Continuing the spotlight on Australia’s brutal detention facilities: from Perth to Port Hedland, Western Australia

Trigger warning: This document contains distressing content as we continue to shine a light on the heartbreaking impact of Australia’s cruel policies of detaining refugees – this time in Western Australia.

In the past week as we travelled virtually across the vast state of Western Australia, we passed several key sites of immigration detention – some of which remain open. Later in the Walk, the virtual walk will come back to the Curtin Detention Centre.

The story of the detention of refugees in Western Australia, like elsewhere, is devastating, with many documented accounts of violence, harm, trauma and abuse.

This is a story of systemic cruelty.

Indefinite detention, by its very nature, hurts people. 

Paul Keating’s announcement of a policy of mandatory detention in 1992, shortly after opening the Port Hedland detention centre, set Australia on a 30-year path of intentional cruelty and harm towards people who came to Australia by boat to seek safety.

This harm could even be seen in “low-security” centres such as Leonora, an “alternative place of detention” (2010-2014) predominately for families and children.

Despite the fact that this was predominately a centre for families and children, sexual abuse, harassment and violence were reported. You can read more in this WA today coverage.

In 2010, Leonora visitors from the WA Refugee Rights Action Network visitors reported Serco guards’ abusive treatment of refugees:

“Following much lobbying to receive detainee handwritten notes which were barred from direct receipt by RRAN visitors from Serco staff, a detainee has reported that these letters were taken from them and ripped up before them.”

The Australian Human Rights Commission also expressed concerns in 2010 about the impact of prolonged detention, particularly for children: 

“My children come home from school and ask ‘Why are they doing this to us Mum? Why are we still here?’” (Woman detained in Leonora)

At this time, Leonora held 202 people – 69 men, 67 women, 35 boys and 31 girls from Iran, Afghanistan, Sri Lanka, Iraq, and stateless people. All had arrived by boat to Australia by boat seeking asylum. Read the 2011 report here.

Over more than a decade, the Commission has continued to raise concerns about the impact of detention on the health, safety and rights of people held in these environments.

In Yongah Hill, which opened in June 2012 and is still in operation, these concerns revolved around the prolonged nature of detention as a last resort, policies of force, inadequate healthcare, the need for additional support workers and for educational opportunities. Extended periods of detention remain a concern, as reiterated by the Commonwealth Ombudsman’s visit in 2024: of 160 people held in the centre, 29 had been there for 6+ years. Shockingly, 3 people had been detained for over 10 years. Read the 2024 report here. 

A 2023 visit found similar concerns, with the Human Rights Commission raising serious concerns over the safety conditions and the level of care for detainees and staff at the Centre.

Similar concerns were expressed about the centre in Port Hedland (for more information here: Port Hedland detention centre | National Museum of Australia)

Long time refugee rights supporter and activist, Pamela Curr, reported on distressing levels of violence directed at people held at Port Hedland Her beautifully written but disturbing Arena article here draws parallels with US torture techniques.

This cruelty was aimed at pushing detainees to return to their home countries. In a leaked memo, a senior bureaucrat said “the key to ensuring voluntary departure lies in the creation of a credible threat of involuntary removal.”

One man held at Port Hedland was isolated for 63 days for no apparent reason – apart from as a cruel and punitive lesson to others.

There are many, many documented instances of harm and the threat of harm. Protests broke out at the centre in 2003 when Perth secondary school students were banned from visiting. People angry about their ongoing detention and treatment in the facility climbed onto the centre roof. Photographic evidence of violence on the part of WA police and detention officers was smuggled out of the facility. The centre was closed in 2004. This Refugee Action article covers the 2003 riots in more detail

Echoing concerns of cruelty and human rights abuses occurring at other immigration detention centres, the Perth Immigration Detention Centre, which is still operating, has faced similar claims. An inquiry by the Human Rights Commissioner in 2000 found that the treatment of a detainee was inhumane and amounted to human rights abuse. Read the report here.