Transcript
NICK McKIM: I've been prevented entering the camp unfortunately by the Papua New Guinea immigration department, but I've met with a lot of the refugees and people seeking asylum and met the local MP Ronny Knight and met the police inspector David Yapu. So it's been a relatively productive trip given that I'm not allowed into the camp.
BEN ROBINSON DRAWBRIDGE: Was that really the objective of your mission was to have a look inside?
NM: Look, it was. I applied for my Papua New Guinea visa before the Good Friday attack on the Lombrum centre and it was always my intention to try and get in and have a look at the camp and see for myself the conditions in the camp and hear the stories of the refugees and people seeking asylum and understand the suffering they're going through.
BRD: From the detainees that you've spoken to, what was the impression that you got of the suffering they endure?
NM: There's been a consistent theme in what the detainees have told me that they are having their hope gradually extinguished and many of them have said to me that they don't even want to be hopeful anymore because every time they become hopeful about something they get disappointed. So that's been a consistent theme, but I've been inspired by the dignity and the bravery and strength of a lot of these people and I'm even more determined to be a stronger voice for them when I get back to Australia.
BRD: Do you think that the Australian immigration department or in fact its minister may have resisted your attempt to enter?
NM: Well it wouldn't surprise me at all if Peter Dutton's fingerprints were on this one. It's supposed to be an open camp, the Australian government describe it as an open camp. But it seems as if as soon as a senator, who by the way is one of the people who votes to appropriate the funding that the Australian government uses to run this camp, arrives on the ground, the camp suddenly becomes closed to me. So I'm pretty disappointed at being prevented from entering the camp but I'm less disappointed for me and more disappointed for a lot of the guys in the camp who don't want to come out and I won't be able to see them on this trip. But I do have a multiple entry visa over the next 12 months to Papua New Guinea. The reason given to me by the Papua New Guinea immigration department is due to the sensitivity surrounding the ongoing investigation into the Good Friday attack. I will come back, if that is genuinely the reason, and once those investigations are complete I'm hopeful that I'll be able to access the camp next time I come back.
BRD: But it was only last week that your own senate called for the immigration department's secrecy around the centre to cease.
NM: That's true and in fact I was on the legal and constitutional affairs committee that conducted that inquiry and wrote that report, so I'm well aware of many of the challenges in the camp. I'm also well aware of, now that I've spoken to a number of detainees, the lead up to the Good Friday attack. I've spoken to Inspector Yapu, who's the senior local police officer on the ground here, and he's standing by the comments he's made publicly that in fact that attack escalated out of a dispute over a football field. And that Peter Dutton's reason that he's given publicly, which I believe is a lie, which is that it flared out of a young boy being led up into the centre. Inspector Yapu has confirmed to me that that event did not lead to any complaint to the PNG police and he's not currently investigating and he regards it as a completely separate matter.
BRD: I think the minister has since tried to qualify his comment by suggesting the incident with the small boy led to an escalation of tensions but perhaps not the Good Friday incident itself.
NM: What Peter Dutton was doing was dog whistle politicking and once again trying to demonize detainees, demonize refugees and demonize people seeking asylum in the eyes of the Australian people. It was a despicable thing for him to do and remember the Liberal Party in Australia has plenty of exposed form lying about refugees and people seeking asylum. Exhibit A: the children overboard affair from a number of years ago. It wouldn't surprise me that Peter Dutton is trying to crab-walk away from his statement. He stands condemned for doing everything he can to engage in dog whistle politics and demonizing the men, who Australia has incarcerated for so many years on Manus Island, in the eyes of the Australian community.
