cornelia Rau, the psychiatric patient whose illness went undiagnosed for several months. Global Solutions Ltd, whose management of health services has drawn criticisms of care standards and conflict of interest, denied the loss of services was "in any way the result of dissatisfaction with the services provided" by Global Solutions. A company spokesman said the review of the centres had not criticised the health and psychological services it managed. But the company's management of the centres and detainee health services had represented a "fundamental conflict of interest", said Louise Newman, a psychiatrist and a member of a government expert advisory panel on detention health. Professor Newman said the failings in health care and psychological services, highlighted by the Rau saga and other cases of inadequate care, had resulted in "incalculable" suffering for detainees.

March 2, 2006 Sidney Morning Herald
The immigration department made an unexplained $5.7 million payout to the company that used to manage Australia's detention centres, an audit has found. The Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) has identified a series of anomalies, potential conflicts and inadequate record-keeping in a review of the department's contracts with companies paid to run the centres. The department put detention centre management out to tender in 2001 and a $400 million, four-year contract with Global Solutions Limited (GSL) was ultimately signed in August, 2003. But the ANAO has found DIMIA, now DIMA, wanted to "encourage" the former contractor to end its management of the centres with a contract "completion payment". As a result, Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) received a payout of almost $6 million. "DIMIA was not able to provide evidence of the criteria it used to make its determination to pay ACM $5.7 million in contract completion payments," the ANAO said in its report. "The basis on which DIMIA made these payments was doubtful," it said. Labor says the audit's findings are a scandal. "What we have is nothing short of a scandal in the way the government has handled this," opposition immigration spokesman Tony Burke said. "The people who were involved in the negotiations of the contracts on behalf of the department became horribly compromised. "Records weren't kept, records were lost, and some of the records that we have are conflicting."

November 2, 2005 Sidney Morning Herald
Laws that follow through on the government's compromise deal with rebel backbenchers over its tough immigration detention policy were introduced to the lower house on Wednesday. Three-month time limits on deciding protection visa applications and decisions by the Refugee Review Tribunal are two of the major changes introduced in the bill. In addition, the department will be able to release the identity and photographs of people being detained when all other efforts to identify or locate them have failed. This is to rectify the reluctance on DIMIA's part to release information about the mentally ill Australian resident Cornelia Rau who was wrongly locked up in immigration detention for 10 months. Labor's immigration spokesman Tony Burke described the bill as "an incremental step in the right direction". Mr Burke wants the government's contracts with the private company running Australia's immigration detention centres, Global Solutions Ltd, terminated and the management of the centres returned to government hands.

July 14, 2005 Daily Telegraph
THE federal government has apologised to Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez for their treatment at the hands of the immigration department. Prime Minister John Howard said both women were owed an apology. "Both Cornelia Rau and Mrs Alvarez are owed apologies for their treatment, and on behalf of the government I give those apologies to both of those women who were the victims of mistakes by the department," Mr Howard told reporters. Mr Howard and Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone today released the Palmer report into the immigration department, which catalogues a litany of failures that led to Ms Rau being wrongly detained for 10 months, and Ms Alvarez, also known as Vivian Solon, being wrongly deported. In a statement accompanying the release of the report, Senator Vanstone said the pair would receive assistance. Mick Palmer, a former federal police commissioner, was appointed to look into the case of Ms Rau. His inquiry was later widened to include the case of Ms Alvarez. After criticising the government's contract with Global Solutions Limited (GSL), which runs the immigration detention centres, Mr Palmer recommended an expert group review the company's contract. Senator Vanstone said Mr Palmer was critical of the department's policy of 'exception reporting', where instead of outlining what should be done, the contract outlined what must not be done to make it as flexible as possible. "But Mr Palmer's not of the view that the other regulations surrounding detention allow that flexibility to be there," Senator Vanstone said.

November 13, 2004 AP
Doubts have been cast on the financial stability of security contractor AIMS Corporation, with a new Department of Justice report warning of possible risks to the Government over the corporation's $21 million a year contract to manage Acacia Prison. The department's annual report on WA's only private prison, tabled in the Legislative Assembly this week, revealed plans to scrutinise AIMS' books to uncover any financial risks the company posed to WA taxpayers. The report said the department had held concerns over the financial health of AIMS for two years, and closer monitoring of the prison over the last year exposed multiple financial issues, including cashflow problems and long delays in invoice payments by the prison. The report attacked AIMS over a host of other problems at the $79 million prison, most significantly, the level of illicit drug use. Nearly one in 10 random urine samples tested positive for illicit substances in the past financial year, the most cases ever recorded in the three year history of the prison. Another cause for serious concern was the high number of test refusals. Criticism was also levelled at faulty electronic systems. AIMS was penalised $211,598 for various deficiencies at the prison, including the drug problem. Its five-year contract to manage Acacia expires in May 2006, with the department to review the contract before it expires. The performance of AIMS, which also manages court security and custodial services in WA, was thrust into the spotlight this year when nine dangerous criminals escaped from the Supreme Court lockup in June.

November 5, 2004 New Zealand Herald
The Land Transport Management Act has paved the way for Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) in road transport and the Public Finance (State Sector Management) Bill will accelerate this privatisation into the health and education sectors. It is commonly argued that PPP schemes provide the necessary roads and other infrastructure assets more quickly and cheaply than direct taxpayer funding. This is unlikely to be true. Research by Sanjiv Sachdev, of the Kingston Business School in England, shows the apparent efficiency of private prisons is not the result of innovative management but shorter holidays, lower pay and worse pensions. The average basic pay is 30 per cent lower and annual leave is five to eight days fewer than in the public sector. Taking into account pension losses, he estimates that privatised staff are up to 70 per cent worse off.

July 23, 2004
The private security company lambasted over the mass escape of prisoners from Perth's Supreme Court has issued a public apology. AIMS Corporation's contract with the West Australian government first came under scrutiny following a breakout by nine maximum security prisoners from the central Perth courthouse on June 10. But the pressure on the company intensified still further with the escape last week of Adrian John Ugle, who slipped out of his handcuffs and fled from AIMS officers who had been transporting him to a hospital appointment. Ugle, 28, who was serving a two-year sentence at Casuarina Prison for aggravated burglary and previous escapes, spent four days on the run before being returned to custody last Saturday. Ugle's escapade prompted the State Government to consider dumping AIMS from their contract to protect and transport the state's convicted criminals. (News.com)

June 19, 2004
Australasian Correctional Management ran 12 immigration detention centres on behalf of the Howard Government from early 1998 until early this year. According to the Australian National Audit Office report, the Department of Immigration, Indigenous and Multicultural Affairs had no strategy for detaining asylum seekers, let alone a contract management plan with ACM. The damning report found: No risk management strategy in the contract. No contract management training or guidance. No performance targets and an ad hoc approach to changing numbers. No contract monitoring or assessment. No financial risk strategy or asset management plan. "This meant that DIMIA was not able to assess whether its strategies were actually working in practice," the report said. During the contract the number of detainees varied from just a handful in 1998 to 3000 in the year 2000. And the auditors could find no assurance that the financial aspects of the $500 million contract "operated as intended". The report also found a gap in the audit trail." Invoicing procedures where the audit trail between the services provided and payments made did not provide senior managers with assurance that full value for money was being achieved," it said. "A systematic approach to risk management, including the establishment of an appropriate and documented risk management strategy, should have been an integral part of contract management," the auditors said. According to the report a manual for departmental centre managers was not issued until four years after the contract began and had not been kept up to date. In its response to the report the department agreed with the six recommendations made by the auditors. It defended itself by saying the audit did not "fully reflect and take account of the complexity of the environment and the nature of the previous detention contract". "Many aspects of the contract were intended to be flexibly addressed through negotiation and discussion," it said. Opposition immigration spokesman Stephen Smith demanded the return of immigration detention centres to government management. "The report is a comprehensive condemnation of the Government's policy of the privatisation of the management of immigration detention centres and a comprehensive indictment of DIMIA's administration of it," Mr Smith said. The auditors found that 38 of the 100 immigration detention standards issued by the department had no performance measures and another 37 were only partially covered. Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone's spokesman did not respond to the report. (The Courier Mail)

March 2, 2004
The Pope clearly opposes the federal government's policy of mandatory detention of children, according to an Australian asylum seeker advocate honoured by the Vatican. Adelaide Centacare director Dale West will next month be awarded a Venerable Cross by the Pope in recognition of his work for detainees. The welfare worker said the awarding of the Venerable Cross Pro Ecclesia et Pontifice showed the Pope opposed mandatory detention of children. "That message is clear," said Mr West, a member of the Uniting Church who is believed to be the only non-Catholic in Australia to receive the Papal honour. "It's support at the highest level in the Catholic Church for what we're doing. "It says we have got support even beyond the bishops in Australia and, without sounding conceited about this, it says we've taken the right view." Mr West has for four years been a vocal opponent of holding children in mandatory detention. He was instrumental in bringing the Baktiari children to Adelaide last August after they were released from the Baxter detention centre. (The Age)

February 9, 2004
Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Christine Nixon will be given responsibility for regulating the state's private security industry under proposed tough new laws. The Age believes responsibility for the more than 20,000 Victorians who work as crowd controllers, security guards and private investigators will be taken from a police unit known as the Private Agents Registrar and placed directly under Ms Nixon's supervision to tighten controls on the industry. The regulation of security staff came to prominence last month after the death of former Test cricketer and media personality David Hookes outside a St Kilda hotel. St Albans bouncer Zdravko Micevic, 21, has been charged with manslaughter. (State Political Reporter)

January 22, 2004
The Bracks Government was yesterday accused of incompetence for breaching its own laws by failing to establish new security industry regulations after existing ones expired three years ago. A report last year by a parliamentary sub-committee that scrutinises regulations had criticised the Government's inaction, it was revealed yesterday. Opposition Leader Robert Doyle said the Government had been lazy and incompetent by not establishing new regulations to tighten controls on the security industry, despite having begun a review in 2000. (State Political Reporter)

October 10, 2003
Australia's treatment of refugees in detention centres was the harshest in the world, federal human rights commissioner Sev Ozdowski said today. Dr Ozdowski said the billion dollar system removed basic liberties from refugees, resulting in levels of despair unseen in detention camps elsewhere. "It (Australia's system) is the harshest - the harshest mainly from the point of view of the length (of detention)," he told seminar guests at Monash University. "I've never seen the level of despair (in camps anywhere) that I've seen in Australia." He said the longest a child had been held in detention in Australia was five years, five months. By April this year, 50 children had been detained for more than two years. Dr Ozdowski, who has conducted an inquiry into detention centres and will have his findings tabled in federal parliament next year, said the social implications of indefinite detention were shattering. Family life disintegrated, people became suicidal and he had seen children as young as 10 with signs of self-harm. He quoted from one detainee who said "it's 16 months since my detention. My life has been taken away from me ... I've become a useless person who wishes for death everyday." Dr Ozdowski, who was once himself a Polish refugee, also said the government's system of temporary protection visas (TPVs) was "ill-conceived". "I personally believe that the TPV system is a disaster and we'll be paying for it for a long time," he said. He said TPVs stopped people integrating into Australian society and contributed to mental health problems. Dr Ozdowski said that unlike prison life, where inmates have regular routines with access to TV, sport, literature and education, detention centres offered no such distractions. He said officials that he interviewed from the immigration department showed a lack of interest in improving the lot of detainees. "My view is that this culture in the department contributes to the harshness in the detention system," he said. He said the biggest human rights abuses had occurred during riots at the centres. "(It happened) where basically control was lost and gas was used and physical force was used," he said. "You just don't keep people imprisoned for a long time for no good reason." Senator Vanstone issued a statement saying Australia was "one of the great immigration success stories". "We have a generous, robust and ordered immigration system," she said. "It is very difficult when people jump the queue and arrive in Australia with no paperwork. The systems that we have in place are there to make sure that those people who are most in need get help, and those who aren't are repatriated." (The Age)

July 9, 2003
The Federal Government will go to the High Court in an attempt to keep five children in an immigration detention centre after the Family Court yesterday dismissed an application to overturn a landmark ruling that it had the power to set them free. The Family Court yesterday granted the Government permission to appeal to the High Court over the June judgement, in which two out of a three-judge bench found the indefinite detention of children was unlawful and that the court could order their release. This was because there were "important questions of law and of public interest involved". But the Family Court refused the Government's demand that, in the interim, it should issue a "stay" on the judgement, preventing any court acting on the ruling and ordering the release of any children from detention. A spokesman for the Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, responded to yesterday's ruling, saying "we'll look at possibly asking the High Court to consider a stay". There are more than 100 children in immigration detention centres in Australia. (Sidney Morning Herald)

January 2, 2003
Up to 39 people have been moved from immigration detention centres to jails or police cells across the country to try to end several days of violence in five detention centre. The Federal Government also threatened strip-searches at detention centres yesterday as senior immigration officials prepared reports on the four days of violence, which have caused an estimated $8 million damage. (The Age)

January 1, 2003
The Australian Federal Police will look into whether the series of arson attacks that have hit five immigration detention centres in as many days were part of an organized campaign. The Federal Attorney-General, Daryl Williams, said he had heard suggestions that the fires and violence - which caused $8.5 million damage - were "an orchestrated set of events" but he thought there was no substantive evidence to support the claim. The Department of Immigration said tension was still high at Western Australia's Port Hedland centre, South Australia's Baxter and Woomera centres and the centres at Christmas Island. The five days of violent protest culminated with fires and a car-ramming at Sydney's Villawood centre on New Year's Eve. (smh.au.com)

January 1, 2003
A ring of militant asylum seekers planned and coordinated the fires in immigration detention facilities across the country, centre managers claimed yesterday. Five of the country's seven centres have been hit by fire over the past week, causing more than $8 million damage. In the latest incidents, about $500,000 damage was caused during a riot on New Year's Eve at Villawood in Sydney. Staff from Australasian Correctional Management believe that detainees from various centres had been in regular telephone contact since December 27, when the first of the fires broke out at Baxter in South Australia. A group of about 50 to 60 men from Baxter are alleged to be among the ringleaders. The allegations come as about seven handcuffed detainees from Woomera were transferred to Port Augusta police station for questioning over a rampage in the early hours of Tuesday morning. (The Age)

December 31, 2002
Asylum seekers who have caused about $8 million damage to detention centres in the past week have been warned by the Federal Government they will housed in "far less comfortable" circumstances if they do not stop destroying property. The warning followed fires that caused about $2.5 million damage at Woomera, including the destruction of 33 accommodation blocks. The Department of Immigration said that in the latest incident at Woomera, guards were pelted with stones and threatened with metal bars as they tried to extinguish fires. "Staff attempting to extinguish the fires were set upon by around 10 detainees in each compound," the department said. A fire at Port Hedland in Western Australia caused $3 million damage and a blaze at Baxter in South Australia, caused about $2.25 million damage. The Federal Government is considering closing the Woomera centre, at which there have been escapes, protests and riots in recent years. (The Age)

December 30, 2002
It could be "very difficult" to prosecute the asylum seekers responsible for fires at detention centres across the country, estimated to have caused about $5.25 million worth of damage, Attorney-General Daryl Williams said yesterday. After fires in the remote Western Australian facility of Port Hedland caused damage estimated at $3 million, Mr Williams conceded court action could prove impossible. "If they are not cooperating, and it's not likely they will cooperate, it may be very difficult to identify those who are directly responsible," he said. The fire at Port Hedland is believed to have been deliberately lit in a copy-cat style act after fires at South Australia's new Baxter detention centre, which caused $2.25 million damage. The Department of Immigration also revealed that detainees at the Woomera centre in South Australia had deliberately lit fires on Sunday, causing little damage, and a guard at the detention centre at Perth airport had been hospitalised yesterday after a scuffle with four detainees. An Iranian inmate of the Baxter centre who witnessed the fires said people were extremely frustrated and had behaved irrationally because Australian Correctional Management were mistreating people. "It is the incompetent management of the ACM, that they couldn't understand the detainees have not good mentality in here," the man said. "They must manage all of the people in here and calm them down." (The Age)

December 4, 2002
The Howard Government yesterday bowed to pressure to soften its treatment of women and children asylum seekers as Labor began debating a dramatic departure from the refugee policy it took to last year's election. Under new guidelines released by Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock, unaccompanied minors will now be placed in foster care and women with children will be offered an alternative to living in high-security detention centres. (The Age)

November 15, 2002
Some 533 Afghan asylum seekers have accepted the Federal Government's $2000 cash offer to return home rather than face continued detention in harsh and isolated detention centres. (The Age)

Australian Immigration Department
October 31, 2006 Sidney Morning Herald
THE Federal Government is winding back private management of immigration detention centres after years of controversy over the compromised health and psychological care of detainees. The Immigration Minister, Amanda Vanstone, said yesterday the Government was relieving a private company of its responsibility for health and psychological services, which would be transferred to the direct control of her department. The move follows the recommendations of a review triggered by the Palmer report into the deficiencies of care in detention highlighted by the case of Cornelia Rau, the psychiatric patient whose illness went undiagnosed for several months. Global Solutions Ltd, whose management of health services has drawn criticisms of care standards and conflict of interest, denied the loss of services was "in any way the result of dissatisfaction with the services provided" by Global Solutions. A company spokesman said the review of the centres had not criticised the health and psychological services it managed. But the company's management of the centres and detainee health services had represented a "fundamental conflict of interest", said Louise Newman, a psychiatrist and a member of a government expert advisory panel on detention health. Professor Newman said the failings in health care and psychological services, highlighted by the Rau saga and other cases of inadequate care, had resulted in "incalculable" suffering for detainees.

July 29, 2005 ABC
Detention centre operator to pay for maltreatment. The private operators of Australia's detention centres, Global Solutions Limited (GSL), will be penalised more than $500,000 for poorly handling five immigration detainees. The GSL officers have been accused of treating the detainees in an inhumane and undignified manner when the detainees were being transferred from Maribyrnong detention centre in Victoria to the Baxter centre in South Australia in September 2004. An investigation has found that the GSL officers used force against one detainee. It has also found that overall they failed to provide adequate medical assessment, deprived the detainees of toilet breaks, did not allow them to rest and did not give them enough food during a seven-hour road trip.

May 13, 2003
A year after a national call for the release of all children from immigration detention centres, a study has found unprecedented rates of mental illness among young asylum seekers. The study of 10 families found that just one child out of a total of 22 children and 14 adults was not suffering a major depression. Some were suicidal, and had harmed themselves. Some were also suffering from post traumatic stress disorders, which started, or worsened, during their detention. Findings from the study, to form the the keynote address at the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists congress in Hobart today, were said to be causing great concern among health professionals. "There isn't a cohort of children as distressed as this group that we have been able to find anywhere in the medical literature in the world," said Zachary Steel, who co-ordinated the study. Mr Steel is a clinical psychologist in the School of Psychiatry at the University of New South Wales. The study's findings come a year after an alliance of doctors and health professionals called for the immediate release of children from detention centres and a review of Australia's detention policies. The study's findings come a year after an alliance of doctors and health professionals called for the immediate release of children from detention centres and a review of Australia's detention policies. (The Age)

February 17, 2003
Children held in Australian immigration detention camps spend an average of 15 months behind the razor wire. One child was detained for more than five years, Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock told Parliament. Labor MP Tanya Plibersek said most Australians would be shocked to learn how long children were detained. (The Age)

August 27, 2002
A night spent in immigration detention can cost an asylum seeker more than a quality bed in some five-star hotels. The Federal Government bills detainees up to $191 per person for each day spent behind barbed wire. The price of a night in detention, however, varies across the nation's six immigration compounds: some detainees can be kept more frugally - for $60 a night per person, an Immigration Department spokeswoman confirmed. The Migration Act makes detainees liable for all costs the government incurs in keeping them detained, from food to one-way air fares out of the country if they are deported. Inquiries by The Age confirm some former detainees who have been released into the community have received bills in excess of $200,000. (The Age)

Australasian Correctional Management Pty Limited
Australia
Wackenhut
July 9, 2004
A damning report by the Auditor-General, released two weeks ago, showed initial detention arrangements with private prison operators Australian Centre Management to be a farce. Appalling hygiene and frequent escapes perpetuated by ACM's lackadaisical attitude to detainees was highlighted as a failure of the immigration department. With a second report by the Auditor-General expected to detail arrangements with ACM's replacement Global Systems Management later this year, the department maintains it. (The Austrailian)

March 17, 2004
The company dumped last year as manager of Australia's immigration detention centres could soon be back in charge if a change of ownership goes ahead. Wackenhut Corrections Corporation (now known as the Geo Group) has offered $490 million to buy Global Solutions, the company now managing the centres. The Geo Group also owns the company formerly known as Australasian Correctional Management, now Geo Australia. ACM was stripped of management of the detention centres in December 2002, less than halfway through a 10-year contract. Its four-year tenure was dogged by riots, hunger strikes, suicide attempts and allegations of human rights abuses at the six detention centres under its management, including Woomera, Port Hedland, Villawood and Maribyrnong. ACM earned an estimated $328 million during the life of its contract. But the transfer of management was criticised at the time because both ACM and Global Solutions were owned by the Danish firm Group 4 Falck. Group 4 later sold off Wackenhut Corrections, which changed its name to the Geo Group last December. Group 4 Falck, which is merging with British security firm Securicor, now wants to sell Global Solutions. And the prime bidder is the Geo Group – which has offered $490 million. An Immigration Department official said the department was aware of the corporate manoeuvres. He said the sale of Global Solutions was a matter for the two companies, but there were provisions in the detention service contract about changes of the contractor which would have to be met before any change of ownership could take place. "The department is currently in dialogue with GSL (Global Solutions) to resolve these matters prior to the sale proceeding," he said. The conditions of the contract remain confidential. Opposition immigration spokesman Stephen Smith yesterday said: "This is but another illustration as to why the management of detention centres needs to be returned to Commonwealth officers on Commonwealth territory. "You can take over a company but you can't take over the Commonwealth," Mr Smith said. Howard Glenn, national director of A Just Australia, said he had reservations about management of the detention centres returning to the same hands. The Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission was soon to release a report into the treatment of children in detention under ACM's management. Mr Glenn said the report could be highly critical of ACM. "There's kids who have been in detention through all the owners, for over three years," Mr Glenn said. "While the company structures change, there's no action from the Government in moving these kids out. "Before giving the keys back to this company who had it in the crisis days of 2001, let's hear what the Human Rights Commission says." (The Courier Mail)

September 26, 2003
The Government has been hiding the real reasons why a private company lost the contract to run six immigration detention centres. The Immigration Minister, Philip Ruddock, is covering up the poor performance of Australasian Correctional Management (ACM) when it managed six of Australia's immigration detention centres from February 1998 to December 2002. Also covering up the poor performance is the Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (Dimia), which is acting in the commercial interests of ACM despite continuing revelations about the poor performance of the company. BRW has discovered a serious contractual breach relating to ACM and its handling of an escape that the department is keeping secret. Despite the seriousness of the breach - and the amount of about $90 million in taxpayers' money paid to the company for each year of the contract - the Federal Government refuses to disclose details about why a default notice was served on ACM. It also brings into question the Government's claim that ACM lost the contract to manage the detention centres because of poor value for money rather than poor performance. After a lengthy freedom-of-information request that began in May 2002, BRW has established that the department secretary, Bill Farmer, or his agent, issued a default notice to ACM under the contract. The default notice, which warns that a contact may be cancelled, was issued between March 1, 2001 and September 5, 2002. The assistant secretary of unauthorised arrivals and detention services, Jim Williams, wrote to BRW on September 5: "I believe that there is a real risk that disclosure of the document would cause unreasonable harm to ACM's business reputation and potentially prejudice its ability to perform competitively in its industry." Despite a long history of violent incidents at detention centres, including a mass breakout from Woomera detention centre, South Australia, in June 2000 and a riot in August 2000, it is the only default notice issued by Dimia to ACM under its "general agreement" contract. In October 2000, the Victorian Government took back the contract for the Melbourne Metropolitan Women's Correctional Centre, in Deer Park, after issuing three default notices to its operator, Corrections Corporation of Australia. ACM held the detention centre contract from February 1998. Dimia announced on May 25, 2001 that it would be re-tendering the contract. On December 22, 2002 Ruddock announced that Dimia would enter negotiations with another company, Group 4 Falck, to provide detention centre services. Group 4 Falck is a majority owner of ACM's United States owner, Wackenhut Corrections Corp. Dimia's sensitivity to ACM's business reputation is characteristic of its defence of ACM in numerous public inquiries. In 2001, despite direct questions about ACM's performance under the contract, Dimia staff, including Farmer and the then deputy secretary Andrew Metcalfe (now promoted to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet) said the removal of the contract from ACM was based on value-for-money reasons. Since some of Dimia's stonewalling defences of ACM in 2001, the poor performance of ACM in managing detention centres has been revealed even more starkly. In July 2002, the former operations officer at the Woomera detention centre, Allan Clifton, told the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Com-mission inquiry into children in immigration detention that it was regular ACM practice to inflate figures on services provided. He also said that staff at Woomera were under-resourced in training, numbers and medical supplies, and that children had been endangered in riots. (Business Review Weekly)

December 23, 2002
The new manager of Australia's detention centres will have to comply with a 51-page list of obligations to detainees if it is to receive the full value of the $100 million-plus contract. The manager, Group 4, will have to provide native-language newspapers and agree to a requirement that the Immigration Department be told within one hour if any detainee is placed under restraint. The list exposes Group 4 to fines if standards are breached. The present operator, Australasian Correctional Management, which lost its contract renewal bid at the weekend, had been subject to only a four-page general statement of detention principles during its six-year term. The ALP has described the new contract with Group 4 - whose international parent merged with ACM earlier this year - as a "sham". It was inappropriate with an international business in corrections to be handling detention centres, it said. A union representing detention centre workers warned yesterday that there could be industrial strife if ACM did not pay outstanding entitlements before departing the scene. It claimed that ACM was yet to pay staff 2002 wage increases. (The Age)

December 23, 2002
RIOTS, arson attacks, hunger strikes and lip-sewing protests were no match for the dollar yesterday when the Federal Government replaced the private operators of Australia's detention centres for a better deal. As a refugee activists vowed to stage mass protests this Easter at the new Baxter Detention Centre near Port Augusta, Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock yesterday announced his preferred contractor for the centres. Austalian Correctional Management lost the multi-million dollar deal to Group 4, Falck Global Solutions Pty Ltd, with which it recently merged. (The Advertiser)

October 9, 2002
Australia's immigration department and detention centre management have been told they must give evidence in public to a national inquiry into child detention. The Department of Immigration, Multicultural and Indigenous Affairs (DIMIA) and Australiasian Correctional Management (ACM) have wanted secret hearings, arguing open evidence could put staff and detainees at risk. However Australian Human Rights Commissioner Sev Ozdowski today rejected submissions arguing the confidential nature of their evidence justified a private hearing. DIMIA and ACM will now have to publicly release any documents required by the commission. In today's report, Dr. Ozdowski said each document needed to be assessed at face value, and the majority of documents requested by the commission would not pose a credible risk to safety. DIMIA and ACP's argument that the inquiry would hinder tender processes for new detention services did not satisfy the commissioner. "I have decided that any prejudice to the tender process that may be caused by the holding of public hearings involving DIMIA and ACM is outweighed by the public interest in the inquiry being held in an open, efficient and timely manner," Dr. Ozdowski said. (Smh.au.com)

May 1, 2002
Police arrested 31 protesters, charging one for using firecrackers on police horses, during May Day protests in Sydney today. City East regional commander Dick Adams said about 400 protesters took part in today's May Day action. One horse fell, bringing a policewoman down with it. The horse was quickly up, while the policewoman rolled onto her side with horses stepping all around her. The policewoman returned and remounted, joining the drive to clear the protesters from the driveway leading into the building housing ACM. (smh.com)

May 1, 2002
Police and M1 protesters have clashed outside the Australasian Correctional Management building in Sydney this morning. Police attempted to push back the protest line after about 100 demonstrators moved from the front to the side garage entrance. More than 500 people gathered to blockade the front of the building, with protesters letting off bungers and chanting before the clash. (The Age)

October 4, 2001
Wackenhut Corrections Corporation/ -- In the news release, "Wackenhut Corrections' (NYSE: WHC) Australian Subsidiary Renews and Expands Health Care Services Contract for Victoria Public Corrections Enterprise," issued Sept. 18, 2001, we are advised by the company that the headline should read "Wackenhut Corrections' Australian Subsidiary Is Nominated as the Preferred Tenderer of the Health Care Services Contract for Victoria Public Corrections Enterprise." Also, the first paragraph, third line, should read "Australasian Correctional Management Pty Limited ("ACM")has been nominated as the preferred tenderer of the health care services contract for The Public Corrections Enterprise, Victoria ('CORE') -- with the final outcome of the tender process contingent on a number of other factors, including purchase and funding approval" rather than "Australasian Correctional Management Pty Limited ('ACM') has renewed and expanded its health care services contract.

Baxter Detention Centre
South Australia, Australia
Global Solutions (formerly run by Group 4 and by Wackenhut Corrections)
November 14, 2007 The Age
THE Federal Government faces another humiliating compensation payout that could run into millions of dollars as a result of court action taken by a Vietnamese-born man. Tony Tran, 35, was unlawfully detained for more than five years and badly bashed in early 2005 at the Baxter Detention Centre by a mentally ill inmate with a history of violence, a statement of claim filed in the Supreme Court of Victoria says. He was also separated from his son Hai and not told by the Government in 2000 that Hai, then two years old, would be taken by the boy's mother to South Korea, the country of her birth. Three years later the boy was left by his mother with Mr Tran's brother in Australia and later placed in foster care for 14 months after the brother could no longer care for Hai. Mr Tran is seeking compensation from the Federal Government for physical and psychological damage. If successful, any compensation was likely to run into millions of dollars, said litigation expert Anne Gooley, from Maurice Blackburn Cashman. "How do you compensate somebody for detaining them unlawfully for five years?" she said. Ms Gooley expects the case to be settled before it goes to a full hearing.

April 9, 2007 The Australian
THE Federal Government says it is still waiting for a list of claims from the lawyers for Cornelia Rau, an Australian resident detained as an illegal immigrant. Ms Rau's lawyers said today they would sue the Government over her treatment, amid difficulties in reaching a negotiated resolution. Immigration Minister Kevin Andrews said the Government still hoped to reach an out-of-court settlement. "The Government has written to Ms Rau's lawyer a number of times over the past few months seeking to obtain a list of claims to enable the Commonwealth to settle this matter," Mr Andrews said through a spokeswoman. "We wish to settle it as expeditiously as possible. "We're just waiting on Ms Rau to provide us with a list of her claims. We can't process a final settlement ... quickly without actually receiving a claim for what she may wish to have compensation for. George Newhouse, one of Ms Rau's solicitors, said the Government's contracting out of Baxter detention centre's operations to Global Solutions Limited appeared to have complicated his client's compensation claim. "The Commonwealth Government has its own financial arrangements with the operators of the detention centre that appear to be complicating Cornelia's case," he said. "That's not Cornelia Rau's problem. It was the Commonwealth Government that set up this ridiculous system of immigration detention. "She shouldn't suffer because of the Commonwealth Government's privatisation of detention."

December 12, 2006 ABC News
More than 30 detainees are reported to be staging a protest at the Baxter detention centre near Port Augusta in South Australia. A caller to the ABC, who says he is a detainee at Baxter, says a group of detainees has blocked the front gate of the detention centre, and others are on a hunger strike. He says the protest follows reports of several detainees harming themselves to draw attention to their frustrations. "It's just a process of long-term immigration detention, it's unnecessary, it's unreasonable," he said. "Any other country in the world - and Australia is a wonderful country - but any other country in the world, they detain you for 30 days, they identify you, then they release you. "There is no purpose for us being here. "We have been vilified by the Government in order to justify our detention. This is unfair." The Immigration Department says there have been five incidents in the past four days. The Department says this morning a detainee was taken to hospital after an incident that is still being investigated. It says two detainees jumped from the roof on Friday, a detainee climbed a tree on Saturday and was treated for heat exhaustion when he came down, and on Sunday another man climbed onto a roof before coming down again.

March 20, 2006 The Age
AT LEAST two long-term immigration detainees — one held for 6½ years — are in a psychiatric hospital after developing mental problems while in detention, the Greens claim. The man who has spent more than six years in detention, a 34-year-old from Bangladesh, was moved from Baxter detention centre last August to Adelaide's Glenside psychiatric hospital. The other man, whose family are Australian citizens, has been detained for more than two years. "This period of time in detention makes this man another Peter Qasim, the long-term detainee who was recently released after seven years," Greens senator Kerry Nettle said. Their cases have been raised by the Greens as up to 100 detainees at Sydney's Villawood detention centre entered the fourth day of a hunger strike aimed at forcing the release of mentally ill detainees held for more than two years.

March 3, 2006 Sidney Morning Herald
A DAY of turmoil in the nation's immigration system ended with the Federal Government backing down on several fronts yesterday. It agreed to pay damages to a boy traumatised in detention and allowed a deported Melbourne man to return to Australia on humanitarian grounds. A damning report released by an independent auditor yesterday also raised questions about a successful 2003 bid by the immigration detention contractor GSL, whose contract the Government refused to renew on Wednesday. In Sydney, an 11-year-old Iranian, Shayan Badraie, was offered damages for trauma he suffered in Woomera and Villawood detention centres. The move comes after a 63-day Supreme Court hearing. While in detention between March 2000 and August 2001, the boy became severely traumatised after witnessing riots, a stabbing and a string of other disturbing incidents. He subsequently spent 94 days in hospital, and still requires treatment. Commonwealth lawyers approached lawyers representing Shayan this week to offer a settlement for damages. The exact sum will be fixed at a hearing this morning but is expected to be more than $1 million. Meanwhile, the immigration detention contractor GSL was found to have been hired even though it was more expensive and provided inferior services to competitors, the National Audit Office announced yesterday. GSL's bid was $32.6 million higher than that of the incumbent detention centre operator, ACM, when the latter's bid expired. The audit office found the basis on which ACM was paid $5.7 million after it missed out on the contract was "doubtful", since the department was only required to compensate for matters pertaining to detention. Immigration could not provide evidence of the criteria under which the sum was paid. The audit also found the head of the steering committee, which was heavily involved in the evaluation of the bids, gave a reference for ACM's bid. An independent probity adviser told the steering committee seven months later that this should not happen again.

March 2, 2006 The Age
THE CONTROVERSIAL private operator of Australia's detention centres will not have its lucrative $90-million-a-year contract extended. An independent review, carried out in the wake of the Cornelia Rau and Vivian Alvarez Solon scandals, found that changes to the contract were required. Yesterday Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said all detention services would be re-tendered as part of sweeping reforms to prevent a repeat of the problems that engulfed the Immigration Department last year. GSL, which also operates Victoria's Port Phillip Prison, took over the running of Australia's detention centres in late 2003. The company has come under intense scrutiny, with critics claiming it has introduced a punitive prison regime to detention centres, including the use of solitary confinement. In July last year GSL was penalised more than $500,000 after a report said five detainees endured 6½ hours in the back of a van with no toilet breaks and no food or water while being transferred between the Maribyrnong and Baxter detention centres. Senator Vanstone said that although there was an option to extend the contract with GSL when it expired late next year, the Government had decided to re-tender after a report by former Health Department deputy secretary Mick Roche found changes to the contract were required.The Palmer report on the treatment of Cornelia Rau, an Australian resident wrongfully detained for 10 months in a Brisbane jail and the Baxter detention centre, was scathing about the inadequate health care she received at Baxter. It also said the Government's contract with GSL was "fundamentally flawed" and failed to deliver the immigration detention policy expected by the Government. A damning Auditor-General's report last year said health standards in detention centres were not clearly spelt out in the contract. Another National Audit Office Report, to be tabled in Parliament today, is also expected to be critical of the detention services contract.

January 31, 2006 Scoop
The Victorian Greens Spokesperson on Refugees, Peter Job, today expressed his concerns about growing discontent amongst asylum seekers about their treatment in Baxter detention centre due to the Intransigent policies of the Department of Immigration and its subcontractor Global Solutions Limited. Mr. Job explained that he had just completed a three day visit to Baxter, during which he met with over twenty detainees from a variety of backgrounds. “Despite claims from the Department to be cleaning up its act, the detainees I spoke to claimed the situation in Baxter is actually getting worse, giving consistent accounts of increasingly repressive and heavy handed treatment by management,” Mr. Job said. “They spoke of increasingly intrusive and undignified searches of their bodies and property, especially when accessing the visitor’s compound. They spoke of run down facilities, where broken telephones, kitchen items and leisure facilities were not fixed for months, despite continued requests from detainees. They also continued to complain about the appalling quality of the food, which they claimed had not improved despite the Minister’s assurances to the contrary. “Above all they pointed to a culture in which their opinions and complaints are belittled and ignored, where incidents of discontent are further provoked rather than deescalated, and in which detainees are given little respect as human beings.”

November 23, 2005 Green Left Weekly
I wasn't involved in the asylum seeker debate in 2001 when the government's actions on Tampa were, in their opinion, decisive in getting them re-elected. It was an accident of circumstance that my family was given a voice this past year: we had an obligation to point out the hypocrisy of having one set of rights for citizens and another for suspected "illegals" who are left to rot for years in detention centres without the rule of law to protect them. Even though it took months for all the nasty specifics of Cornelia's treatment to emerge, the broader themes were clear from the outset: the lack of morality - not to mention the expense - of detaining innocent people and hiding them away in the desert; the overall levels of secrecy; the farming out of detention centres to for-profit corporations; the use of punitive isolation to control behaviour; the unchecked power of ill-qualified immigration bureaucrats and privately employed security guards; and the absence of judicial review. The failures exposed by Cornelia's case have hardly been addressed. The reforms emanating from Mick Palmer's inquiry into the wrongful imprisonment of Cornelia have given a greater review role to the federal ombudsman (but only after someone's been detained for two years) and many long-term detainees are being quietly released. A couple of sports fields have been added to Baxter and some of the razor wire in Villawood coming down with great fanfare - only to be replaced by electrified fence. In detention centres, the lack of palatable food has been a deeply felt source of contention. The food issue, so seemingly trivial when compared with indefinite detention, can lead to avoidable tension and abuses. This has not changed. Cornelia's case: In early February, Cornelia was just another non-person in Baxter, receiving no treatment for a florid psychosis. The rest of our family was living in suburban obscurity. We were dragged into public life in early February 2005 when the media became interested. Even before the government announced the Palmer inquiry - only five days after Cornelia was identified - we were getting calls from people with information about what had happened to her during her brush with DIMIA. I was determined to expose the more appalling misuses of power during Cornelia's time behind the wire, much of it in punitive isolation. In the first few days, Senator Amanda Vanstone's office put out various bits of misinformation about how wonderful DIMIA had been to Cornelia and to us. No-one had contacted us. We learned of the phantom medical care being given to detainees. There were horrific cases of neglect: the young child with a broken thumb, which turned purple and swollen in the week it took for him to get medical attention; the man complaining of severe headaches who was fobbed off with Panadol for two years until he collapsed one night between compounds and started to turn blue after which he was finally rushed to hospital where neurosurgeons operated for 12 hours to contain the burst aneurism. There was the woman in Villawood in NSW who couldn't establish breastfeeding with her newborn because guards were in her hospital room 24 hours a day. During the delivery, a guard even gowned up to watch the caesarian, worried no doubt, she might jump up from the table and abscond during the procedure. There were stories of sexual assaults by guards, and in one case, a hastily arranged abortion. Many of our interviewees were worried about repercussions and asked for confidentiality. The former detainees and their families were able to tell us how places like Baxter really worked in practice, how the medical services that DIMIA described in such glowing terms, breached the duty of care requirements. Interview transcripts and court affidavits, including from DIMIA staff that flagrantly contradicted the sort of eyewitness evidence we were getting, were passed onto the university. One such chilling document was the "Behaviour Management Plan" (BMP) from Global Solutions Limited (GSL, the company that runs Baxter among other corrections institutions), which set out rules for detainees in the punishment compound at Baxter, Red One. This is where Cornelia spent 94 days in a psychosis, which had been discerned by other detainees. Evidence we were given showed GSL even flouted its own management plan for much of the time Cornelia was in Red One. For example, detainees have to sign a consent to the BMP before they enter the compound. Cornelia signed no such document. Under the strictest stage of the plan, detainees are allowed four hours out of their cell. In Cornelia's case, we were told by eyewitnesses that on many days she was given only two hours' egress, or none at all. At least on one occasion, Cornelia was punched in the chest so hard she fell backwards into her cell so the guards could lock her inside. [Abridged from a speech by Christine Rau, Cornelia's sister, to the Queensland Public Interest Law Clearing House on October 18. For the full text see <http://www.qpilch.org.au/>.]

November 14, 2005 The Age
THE Immigration Department says it will have no hesitation in pursuing criminal charges against detainees who allegedly lit a series of fires at the Baxter detention centre. One detainee was taken to hospital and five others were treated for smoke inhalation on Saturday as a result of four fires that destroyed 14 accommodation rooms and forced the evacuation of 58 detainees at the South Australian facility. The Immigration Department said the damage bill was in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. The fires forced the removal of 54 detainees to other parts of the centre. Four who are of interest to the police have been isolated and are under constant watch. The fires began in a kitchen, and fire authorities have said the fact there were a number of separate fires suggested there was some unrest at the centre.

November 12, 2005 The Age
One man has been taken to hospital and five others treated for smoke inhalation after a series of fires forced evacuations at the Baxter Detention centre in South Australia. Fifty-eight men being held in detention were evacuated from the White One compound after fires started at the Port Augusta centre around 4am local time a spokesman for the immigration department said. Six of those evacuated were treated on the scene for smoke inhalation with one of them taken to hospital for further treatment. The four separate fires caused more than $25,000 worth of damage and were probably deliberately lit, according to a fire services spokesman.

September 13, 2005 The Australian
ILLEGAL immigrants held in detention will be offered taste testing of prospective menus and weekly barbecues in a further attempt by the Howard Government to soften its hardline image on asylum-seekers. The move follows complaints from detainees about the quality of food, including reports of maggot-infested meat, at the privately run Baxter Detention Centre at Port Augusta, South Australia. A confidential government report found food quality had been so bad at Baxter - administered by British conglomerate Global Solutions - that consultants witnessed three-quarters of meals being thrown in bins, with some detainees reporting they were prepared to eat only three or four main meals a week. The report says meals at Baxter often developed a "stewed" appearance, with food "very wet at times, the sauce unthickened and tasteless, or dried out". Immigration Department deputy secretary Bob Correll said yesterday food at Baxter had not been provided to standards required under the contract with GSL. He said there was a direct link between unrest in detention centres and food quality. "Sometimes food has not been served at correct temperature or it is bland," he said. "Special requests in relation to cultural and religious issues were also not being met." The federal Government's $300million contract with GSL is under review. The Palmer Report into the case of Cornelia Rau - a mentally ill Australian resident wrongfully detained at Baxter - found that GSL's contract had "little emphasis on service quality or the establishment of an equitable detention environment".

September 6, 2005 The Age
CONDITIONS at Baxter detention centre are not conducive to good mental health, with more than a fifth of detainees on tranquillisers and anti-depressants, a damning report by a bipartisan parliamentary committee says. The joint standing committee on migration, chaired by Liberal backbencher Don Randall, spoke to about 25 long-term detainees during a visit to Baxter detention centre, near Port Augusta in South Australia, in April this year. "For the committee the three main concerns to emerge from the inspection were the length of detention, mental health in detention and the possibility of physical abuse," Mr Randall says in a report tabled in Parliament yesterday. "The committee cannot deny the impact of long-term detention." When the committee visited Baxter on April 19, more than 50 of the 240 detainees were on anti-depressants and many slept for long periods during the day. The report comes two months after the scathing Palmer inquiry into the wrongful detention of Cornelia Rau, which found mental health care at Baxter was inadequate by any standards.

August 26, 2005 The Age
Police have launched an investigation into claims that guards at South Australia's Baxter detention centre deliberately twisted an asylum seeker's leg until it broke. The Immigration Department has confirmed Peter Mode, a 24-year-old from Zimbabwe, suffered a broken fibula during a violent incident involving three detainees and several guards at the centre on Tuesday. South Australian police are investigating the incident and Mr Mode plans to make an official complaint. Mr Mode said he was assaulted by guards when he sought to protect another inmate, named John, after he threw his meal against a wall, complaining the fish being served to detainees tasted of dust. Mr Mode said seven guards arrived at John's room on Tuesday night to take him to the Red One maximum security unit. "I started arguing with them; 'No you can't take him out of his room, he had an operation last week'," Mr Mode told ABC Radio. "And then I was trying to struggle with them and then they pushed me down to the ground and then one of the officers held my leg. "I was kicking back (saying) 'Just leave me alone'. "Then they pushed the leg and it broke to the ankle." Mr Mode said he told the guard he had broken his leg but he continued to twist it.

August 2, 2005 The Age
The Immigration Department has admitted it had provided misleading answers about a group of detainees who were found to have been inhumanely treated during a transfer to Baxter detention centre. The department yesterday blamed private contractor Global Solutions Limited for its mistake, saying it was relying on information from the detention centre operator. A spokeswoman from the department's media unit admitted it had provided misleading answers to questions from The Age about the incident because "this is what we were told at the time". The admission has sparked renewed calls for GSL's contract to be terminated. Five detainees claimed they were forcibly removed from Maribyrnong detention centre on September 17 last year, put in the back of a van and driven for what seemed to be 10 hours with no toilet breaks and no food or water. In a detailed response to the allegations on September 21 last year, the department said the detainees travelled in "a special-purpose air-conditioned vehicle". "There was a break in a major regional centre a number of hours out of Melbourne where the detainees had a meal and stretched their legs for an hour," the spokeswoman said. "During the drive they had access to food and drink and secure places for toilet stops all along the routes, so the detainees only needed to ask if they required a stop." An independent report on the incident, released late on Friday night by the department, found that the detainees were treated in "an inhumane and undignified manner" and denied food, water and toilet breaks for 6½ hours on the Melbourne-Mildura leg of the journey. The report, by the former head of Queensland Corrective Services, Keith Hamburger, found that appeals for assistance from the detainees were disregarded. One of the detainees said he was forced to urinate "like a dog" in the compartment of the van where he was held. The report also found that force was used on one detainee and that the van used to transport them was "totally unsuitable" for the long trip from Melbourne to South Australia. The Immigration Department and GSL have apologised to the detainees, two managers have resigned and the company has been fined more than $500,000. The Immigration Department spokeswoman said yesterday that the "information (given to The Age) was what should have happened" and that the Hamburger report confirmed that GSL officers had given the department misleading information. "Someone from GSL has already been sanctioned for supplying wrong information to the department," she said. Labor's immigration spokesman, Tony Burke, said the episode showed a lack of clear lines of responsibility and communication. "The department should be out there on the front line so that it knows what's happening to detainees and so it can communicate the message rather than become an extension of the culture of cover-up," he said.

August 1, 2005 The Age
A traumatised asylum seeker has told how he was forced to urinate "same as dog" in the back of a van during a hellish trip between Maribyrnong and Baxter detention centres last year. A damning report, released late on Friday night by the Immigration Department, found that five detainees were denied food, water, medical treatment and toilet stops for six-and-a-half hours on the Melbourne-Mildura leg of the journey. The independent report found the detainees were humiliated and treated in an "inhumane and undignified manner". The asylum seeker, who does not want to be named in case it affects his visa application, told The Age a guard gave him 10 minutes' notice of his transfer last September from the Maribyrnong centre in Melbourne to Baxter north of Port Augusta in South Australia last year. "I wanted to call a lawyer. He said, 'No, take your stuff now'," the asylum seeker said. He said the five detainees were pushed into the van by guards working for detention centre operator Global Solutions Limited. One detainee, who struggled, broke a bone while being forced into the van, the asylum seeker said. He said the van, which was divided into compartments, was dark. The space he was put in was so small he couldn't move. "The guards said, 'If you die inside no one will know'," the man said. "I can't see anything. For eight hours there was no toilet, I had to go in the van, same as dog." He said the detainees were not fed until they arrived at Mildura police station, where they had an hour's break. "I can't believe it," he said. "GSL and the Immigration Department are the law, they can do anything. I didn't know much English, I didn't know what to say to who." He said that although he still felt angry, he did not want compensation. "I'm angry for treating me like a dog," he said. " I don't want money. All I want is for the minister to give me the visa." The Immigration Department apologised for the "very regrettable incident". New department secretary Andrew Metcalfe said GSL would be penalised more than $500,000 and he would refer the matter to police to investigate if criminal offences were committed. Two GSL managers have resigned.

July 25, 2005 Herald Sun
DETAINEES at the Baxter detention centre rioted on Friday night, causing up to $70,000 worth of damage to the complex. The riot was sparked by complaints of bad food, according to police. Police are expected to charge some of the 25 detainees who damaged a kitchen, mess hall and store room during the disturbance. The Department of Immigration said the five minute riot caused between $50,000 and $70,000 damage to the centre in South Australia's North. A Department spokesman said complaints about the evening meal of lamb aubergine sparked the riot in a compound called Blue Two. Detainees damaged security cameras, lighting, tables, chairs and food warmers during the disturbance, the spokesman said.

July 14, 2005 The Age
The Immigration Department has stalled for weeks over transferring from Baxter to a psychiatric institution three severely depressed men who a mental health expert says need immediate hospital care. This is despite the department being severely criticised by the Palmer inquiry over the inadequate mental health treatment it provides for immigration detainees. Former police commissioner Mick Palmer's report on the wrongful detention of mentally ill Cornelia Rau, which is highly critical of the department's culture, will be released today, with the Government's plans for action on mental health, identification and other aspects of immigration detention.

June 29, 2005 The Australian
IN his explosive report on the detention scandals, former police commissioner Mick Palmer refers to Cornelia Rau's four months in Baxter detention centre as "Anna's journey". Using the name she took at the time of her admission to the South Australian holding centre, Mr Palmer tells how her mental health deteriorated inside Baxter, yet systemic failures allowed her to remain on the periphery of psychiatric care even after the intervention of the state's director of mental health. Anna arrived at Baxter, on the desert outskirts of Port Augusta, on October 6 without any documentation on her medical history. She was assessed and screened by a contract nurse but things soon got out of hand. "She was unco-operative during the medical induction, by crying, being confused and upset," Mr Palmer says. An assessment by Adam Micallef, a psychologist employed by Global Solutions Ltd, the company with the detention centre contract, was ordered for the next day as a "precaution". Medical papers were sent from Brisbane Women's Correctional Centre, including discharge papers from the Princess Alexandra Hospital. Micallef decided her problems appeared "behavioral", rather than stemming from mental illness. "Anna's behaviour continued to be bizarre," Mr Palmer says. Critically, Micallef wrote that Baxter was not equipped to handle cases such as Anna's, and he recommended that she be moved to an all-female compound such as the one in Villawood detention centre in Sydney. The option was never pursued. Anna had been a month in Baxter when she was seen by the centre's consulting psychiatrist, Andrew Frukacz. Despite two attempts, he was unable to make a definitive diagnosis. He recommended she be assessed in a mental health facility. Acting on Frukacz's advice, attempts were made to bring in South Australia's Rural Remote Mental Health Service to assess Anna. "The RRMHS triage team seemed unsure of their relationship with Baxter and said they would need to clarify matters and then get back," Mr Palmer says. "They did not do so." On November 12, Micallef called a psychiatrist working at Glenside -- South Australia's only dedicated mental health facility -- to discuss Anna's "issues" with Baxter staff. The psychiatrist advised that Anna's problems sounded behavioural but later told Mr Palmer no sense of urgency was conveyed to him at the time. The next day the RRMHS took Anna off their books as to be placed at its allocated beds in Glenside. But no-one at Baxter was told. Micallef sent Anna's psychiatric assessments to Glenside but there was not enough detail in the file to admit her to its waiting list. On New Years's Eve last year, NSW psychiatrist Louise Newman, Adelaide refugee lawyer Claire O'Conner and a local doctor visited 12 detainees at Baxter. After examining several of the detainees, they decided to commit two under the state's mental health act. By January 4, Baxter staff urged Glenside to accept and assess Anna. Three days later a rural doctor contracted to Baxter diagnosed possible "schizoid or schizotypal personality features and possibly schizophrenia", but further discussion with a Glenside psychiatrist resulted in no action. On January 24, South Australia's then director of mental health services, Jonathon Phillips, offered to have Anna assessed at Glenside. Department of Immigration officials in Canberra sought RRMHS assistance to arrange this, but its director suggested she be examined at Baxter. "It was clear the efforts made by Glenside, RRMHS and Baxter were unco-ordinated and no one took overall responsibility for the arrangements to admit Anna to in-patient care," Mr Palmer says. Eight days later, after media reports of a mentally ill German woman in Baxter, it was finally decided that Anna be assessed under the Mental Health Act. That same day, it was revealed she was in fact Cornelia Rau.

June 5, 2005 The Advertiser
SECURITY guards have been moved on to the grounds of Glenside Mental Health Service to watch over nine Baxter detainees receiving treatment. The guards, employed by the Baxter Detention Centre operators, are costing an estimated $150,000 a month. Effectively, two guards have been assigned to each detainee. They operate out of a hired demountable hut which was recently delivered to the grounds of the hospital. State health officials have made it clear the guards are not welcome. Director of Mental Health, Learne Durrington, said she has approached the Immigration Department about the impact of the guards on other patients. "We're running a hospital here and it needs to be managed as a hospital," Ms Durrington said. "I've proposed that we get rid of the guards and replace them with our own staff who are better trained in mental health care." The Baxter guards are employees of Global Solutions Limited (GSL) subsidiary Group 4, the security company that has the contract to operate the Baxter Detention Centre. "We've taken additional troops from another part of our company," the spokesman, who did not wish to be named, said. "As a result we've got staff shortages and we're recruiting more people – mainly for our Baxter contract." One of the guards told a visitor to Glenside hospital the demountable was hired at a cost of $300 per day. Figures from the Miscellaneous Workers Union show the salary costs of the 54 daily eight-hour shifts to be more than $150,000 per month. A spokesman for the Glenside hospital confirmed two guards were allocated for each detainee. "That's 18 guards on three eight-hour shifts, making a total of 54 guards on a daily basis," he said. The increase in numbers of detainees needing mental health treatment has occurred subsequent to the Cornelia Rau case where an Australian resident suffering psychosis was wrongly detained in Baxter until her real identity was discovered in February this year. Health officials have confirmed that in the year prior to the Rau case only one person had been referred to Glenside, but now nine people were in treatment. Glenside hospital officials are still waiting for a response from the Commonwealth on the presence of the Group 4 guards. Meanwhile, the legal team assisting the Rau family's submission into the Palmer inquiry has questioned the timing of an internal Baxter memo about the identity of a detainee. A story in the Sunday Mail of November 21, 2004, described a missing woman as 168cm tall, 58kg, with dark blonde hair, brown eyes and a brown mole on her left cheek. It subsequently turned out to be Cornelia Rau. It's since been revealed that an internal memo dated November 24 raised the possibility a detainee was an Australian citizen. Legal representatives for the Rau family will ask the Palmer Inquiry to check if the memo was sparked by the article in the Sunday Mail.

February 9, 2005 The Age
The detention centre where mentally ill Australian Cornelia Rau was wrongly held was not visited by a psychiatrist for at least three months last year, documents filed in Adelaide's Federal Court suggest. South Australian Legal Services Commission lawyer Claire O'Connor claimed in documents that Group 4 Falck, the company that runs Australia's detention centres, and the Department of Immigration had breached their duty of care by failing to provide adequate psychiatric care for three mentally ill Iranian men at the Baxter detention centre. Outside the court, she said there were parallels with the Rau case. "Cornelia was sick and wasn't treated, my clients are sick and they are not being treated," Ms O'Connor said. "She is no different to people in there." In documents supporting her attempt to get urgent psychiatric treatment for the men, Ms O'Connor said the centre's suicide and self-harm unit did not employ a psychiatrist. "It is believed there has been no psychiatric visit . . . since about August 2004 and certainly none since November 2004," she said in an affidavit. Ms O'Connor said the problem of the lack of psychiatric care at Baxter was compounded by the fact that the centre itself was contributing to the poor mental health of detainees. She said psychiatrists visited Baxter infrequently and were forced to deal with a series of seriously ill people in a short time. "All they can do is medicate them, they just keep renewing the prescriptions," she said.

February 7, 2005 The Age
Only a full judicial and public inquiry would be sufficient to establish the facts about the detention of a mentally ill Australian woman, her sister said today. Cornelia Rau, a 39-year-old former flight attendant who was released from Baxter immigration detention centre last week after spending 10 months locked up, has caused a national debate over services for the mentally ill. Her sister, Christine Rau, said an inquiry independent of the government and open to public scrutiny was necessary to get to the bottom of the case. Adelaide public defender John Harley, who represents mentally ill people, said he had grave concerns for the fate of other people suffering mental health problems imprisoned by the immigration system. "This is not isolated at all," Mr Harley told ABC radio. "I was informed that (Ms Rau) was in solitary confinement and that involves her being under lights 24 hours a day (with) closed circuit television. "She was allowed out of her room six hours a day, but in some occasions it required four men in riot gear to remove her back into her cell," he said.

February 7, 2005 Herald Sun
THE Federal Government will hold an inquiry into the detention of a mentally ill Australian women at the Baxter centre for illegal immigrants. Prime Minister John Howard yesterday said it was regrettable Cornelia Rau was held in custody for three months in Baxter and before that six months in a Brisbane jail. "Obviously it's . . . a very regrettable incident," Mr Howard said. Ms Rau, a 39-year-old former Qantas flight attendant, was released from Baxter in South Australia on Friday. Australian Democrats leader Lyn Allison said the Government should not be trusted to investigate its own actions. "It is bad enough that Ms Rau was being held in an immigration detention centre," Senator Allison said. "But why did she spend six months in a women's prison before that? Senator Allison said state and federal governments had allowed prisons and detention centres to become "the new psychiatric asylums".

February 5, 2005 The Age
A family snapshot of Cornelia Rau, detained as a suspected illegal immigrant. A mentally ill Australian woman found by Aborigines in a remote Cape York township has been mistakenly held in immigration detention for nearly a year while her distressed family thought she was dead. Cornelia Rau, 39, who suffers from schizophrenia, was last seen in March after she escaped from the psychiatric unit of Sydney's Manly Hospital. The Immigration Department confirmed last night that Ms Rau, who was speaking German and some English, had been held in a Queensland women's prison until September when she was transferred to Baxter detention centre. Ms Rau's sister, Chris Rau, a Sydney journalist, read an article from The Age last Monday about a mystery German-speaking woman held at Baxter, known only as "Anna". Baxter authorities faxed her a photograph, which showed her missing sister. "We're just relieved that she is alive," Chris Rau said. They were also bewildered why the department could not establish her identity when police had her details. Ms Rau was first taken into detention in April. She had been staying near an Aboriginal camp at Coen, in far north Queensland. The Aborigines became concerned that she was sick and brought her into Cairns police. A spokesman for Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone said the woman was handed over to the Department of Immigration by police in April 2004. She was held in a Queensland women's prison until September when she was transferred to Baxter. Greens senator Kerry Nettle last night called for an inquiry into "this staggering case of mismanagement and abuse". During her three months in Baxter, Ms Rau was kept in isolation for a week, then in a high- security unit locked in a room on her own for 18 hours a day, refugee advocate Pamela Curr said. She said her sister had "been through hell". "We don't know what the implications are going to be for her future condition or her treatment."

December 13, 2004 The Age
The immigration department today accused refugee advocates of inciting incidents within the Baxter detention centre by exaggerating reports of a detainee hunger strike. Refugee support group Rural Australians for Refugees (RAR) today said 27 Iranians within the South Australian centre were participating in the hunger strike, now into its second week. Among those were five men who had sewn their lips together and three who were staging a protest on the centre's gymnasium roof, RAR spokeswoman Kathy Verran said. She said those on the roof had been denied water since last night, after guards stopped other detainees bringing water to the men. Ms Verran said detainees had also reported the guards were bouncing balls against the ceiling of the gym, underneath the detainees, to prevent them from sleeping.

December 3, 2004 The Age
Four Sri Lankan men have been hospitalised after refusing food for up to 10 days in a hunger strike at South Australia's Baxter detention centre. Two of the men had also been admitted overnight earlier this week, she said.

December 1, 2004 The Age
Eleven Sri Lankan men at the Baxter detention centre have stepped up their hunger strike and are now refusing medication, a refugee advocate said today. The detainees were determined to continue their hunger strike until death, in a last bid to be granted refugee status in Australia, according to Rural Australians for Refugees spokeswoman Mira Wroblewski. Ms Wroblewski said other hunger strikers were angry that the pair, after their release, had been forced to walk from the detention centre medical facility to their compounds in pouring rain. "It (forcing them to walk in the rain) has just strengthened their resolve.

September 20, 2004 The Age
A hunger strike, a High Court action and a direct appeal to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone are among last-ditch efforts to stop the forced return of asylum seekers to Sri Lanka. The man on hunger strike, who is 34 and was detained after his visa expired, was put into Baxter's management unit on Thursday and forcibly fed. He resumed his hunger strike on Saturday, Ms Wroblewski said. Eleven other Sri Lankans held at Baxter yesterday entered the fifth day of a peaceful sit-in at the compound.

August 20, 2004
A food sample from South Australia's Baxter detention centre will be presented to health authorities for inspection after detainees complained they had been served a meal crawling with maggots. The Immigration Department last week said one maggot had been found in food and an investigation was under way. South Australian Greens MP Kris Hanna said he would today present a sample of meat and rice to the state Environmental Health Department for examination. Mr Hanna said the food sample was smuggled out of Baxter following frustration among detainees about the situation. "According to reports in the centre, the food was crawling with live maggots," Mr Hanna said. Detainees at the Baxter centre last week upturned rubbish bins in protest after complaining about maggots in their food. (The Age)

July 29, 2004
Two murals border a grassy patch in the fenced-in adult education compound of the Baxter immigration detention centre. Goldfish feature in one. The other, still being painted by detainees yesterday, is an abstract composition of nine blue eyes and brown faces. For the first time since the fires in 2002, journalists were allowed in the centre. An Iranian detainee, who said he had been in detention for about four years, waited until the Immigration Department official was out of earshot before he started whispering to the Herald. The mural of the eyes represented confusion, he explained. "People don't know what they're doing, they've lost their personality, they don't know what happens to them," he said. And the fish? "If you scream underwater, nobody hears your voice, if you're crying, nobody hears." One area the media had never seen before was the grim "Management Unit", where detainees with behavioural issues are put into solitary confinement - sometimes for more than a month at a time. The Red compound, burnt during the fires in 2002, is for "problem" detainees who have come out of the "Management Unit" and are being "re-integrated" into the general detention centre population. There were no detainees in the Red compound yesterday either - just empty non-carpeted rooms with metal furniture bolted to the floor and a peephole for guards to look through when doing their head counts each night. (