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Immigration detention’s drug problem · The Front

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  Speaker 1: From the Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm christinamiot.
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  Speaker 1: It's Monday, December twenty three.
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  Speaker 2: In.
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  Speaker 1: Battled Victorian Liberal Party leader John Pisuto has backflipped on
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  Speaker 1: his decision to block ousted MP More Redeeming from rejoining
• 0:20
  Speaker 1: the party room. He's called a new vote for January
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  Speaker 1: fifteenth in a desperate attempt to save his leadership as
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  Speaker 1: some of his closest allies urge him to step down.
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  Speaker 1: A Melbourne lawyer lied to her clients and forged their signatures,
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: and she misused funds from a trust. Now Elisa Berry
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  Speaker 1: has been struck off and called a stain on the
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  Speaker 1: legal profession in a withering takedown by a Victorian Supreme
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  Speaker 1: Court judge. That exclusive story is live right now at
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  Speaker 1: the Australian dot com dot AU. Illicit drugs are roone
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  Speaker 1: rampant in Australia's immigration detention centers, and law enforcement agencies
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  Speaker 1: admit they're struggling to keep on top of the problem
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  Speaker 1: as hundreds of detainees await deportation. That's today's story. In September,
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  Speaker 1: a woman arrived at Sydney's Villawood Detention Center with her
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  Speaker 1: two children to visit her husband. Located in Sydney's Western Suburbs,
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  Speaker 1: Villawood is the biggest immigration detention center in the country.
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  Speaker 1: It holds almost four hundred people, many of whom have
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  Speaker 1: been waiting for months or even years to be deported.
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  Speaker 1: It's not a prison, but some residents do have criminal convictions,
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  Speaker 1: so it's subject to tight security. The woman was searched
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  Speaker 1: by New South Wales police officers stationed at the detention center.
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  Speaker 1: They found two hundred and fifty grams of methemphetamine, as
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  Speaker 1: well as three cigarette lighters in her belongings. Her kids,
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  Speaker 1: who are aged ten and four, weren't found to be
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  Speaker 1: carrying any contraband substances. Their mother was charged with supplying
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  Speaker 1: illegal drugs and within days her husband was also arrested
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  Speaker 1: inside Villawood, where police seized two mobile phones. He later
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  Speaker 1: admitted he'd instructed his wife to bring the meth amphetamine
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  Speaker 1: to the center for him, and according to new reporting
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  Speaker 1: by The Australian, this isn't a one off.
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  Speaker 3: The Australian has confirmed that heroin, meth amphetamine and fentanyla
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  Speaker 3: are flooding into Australia's immigration detention centers.
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  Speaker 1: Damon Johnston is The Australian's Victorian editor.
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  Speaker 3: These are hard drugs, these aren't cigarettes, and there is
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  Speaker 3: a major drug problem within the immigration detention centers around
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  Speaker 3: this country. These cases where highlighting happened in Sydney, in
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  Speaker 3: Wa and in Melbourne.
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  Speaker 4: There will be many more, according to my sources, that
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  Speaker 4: have happened in the last three months as well.
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  Speaker 1: There are six complexes like Villawood Detention Center dotted around
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  Speaker 1: the country, including in Melbourne and Perth. Detainees in those
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  Speaker 1: centers tend to have more freedoms than inmates held in prisons.
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  Speaker 1: That means they're allowed to own mobile phones and receive
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  Speaker 1: regular visitors, and the private security firms and police running
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  Speaker 1: the detention centers say that's part of the problem.
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  Speaker 4: They're not considered jails.
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  Speaker 3: However, these freedoms obviously increase the chances for the criminals
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  Speaker 3: within the detainee system to source drugs and get them
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  Speaker 3: smuggled in. Australian Borderforce have said that drugs are a problem.
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  Speaker 3: They haven't tried to hide from this. They say the
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  Speaker 3: high number of criminals within the detention centers is essentially
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  Speaker 3: encouraging the amount of drugs that are being smuggled into
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  Speaker 3: the centers.
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  Speaker 1: Are detainees using the drugs themselves or distributing them or both?
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  Speaker 3: I think it would be fair to say both, some
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  Speaker 3: of them where publishing shows that the drugs were used
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  Speaker 3: by the people that pick them up.
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  Speaker 4: But anywhere where drugs are a problem, users can.
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  Speaker 3: Become dealers as well or distributors, so I would be
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  Speaker 3: surprised if that was not the case in these detention centers.
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  Speaker 1: Officials from the Australian Border Force say the fact that
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  Speaker 1: many detainees have been refused visas or had their visas
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  Speaker 1: canceled on character grounds has fostered a prison like culture
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  Speaker 1: in detention centers and that's putting the safety of staff
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  Speaker 1: and other detainees at risk.
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  Speaker 3: Australian Border Force says that of the thousand odd people
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  Speaker 3: in detention, roughly seven hundred to seven hundred and fifty
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  Speaker 3: have criminal convictions. So this reflects the decision by various
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  Speaker 3: governments of both persuasions to essentially kick people out of
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  Speaker 3: Australia if they are residents or they're here on other
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  Speaker 3: non permanent visas, if they breach the law and they're
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  Speaker 3: deemed unsuitable, so necessarily they get parked in these detention
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  Speaker 3: centers and then they get ejected. That's how it's meant
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  Speaker 3: to work. But some of them, of course, have been
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  Speaker 3: there for many years and they exercise their legal rights
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  Speaker 3: to frustrate and delay the process of extradition.
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  Speaker 1: Last month, the search and seizure powers of border security
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  Speaker 1: staff working in immigration detention centers were expanded by the
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  Speaker 1: Australian Parliament. Within days of the legislation being passed, kitchen
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  Speaker 1: staff at the Melbourne Immigration Detention Center found a package
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  Speaker 1: containing heroin and methamphetamine in the facility's dining room. But
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  Speaker 1: the new laws are limited in a situation like this.
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  Speaker 1: They allow guards to confiscate weapons and items that could
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  Speaker 1: be used to facilitate an escape, but they don't enable
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  Speaker 1: the facilities managers to implement blanket bands on technology like
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  Speaker 1: mobile phones.
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  Speaker 3: I think a lot of Australians would be interested to
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  Speaker 3: know that detainees in detention centers can have mobile phones
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  Speaker 3: and presumably access to the internet. Many of them have
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  Speaker 3: serious criminal convictions and are being deported because they've been
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  Speaker 3: deemed to be unfit to live in Australia. So I
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  Speaker 3: think ultimately the government will have to tighten the regulations
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  Speaker 3: around mobile phones and probably ban them. The obvious answer
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  Speaker 3: to that would be that, as in standard state run prisons,
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  Speaker 3: prison supplied landlines are offered and the detainees would then
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  Speaker 3: use those to communicate with lawyers and loved ones or visitors.
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  Speaker 3: So I don't think there's any suggestion that they would
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  Speaker 3: be completely cut off from the outside world. But it
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  Speaker 3: is curious that these people are in detention because they're
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  Speaker 3: deemed to be unfit to live in Australia, yet they
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  Speaker 3: are allowed access to mobile phones, and not surprisingly, some
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  Speaker 3: of them then use those phones to set up drug deals.
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  Speaker 1: Coming up why Labour's immigration headache just won't go away.
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  Speaker 1: Immigration is a source subject for Labor. The party has
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  Speaker 1: typically taken a more humanitarian approach to unauthorized maritime arrivals,
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  Speaker 1: in particular, often with disastrous results.
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  Speaker 2: The outstretched hand of a woman grasping for life as
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  Speaker 2: frantic rescuers try to drag survivors from the boiling.
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  Speaker 1: Sea jackets standardy.
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  Speaker 2: This was the refugee boat, just seconds before it was
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  Speaker 2: swamped by huge waves.
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  Speaker 1: By contrast, the Coalition talks tough on refugee flows, a
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  Speaker 1: political tactic that's been incredibly effective at winning elections.
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  Speaker 2: The most compassionate thing you can do is stop the boats, and.
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  Speaker 1: As another federal election approaches, the Labor Party's immigration headache
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  Speaker 1: isn't going away. Earlier this year, it was revealed hundreds
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  Speaker 1: of detainees with prior convictions for serious criminal offenses like
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  Speaker 1: murder and rape were released from immigration detention after the
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  Speaker 1: High Court ruled they were being unconstitutionally held. In those cases,
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  Speaker 1: detainees couldn't or wouldn't return to their home countries, but
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  Speaker 1: the law said they couldn't be kept in detention either.
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  Speaker 1: A small minority of those detainees reoffended after being released
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  Speaker 1: into communities around the country and saw the government scrambling
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  Speaker 1: to contain the fallout and regain public trusts.
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  Speaker 5: Anthony Abnezi has unveiled Labour's new front bench, jumping Claire
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  Speaker 5: O'Neal and Andrew Giles from the Home Affairs, Cybersecurity and
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  Speaker 5: Immigration portfolios and replacing them with Tony Burke.
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  Speaker 1: Tony Burke has declined to comment on the latest revelations
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  Speaker 1: that drugs are rampant in Australia's immigration detention system, but
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  Speaker 1: the opposition, sensing a new opportunity to hammer Labour on
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  Speaker 1: immigration says it's yet more evidence the government can't be
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  Speaker 1: trusted to run the country.
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  Speaker 3: Daintee and the shadow Immigration Minister, has said that Australians
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  Speaker 3: will be furious to learn that while Labor is allowing
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  Speaker 3: detainees out of detention, it's allowing drugs into detention.
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  Speaker 4: And what he's getting at there is.
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  Speaker 3: That after the High Court ruling last year, a couple
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  Speaker 3: of hundred detainees were released and they have gone on
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  Speaker 3: to reoffend. And we know that cost Andrew Giles, the
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  Speaker 3: then minister, his job and the government's mishandling of that
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  Speaker 3: left the government in crisis. So mister Tan is trying
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  Speaker 3: to link the crisis around drugs within the detention centers
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  Speaker 3: to the broader mishandling of immigration by the Albanese government.
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  Speaker 1: Just lastly, Damon, how does this broad immigration debarcle play
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  Speaker 1: for Labor in the run up to next year's federal election.
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  Speaker 3: Oh look, I think it's generally been an area of
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  Speaker 3: weakness for labor. We know what happened after Kevin Rudd
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  Speaker 3: was elected in two thousand and seven. The votes came,
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  Speaker 3: thousands and thousands of people were in detention, hundreds died,
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  Speaker 3: so Labour's track record on immigration is not strong and
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  Speaker 3: this will play into simmering concerns in the community that
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  Speaker 3: they haven't learned their lesson.
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  Speaker 1: Damon Johnston is The Australian's Victorian editor. You can read
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  Speaker 1: this story, as well as all the nation's best news,
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  Speaker 1: sport and politics, right now at the Australian dot com
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  Speaker 1: dot au