Working in the refugee sector in Australia is consistently challenging. In the 17 years since the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre (ASRC) opened its doors, of which I have worked for the past eight, we have witnessed the Pacific Solution Mark 1 open and shut, Temporary Protection Visas introduced and repealed and then reintroduced, offshore processing on Manus and Nauru reopened and children in and out of detention.
Our checkered past has now led us to a place in our history unlike anything we have seen before: a manmade hell for people seeking asylum on Nauru.
Nauru was created by a policy of offshore processing. There is no doubt that the suffering that is happening on Nauru is entirely a situation of our making. Which also means it's a situation we can change.
Recently, then Home Affairs Minister, Peter Dutton, bragged that he had successfully removed all children from detention. In his convenient amnesia he has forgotten about the 107 children still stranded on Nauru.
Through the hard work of legal intervention by lawyers and advocates, 27 overseas medical requests were processed for the transfer of critically ill children to Australia for medical attention. Children who, in some cases, have attempted to take their own life. Children whose condition has deteriorated to a point where they no longer have the capacity to eat, speak, drink or move; children diagnosed with the rare Traumatic Withdrawal Syndrome.
Medical professionals tell us that without treatment, Traumatic Withdrawal Syndrome is life threatening, as children's physical health deteriorates quickly and they can suffer from organ failure or their hearts can simply stop. Let that sink in. I am talking about children who could die. Deaths that could be preventable.
These children's parents are desperately trying to get food and water into deteriorating bodies. They are pleading for help. They have nowhere to turn as the very place they live is the cause of the problem. Being on Nauru is destroying these children and their families.
"There is no other way to describe the situation than a medical emergency. We have betrayed these children and robbed them of precious years of their lives."
Sitting thousands of kilometres away, it's hard to imagine the situation that is unfolding. Hard to reconcile the reality for children on Nauru with our comfortable lives, especially when politicians repeatedly tell us that there aren't kids on Nauru or that medical professionals are exaggerating the problem or asserting it's just behavioural issues