July 2008: New directions in detention
On 29 July 2008, Senator Chris Evans, Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, made a speech New Directions in Detention, Restoring Integrity to Australia’s Immigration System. Children will never be held in a detention centre. People who comply with immigration processes and pose no risk to the community will not be detained. Read more on these changes in policy at the A Just Australia website.
Congratulations to the Minister and the Rudd Government. Congratulations also to all the chilout supporters who worked so hard and so long for reform.
March 2007: Leaked plans of Christmas Is. detention centre: babies separated from parents
The Hon Kevin Andrew ( Minister for Immigration) advises that the leaked plans below are incorrect. How could anyone have planned to lock up babies away from their parents in the first place? Can the Minister assure us that no such facility is being built?
Contact the Minister to voice your objection to this apalling design:
The site remains online as a resource, but has not been regularly maintained since August 2006.
Please note that links or information may no longer be current. For current information and actions please visit:
If you are looking for ways to help refugees in your community, please contact one of the organisations on our community page.
Children Out Of Detention (ChilOut) is a group of parents and citizens formed in 2001 to oppose
the mandatory detention of children in Australian immigration detention centres. Between 1992 and 2005, thousands of children and their parents were locked in remote desert facilities surrounded by razor wire fences in Australia and islands to Australia's north. Most of the children were from Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran and nearly all were found to be refugees. We are appalled that Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers continues to breach several human rights treaties to which we are a signatory, in particular the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Although there are no children behind razor wire at the moment, the policy of mandatory detention remains.
One of the major objectives of ChilOut’s original mission has been accomplished with the release of children from razor wire detention into community detention. After participating in the successful campaign against the Designated Unauthorised Arrivals Bill 2006, ChilOut has wound down, but not totally disbanded. If there is any suggestion that the government intends to lock children up again we will let you know.
Release of families into community detention July 2005
At the end of July 2005, all children in detention centres were transferred with their families into community detention. No children are behind razor wire in high security immigration detention facilities.
View the current immigration detention statistics provided by DIMA...
New Community Arrangements for Families In Detention
Friday 28 July 2005, Media Release, Minister for Immigration.Migration Amendment (Detention Arrangements) Act 2005
Read the amendments and briefings on the web site of A Just Australia.
Read the explanatory memorandum on the amendments.
About the Designated Unauthorised Arrivals Bill 2006
 |
The Bill has been withdrawn
14 August 2006.
The new legislation for the Designated Unauthorised Arrivals Bill was introduced into Federal parliament on 11 May. On 13 June, the Senate inquiry recommended the Bill should not proceed . An amended Bill has passed the House of Representatives on Thursday 10 August. Read the speeches of dissenting coalition MPs. The amended Bill was scheduled for debate in the Senate on Monday 14 and Tuesday 15 August. However the Prime Minister announced on Monday that the Government will not be proceeding with the Bill. |
Alternatives to mandatory detention
There are just, practical and humane alternatives to mandatory detention, whether behind razor wire or in the community. Read more...
Lesson plans
1. Refugees
and asylum seekers
2. UN
Convention on the Rights of the Child
3. Human
Rights Commission's report, "A last resort?"'
Also see The Long Journey Home.
Recent news and updates
ChilOut Media Releases...
Read stories from the news archive...
Asylum policy 'fencing in Aussies'
Keeping asylum seekers in fenced-off detention centres while their claims for refugee status are processed means Australian citizens "by default have become fenced in". [...] The new book, `Fenced Out, Fenced In: Border protection, asylum and detention in Australia', includes a contribution by former Australian Human Rights Commissioner Chris Sidoti.
Labor demands return of Nauru detainee
The last remaining refugee on the Pacific Island of Nauru should be brought back to Australia now so he can undergo security assessments, Labor says. Mohammed Sagar is the only refugee left on Nauru of the 438 refugees sent to the island by Australia after they were picked up by the cargo ship MV Tampa in August 2001. It was revealed that Australia has failed to pay Mr Sagar's visa fee, understood to be between $75,000 and $100,000 a month.
Mental illness 'more likely' for detainees
The research by the Service for the Treatment and Rehabilitation of Torture and Trauma Survivors and the school of psychiatry at the University of NSW looked at 116 of the 20,000 Persian dialect speakers who have come to Australia since 1993. Temporary refugees "had experienced the added stress of being held in immigration detention centres, of having very few of the entitlements of Australian citizens and of facing an uncertain future", the paper says. Ninety-two per cent of temporary refugees saw unemployment as an issue and had trouble paying the rent and buying food, compared with 10 per cent and 13per cent, respectively, of permanent refugees.
Burmese asylum seekers sent to Nauru
The Immigration Department has revived using Nauru Island for its Pacific Solution policy by transferring seven Burmese refugees there. [...] He said the department was still waiting to hear back from ASIO on its re-assessment of its previous security assessment that led to two long-term detainees remaining on the island - one is now living in the community and the other currently in hospital in Australia. The department's spokesman said the cost of keeping the Nauru centre open was $33.7 million (2004-05 figure). From July to December last year when it was empty, the cost was $14.9 million.
Detainees put on secret flight to Nauru
Seven Burmese asylum seekers are today surrounded by a bleak landscape of coral pinnacles at Australia's detention centre on the remote Pacific Island nation of Nauru. Their flight yesterday from Christmas Island, kept secret for "security reasons", made them the vanguard of the "Pacific solution mark II" and the only inmates. [...] They were accompanied by 19 Australian personnel, including private security guards from the detention facility contractor Global Solutions Ltd.
Upcoming events
Visit our events page for links to other listings...
ChilOut wins 2005 Human Rights Day Community Award
9 December 2005
The judges credited ChilOut for their relentless campaign and for their contribution in pressuring the federal Government to remove children from immigration detention.
The group of “middle Australia mums and dads” that formed in 2001 after seeing the plight of a six-year-old Iranian boy in immigration detention has demonstrated the remarkable power of committed individuals to achieve change. They showed the faces of children behind razor wire and brought the suffering of those children into Australian living rooms – confronting us all with the reality of children in detention.