Editor, Canberra Times: I agree with Prof Pat McGorry that immigration detention centres are “factories for producing mental illness”. But I’d go further. I’d say federal laws designed to punish refugees (for who they are) are similar to the penal laws that England used to punish the Irish for who they were.
Edmund Burke’s description of England’s penal laws (in occupied Ireland) also applies to Australia’s punitive detention laws: “They are well-fitted for the oppression, impoverishment and degradation of a people as ever proceeded from the perverted ingenuity of man.”
Valuing a detention policy (that can’t feel pain) higher than children who can is insane. There has to be a better way to win an election than serial child abuse.
Graham Macafee, CLA member, Latham ACT