The abuse of children inside Australian institutions. Reports appearing consistently for years, subject to inquiry after inquiry. Picked up and dusted off to use in political football games, but never really taken past the try line.
The similarities of the Don Dale abuses and the Nauru files are clear. With, so far, one telling difference.
The failure in Northern Territory juvenile detention had a children’s commissioner’s investigation, the Vita report, Jodeen Carney’s review.
The NT government shut down the old centre, retrained guards and claims to have implemented all of the Vita recommendations, but detainees and advocates say there are still major issues – largely to do with the detention environment.
Nauru had the Forgotten Children report, the Moss review, Senate inquiries and a high court challenge.
The Australian government claims to have opened the Nauru centre, given detainees freedom, and is working towards freeing all children from detention everywhere. But detainees and advocates – and the portion of the Nauru files that dates past the Moss review – say there are still major problems, largely to do with the detention environment.
There are elements of race and fear at play in both controversies which are impossible to ignore.
In the NT more than 97% of juvenile detainees are Indigenous, and this overrepresentation repeats across the country. The reports on the treatment of black kids in detention, and the long road that took them there, by Indigenous media, local media, lawyers, activists and human rights groups were noted but largely ignored by mainstream Australia.
Offshore processing centres hold and deter people mainly from the Middle East and south Asia. Their treatment in detention, and their journey amid the world’s greatest refugee crisis since the second world war, make occasional ripples through the national discourse.
NT politicians chanted the mantra of “tough on crime” in Darwin, a city with high rates of thefts and assaults, and pushed laws to deal with “bad kids” who had “given up their opportunity to have a second start at life”.
The federal government talks of national security, stopping the boats and orderly queues through the front door, lest further hordes breach our sovereign borders and fill the country with potential terrorists, or illiterate and innumerate dole bludgers “taking Australian jobs”.
So it goes, for years.
Then a story comes along – much of it new, much of it not, shocking but not surprising – and people are outraged. There was ABC’s Four Corners report on the Don Dale scandal and its now infamous footage of Dylan Voller hooded in a restraint chair. Two weeks later the Guardian published the Nauru files: 8,000 pages of damning documentary evidence, written by the guards and officials who run the offshore detention system on behalf of the Australian government.
The story arrests the attention of the public. There is international condemnation.
But here is where paths diverge.
Within hours of the Four Corners credits rolling Australia had a new royal commission. It was hastily announced, with some missteps, but it was there. The prime minister was “deeply shocked … and appalled”. This could not be tolerated. Labor and both parties in the NT parliament supported it wholly, at least to begin with.
On the day the Guardian published a horrific cache of more than 2,000 official reports and accounts Turnbull was not so moved. He gave a commitment that the files would be examined to see if any complaints hadn’t been “properly addressed”.
“We continue to support the Nauru government,” he said, checking his notes, “to provide for the health, welfare and safety of all transferees and refugees on Nauru.”
Standing beside him, the former immigration minister Scott Morrison told reporters: “It’s important to stress that incident reports of themselves aren’t a reporting of fact. They are a reporting that an allegation has been made.”
On Thursday his successor as immigration minister, Peter Dutton, said: “Most of that’s been reported on before.”
In his first media appearance after the story broke, he told 2GB’s Ray Hadley: “I won’t tolerate any sexual abuse whatsoever. But I have been made aware of some incidents that have been reported, false allegations of sexual assault, because in the end people have paid money to people smugglers and they want to come to our country.
“Some people have even gone to the extent of self-harming and people have self-immolated in an effort to get to Australia, and certainly some have made false allegations in an attempt to get to Australia.”
The Labor opposition said it would reintroduce a bill to force the mandatory reporting of child abuse but did not back calls for the offshore centres to be shut down. Nor did it support a new royal commission, or even for one already running to have a look at the problem.
Much like Don Dale, the scandal of offshore detention shares bipartisan responsibility. For both, the problems – and their causes, escalations and critical incidents – stretch back for years through multiple governments and parties.
For the kids detained at Don Dale both camps put that aside, came together and decided to do something about it.
The 442 people, including 49 children, in detention on Nauru do not yet have that going for them.
Helen Davidson is Guardian Australia’s reporter in the Northern Territory and is a member of the Nauru files reporting team
