The first step of substance abuse recovery is admitting you have a problem.
This would be one step Sandi Logan, the National Communications Manager of the Dept of Immigration could very well embrace. On Twitter last week Mr Logan insisted, "Misinformation about kids in detention centres is unhelpful, disingenuous. As you know, kids are NOT detained in centres." Instead he stated that children are held in APODs, that is alternatives to detention.
On this point "Misinformation ... is unhelpful and disingenuous", I couldn't agree with you more Mr Logan. So let's put some facts straight.
Some APODs are places with fences and electronic sensor mats and alarms that go off if the kids go between houses. Normal? Non-detention like? Hmm. Some schools are surrounded by fences yes. But then again at the end of normal school the little kiddies are free to go to their comfortable houses and their own beds. Not so with kids in detention.
And what about the CCTV, recently installed on Christmas Island to monitor the children there? Perhaps we could install those in our homes, so would know at all times know whether our children were on the internet spending up big on our credit cards, or raiding the pantry for much-loved chips. Hmm, I'm not convinced. CCTV sounds a tad prison-like to me.
What about when the kids go out and they're followed by guards? Maybe they're called "protectors" in Sandi Logan Land. Surely they're just playing the role of parent, ensuring the kids don't decide to walk the 830 kilometres to Perth from their barren desert "non-detention" facility. In which case they're doing the children a great service.
Of course Australian children get to go on holidays from time to time. So too do kids in non-detention. Why only last week, 27 Vietnamese kids who had been settled in Port Augusta were whisked away to their third non-detention paradise in 8 months: tropical Darwin. Away from supporters, their local church to a longed-for holiday in a far away clime.
Not only is this non-detention facility a change, which is apparently as good as a holiday, but it's also an educational experience. Here the children get to learn about self-harm, mental health issues and depression.
Forgive me Sandi, but I almost forgot the most creative of non-detention facility innovations: calling the children by their numbers instead of their names.
Just this week I looked at my last born child, the only boy among 4 girls, and for the life of me I couldn't remember his name. Then it struck me, oh yes! Let's do that non-detention trick; henceforth he shall be known as "Number 5". Oh how delighted I was! Thank you guards/protectors of Leonora non-detention facility for the inspiration.
In some non-detention facilities parents can't even cook a meal of their kids. Nor have any privacy from the eyes of guards or cameras. Room checks can take place at any time of day or night. While my kids might welcome a ban on me cooking in our kitchen, my humour runs out at the invasion of privacy and prison environs of non-detention. There's just nothing funny to say about that.
I'm forced to go back to the old cliche: if something quacks like a Mallard and walks like a Mallard, then surely it is a duck of some kind.
Immigration detention by any other name would smell as foul.
Repeat after me Sandi. "Children are held in immigration detention." Now, don't you feel better for admitting the truth?
