The looming privatisation and Serco-isation of the NDIS

Rick Morton has written an article in The Australian (sadly behind a pay wall) in response to plans by Serco, the British multinational services corporation, to identify business opportunities and develop a business case to enable Serco to make money out of  Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme. 

Rick is kind enough to quote me in the article.

Rick's article was a response to plans by Serco to employ an NDIS expert to “analyse the ­market and determine what opportuni­ties exist” for Serco.

Serco's plans provide further evidence of the looming privatisation and corporate takeover of the NDIS and the state based systems of disability care and support.

The amount of money (see the graph above) and opportunities available under the NDIS  are immensely attractive to for- profit corporations who see huge opportunities for profit taking.

The $22 billion NDIS has been designed along market lines and market based principles to directly fund eligible individuals who can choose how and when to spend their money on disability supports and services.

Federal and State Governments are keen to open up the disability sector to greater competition from corporate and business providers.

They are using the opportunity presented by the NDIS to privatise care and support for people with disabilities, extend corporate and for-profit delivery of programs and services into disability services and reduce the role of State Governments in providing for the care and wellbeing of people living with disabilities

 

The Federal Government is also moving to marginalise people living with disabilities from the governance and management of the scheme by replacing the Board of the NDIS with corporate and business leaders. The federal government has placed an advertisement in the Australian Financial Review  for new board members who must have "substantial board experience either in a large listed company or a significant government business enterprise".

Serco sights on NDIS billions

THE AUSTRALIAN JULY 24, 2015 12:00 AM

Rick Morton

Social Affairs Reporter

Sydney

Global services conglomerate Serco is eyeing the $22 billion ­national disability insurance scheme as a source of new profits and is hiring a “subject matter ­expert” to advance­ a business case.

The company — best known in Australia for running the governmen­t’s outsourced immig­­ration detention centres, including a facility on Christmas Island — wants its NDIS expert to “analyse the ­market and determine what opportuni­ties exist”.

It is the first sign the company aims to move into the disability sector. People who will use the NDIS said while the move was “not shocking, it is concerning”.

“We’ve known the NDIS would open up the marketplace for new providers — that’s not new — but it is worrying when we have the big players come knocking because you wonder how that will affect the mix,” one advocate said.

The scheme will grant almost all funding to individuals who qualify and they will choose how and when to spend their money on disability supports, such as new wheelchairs or therapy.

Serco is part of two parliamentary inquiries in Western Australia, into services at its largest­ hospital, the Fiona Stanley Hospital, and prisoner transport. It has con­tracts for non-clinical care at the hospital and for court security and prisoner transport in the state.

It was stripped of its respon­s­ib­ilities for sterilising hospital equipment after a breach last year and another this year in which tools were returned for surgeries with tissue and blood on them.

The Barnett government told parliament last month that it would not renew the Serco transport contract in June.

In Britain, the firm became ­notorious for charging the government to track prisoners it could not find and for misreporting statistics on a health contract. It has been slammed by rights groups for its refugee work. Serco Watch convener Colin Penter said it had a record of “incredibly dysfunctional and dystopian practice”.

“They just see this as a commercial transaction, the lived ­experience of people with di­s­abilities is peripheral,” he said.

Morton notes how Serco is currently facing a major cash flow and financial crises

Serco Global, the parent employ­ing 100,000 on 600 outsourcing contracts, has issued several profit warnings in the past two years. Last year’s accounts showed an operating loss of about $2.7bn.

The SME (subject matter expert) will act as a liaison point between key stakeholders and Serco working to identify and scope opport­unities to support the implementation and delivery of services within the NDIS market,” its job advertisement says.

“You will be responsible for devisi­ng business development strategies and plans for Serco Citizen­ Services that will achieve short, med­ium and long-term profitable growth targets.”

A Serco spokesman said the company always sought to “add value” to the delivery of public service­s. “We have been recognised through audits and awards for safe, effective and innovative ­delivery,” he said

Interview on New Zealand current affairs programme on Serco

I was recently interviewed on TVNZ TVNew Zealand's evening current affairs programme Seven Sharp to discuss the Australian record of Serco, the UK multinational services corporation.

The interview was in response to an ongoing series of investigations and crisis confronting Serco over the running of Mount Eden Prison in Auckland New Zealand.

The  Seven Sharp segment is here

In memory of Elisabeth Wynhausen: A truly great Australian journalist

Thanks to my local Inglewood Public Library I am re- reading Elisabeth Wynhausen's wonderful book The Short Goodbye in honor of my friend and colleague who died recently. 

Elisabeth was a magnificent journalist and a fearless warrior for social justice who died recently after a short illness. In a long career she worked as a journalist for The Australian, The Age, The Sydney Morning Herald,  The Bulletin, The Women's Weekly, The National Times and the Sun Herald. 

She also published four books Manly Girls, Dirt Cheap, The Short Goodbye and On Resilience (about the strength of family).

I had long been a fan of her work but only came to know her in the last 5-6 years. She lived and worked in Sydney on the other side of the country so we never met and conversed over the phone and via email.

Elisabeth and I shared information on various professional and political issues, including the role of corporations in the delivery of human and community services and the madness of the outsourcing of human and community services to large faith based providers and private business.  She was one of the few journalists who understood the serious threats these corporate and business providers presented and she was willing to name names.

We shared horror stories and outrage about the appalling greed and incompetence of corporations like Max Employment, Serco and G4S and the faith based not- for- profits like Mission Australia and the Salvation Army who also profited handsomely. 

I assisted her with some research she was doing on stories and provided a perspective on issues here in WA.

In that vein she wrote a magnificent piece Unemployed and Wrapped in Red Tape about the privatized and increasingly corporate run Jobs Australia Services (the former Job Network), an issue she also wrote about in the Short Goodbye. She had tried to publish the story in a number of mainstream publications but had been unsuccessful.

It was a truly magnificent and profound article. Thoroughly researched, beautifully written, heartfelt and railing against the injustice of a flawed system. She documents the human , social and economic costs of a privatised, marketized system. 

She does so by weaving together academic research, policy analysis, personal anecdote, lived experience and the profound stories of those people who the system has failed.

In one paragraph she captures the reality of an outsourced, marketised and privatized service delivery system:

" The agencies are in competition, but one effect of a system subject to commercial pressures but strangled in red tape is that there may be little to choose between them. I proceed from Max Employment to Mission Employment and from Mission Employment to Job Find, where the placards and posters say "Anything is possible" rather than "All I want for Christmas is a job". But going from one agency to another and one suburb to another only serves to strengthen the impression that these offices, with all their furniture and the sometimes out-of-date job lists tacked to their walls, are like props in a Potemic Village version of the performance-based contracting model set out in paperwork" 

The agencies are in competition, but one effect of a system subject to commercial pressures but strangled in red tape is that there may be little to choose between them. I proceed from Max Employment to Mission Employment and from Mission Employment to JobFind, where the placards and posters say “Anything is possible” rather than “All I want for Christmas is a job.” But going from one agency to another and one suburb to another only serves to strengthen the impression that these offices, with all their furniture and the sometimes out-of-date job lists tacked to their walls, are like props in a Potemkin village version of the performance-based contracting model set out in the paperwork. - See more at: http://inside.org.au/unemployed-and-wrapped-in-red-tape/#sthash.j2qT36jN.dpuf

The agencies are in competition, but one effect of a system subject to commercial pressures but strangled in red tape is that there may be little to choose between them. I proceed from Max Employment to Mission Employment and from Mission Employment to JobFind, where the placards and posters say “Anything is possible” rather than “All I want for Christmas is a job.” But going from one agency to another and one suburb to another only serves to strengthen the impression that these offices, with all their furniture and the sometimes out-of-date job lists tacked to their walls, are like props in a Potemkin village version of the performance-based contracting model set out in the paperwork. - See more at: http://inside.org.au/unemployed-and-wrapped-in-red-tape/#sthash.j2qT36jN.dpuf

The agencies are in competition, but one effect of a system subject to commercial pressures but strangled in red tape is that there may be little to choose between them. I proceed from Max Employment to Mission Employment and from Mission Employment to JobFind, where the placards and posters say “Anything is possible” rather than “All I want for Christmas is a job.” But going from one agency to another and one suburb to another only serves to strengthen the impression that these offices, with all their furniture and the sometimes out-of-date job lists tacked to their walls, are like props in a Potemkin village version of the performance-based contracting model set out in the paperwork. - See more at: http://inside.org.au/unemployed-and-wrapped-in-red-tape/#sthash.j2qT36jN.dpuf

Obituaries and tributes for Elisabeth are here, here, and here.

Eulogies from her funeral are here and here 

The enormous breadth and power of her journalistic work can be found on this website

Gerry Georgatos on Serco's ongoing contract failures

I have posted before (here) about Gerry Georgatos's pioneering approach to investigative journalism. As the WA reporter for the National Indigenous Times Gerry combines investigative reporting with PhD studies and human rights and social justice campaigning.

Gerry is the only journalist in WA and one of the few in this country willing to investigate the appalling record of the UK multinational Serco, who runs more and more of the nation and WA's public services.

Serco has highly profitable contracts with the Gillard Government to run Australia's controversial immigration detention centres and also runs many of Australia's defence and military bases, including overseas military bases.

Since the Barnett Government came to power Serco's power and influence in Western Australia has grown, thanks largely to their profound and deep conections within the Liberal Party and the Government bureaucracy.

Serco won a contract to run WA's largest hospital Fiona Stanley Hospital despite having no experience running hospitals in Australia. From November it will run WA's only juvenile prison. It already runs Acacia Prison. Serco took over the highly controversial prisoner transport contract from G4S.

Gerry's latest report which will appear in the National Indigenous Times this week describes Serco's continual and constant contractual failure in the prisoner transport contract.

Whistleblowers to National Indigenous Times correct, SERCO wrong says government arbiter

Gerry Georgatos

The multinational SERCO has been hit with a fine of nearly $600,000 and has been told to get its act together. Department of Corrective Services and SERCO whistleblowers to the National Indigenous Times had said that SERCO had been failing to meet its prisoner transport contract duties - and had failed to turn up to pick up prisoners for court appearances, had failed to provide staff for prisoners attending public hospitals and had taken prisoners to the wrong prisons.

SERCO is one of the world's wealthiest organizations and holds not only prison management and prisoner transport contracts, however lucrative immigration detention contracts, and is entrenched in the service delivery of public transport, human resource management and public welfare components and the public health systems.

The Contract for the Provision of Court Security and Custodial Services annual report noted that a performance improvement notice was issued and the reason for this was "persistent poor performance."

In May, a customer satisfication survey was conducted by a government arbiter and found a satisfaction rate of only 52.6 per cent. The annual survey referenced 32,000 prisoner transfers and movements 6,600 court sitting days.

Social researcher  and SERCOWATCH spokesperson, Colin Penter said that the fine and the one in two failures exposed by the survey and by whistleblowers evidences "a consistent failure of SERCO failing to meet targets" and that the underperformance impacts on the prisoners.

SERCO took over the prison transport and court services contracts from G4S, the company in whose care Aboriginal Elder Mr Ward died from horrific burns and dehydration in the back of a prison van on a 43 degree day during a 360km desert drive.

"SERCO has improved nothing, they are just as bad as G4S which killed Mr Ward," said UWA law student and former Deaths in Custody Watch Committee chairperson, Marianne Mackay.

"They are unfit to hold any tenders and contracts to do with the criminal justice system. Our people suffer in their hands."

"Nyoongar man Grantley Winmar died in SERCO run Acacia Prison after being neglected for days - he died of haemorrhaging."

The Australian Institute of Criminology in its 2008/2009 report noted that prison deaths in private company managed prisons died at three times the rate than those dying in government run prisons - 4.5 deaths per 1,000 prisoners in private prisons compared to 1.3 deaths per 1,000 prisoners in government run prisons.

Mr Penter said SERCO cannot be trusted with the profit motive appearing to be foremost. "In the UK SERCO was found to have lied 252 times, and the failures of the SERCO run prison in Christchurch are there for all to see - it comes down to gross neglect."

"To put everything in context SERCO's neglect leads to deaths." In the UK SERCO was slammed for the death of a 14 year old boy in their custody  

"What is disturbing for me is that the whistleblowers who were in a way the 'family', the support, of the prisoners are now gone from inside. They were right all along despite SERCO and the Department of Corrective Services saying otherwise."

In recent months there has been an outcry against the Department of Corrective Services push to use video-link and Skype technology for court appearances and in that prisoners were refused transport to funerals.

The annual report revealed that this is already in place and has reduced the attendance of prisoners to and from courts by nearly 30 per cent in the past year due the increased use of video-link technology.

"A son and daughter, despite being an inmate, should be allowed the dignity of attendance at a parent's funeral, it is both a customary right and the humane thing. Using money as an excuse to stop our people attending funerals well the line must be drawn and this not allowed," said Ms Mackay.

"Our people should also have court attendance in person, so they know what's going on and can speak for themselves and not be removed from their full set of rights and comprehension by being stuck in a prison room and in front of a camera where they can input very little - this should be illegal."

A DCS spokesperson said, "It is too early to assume any service delivery trends or issues from a single survey. DCS Commissioner Ian Johnson was reported saying that the DCS is constantly developing "practices that reduced the need for unnecessary prisoner transport" and that in fact he said "70 per cent of all appearances were now by video link."

Gerry Georgatos on Serco's prisoner transport contract

Gerry Georgatos is a West Australian journalist who combines investigative reporting with a powerful commitment  to campaigning on social justice and human rights issues.

Gerry is  a Western Australian based reporter for the National Indigenous Times for whom he writes important stories about Indigenous and social justice issues that few other journalists are willing to cover.

Gerry is also the Principal and Convener of the Human Rights Alliance through which he has initiated  and led groundbreaking social justice campaigns in WA. Gerry is also a Phd researcher  on Aboriginal Deaths in custody.

It is this combination of investigative journalism, social and political research and social justice campaigning that has resulted in Gerry exposing injustices ignored by the mainstream media and politicians, including the illegal imprisonment of Indonesian youths in adult prisons in WA, Police violence inflicted on a young Aboriginal man in Albany and the appalling state of Aboriginal homelessness in the Kimberley region.

As well as the National Indigenous Gerry's articles also appear in many other places including Indy Media, Indy Media Brisbane, Green Left Weekly and the Donnybrook-Bridgetown Mail.

Gerry's article below is about the decision by the UK multinational corporation Serco and the WA Department of Corrective Services to deny Aboriginal prisoners access to prisoner transport to attend family funerals. 

The article will appear in the National Indigenous Times this week. 

Gerry Georgatos on Aboriginal Funeral outrage

The National Indigenous Times has been contacted by two sources during the last couple of weeks, one within the Department of Corrective Services (DCS) Western Australia and another within SERCO, that Aboriginal inmates will no longer be transported to funerals. Instead they may be left with the option of paying their respects to loved ones by either viewing a recorded or where possible live screening of the funeral and the procession while alone in a prison wing room. This has been slammed as inhumane, and culturally inappopriate by most Aboriginal Elders.

Both sources said that this initiative was flagged allegedly due to SERCO's reluctance to transport prisoners to funerals. The multinational which has the contract to much of the State's prisoner transport, and manages Acacia Prison, on the outskirts of Perth, and the lucrative Immigration Detention Centre network Australia-wide, is allegedly reluctant to provide compulsory funeral attendances for Aboriginal inmates - it has been alleged that SERCO management claimed high prison officer risk issues at funerals and also allegedly cost benefit issues. SERCO is one of the world's wealthiest companies.

UWA law student and Nyoongar rights activist Marianne Mackay the former chairperson of the Deaths in Custody WA contacted the National Indigenous Times a few days ago to confirm that she had also been advised that an Aboriginal prisoner was refused transport to a funeral last Friday. "This is a first, it doesn't happen that one of our people is not allowed to attend a funeral. Apparently SERCO refused to transport him and this has stunned us considering how everybody knows how important it is for our people to attend funerals. It attacks our cultural integrity."

SERCO communications spokesman Tim Evans said, “The issue was discussed at length at WA Estimates hearing in July when the decision was made by the Department of Corrections.” There was no other comment.

The WA Estimates did not discuss some of the allegations raised by the whistleblowers. Questions will be tabled next week in State Parliament in response to the claims by whistleblowers in this article.

At the WA Estimates the WA Commissioner of Corrective Services Ian Johnson said the State Government had asked him to make a two per cent saving in their budget. “We had spent around $1.1 million to transport people to funerals. We certainly recognise there is an importance in doing that. There is significance, obviously, for all people to attend funerals, but particularly for Indigenous people in terms of their family relationships. However, how long is a piece of string? It becomes a situation where you cannot control the expenditure in continuing to provide the opportunity for people to attend funerals,” said Commissioner Johnson.

He said that Skpye had been successfully trialled for prisoners who could not be transported to funerals. Aboriginal rights advocates described this as an outrage for their people.

Another Nyoongar rights activist, Iva Jackson-Hayward has responded with a call for the State Government to ensure that the DCS and SERCO ensure Aboriginal inmates do not have their cultural rights eroded. "The DCS and SERCO are dutibound to protect the rights of our people. Aboriginal women and men in prison cannot break their customary duty to attend funerals. It's outrageous what is happening, and it's a human rights abuse. This is all about money, and SERCO trying to make more of it by abusing the rights of our people. It is the Government's duty to pull SERCO into line."

Ms Mackay said the Inspector of Custodial Services, Neil Morgan was contacted on Friday.

The WA Prison Officers Union (WAPOU) said the State Government should scrap SERCO's prisoner transport contract. WAPOU Secretary John Welch made this call following another whistleblower's leaking of serious allegations.

The whistleblower said SERCO transported prisoners to wrong prisons, was late in bringing prisoners to their Court appearances, transported seriously ill prisoners in prison vans instead of ambulances. It was only a couple of months ago a prisoner who had open-heart surgery was returned to the prison in a van instead of an ambulance and arrived with serious injuries which the DCS tried to play down however CCTV footage proved otherwise.

All three whistleblowers said SERCO was not turning up to transport Aboriginal prisoners to family funerals, and that SERCO made no effort to account for its failure.

Mr Welch said SERCO's failure to ensure contracted prisoner transports gave rise to stress and tensions in prisons.

"These latest allegations are so serious that the Barnett Government should cancel SERCO's contract and bring these services back for the Department of Corrective Services to run so that we can be confident the community is being kept safe."

Australia has one of the world's worst prison suicide rates, with privately run prisons, according to the Australian Institute of Criminology, enduring proportionately more deaths in custody than Government run prisons.

Other serious allegations were made by the whisteblowers to the National Indigenous Times and we will follow these through.

Clare Sambrook exposes the consequences of privatising services for vulnerable West Australians

Clare Sambrook is an award winning British journalist who has written this remarkable piece on the death of Mr Ward in the back of a G4S van in the Eastern Goldfields region of WA.  

Her article reveals the lethal consequences of contracting out to profit making companies, be they G4S or Serco,  public responsibility for vulnerable people, be it the care of prisoners, or for that matter vulnerable youth, children or adults. It does not matter whether it is G4S or Serco. There is no place for them in the care of people.

Ultimately there is little difference between Serco and G4S. The Barnett Government has awarded Serco the new contract to transport prisoners around WA (instead of G4S) and G4S staff will simply transfer across to Serco, the new contractor. This is despite widespread opposition and protest in WA against G4S's previous contract and Serco's new contract to run prisoner transport.

Clare Sambrook writes:

"Indeed the case of Mr Ward provides a shocking glimpse behind the corporate spin, exposing shakiness in the logic that has propelled the global boom in privatisation of core public services".

Clare Sambrook links Mr Ward's death to the profit seeking mantra of companies like G4S and Serco who see the death of a person in their care as simply a risk of doing business. Her report of a business briefing by G4S and its senior Executives in London is chilling.

"Thousands of miles away from scorchingly hot Kalgoorie, here in the UK G4S executives briefed financial analysts the other day. There was a slide show — “Core values: Customer Focus, Expertise . . . Integrity (We can always be trusted to do the right thing)”. Director David Taylor-Smith ran through the company’s UK business, £1.2 billion of it, £700 million with government — the UK Border Agency, the Ministry of Justice, the National Offender Management Service. (Only yesterday morning G4S corporate development director Peter Neden sat in committee room 6 at the Palace of Westminster, arguing the case for “reform” of the probation services.)

“We’re now bigger than the Scottish Prison Service and Northern Ireland Prison Service combined,” said Taylor-Smith. “So we’re starting to get proper scale now in the UK as a kind of a credible alternative to national bodies running prisons.”

There’d been major wins in providing “facilities management” for NHS hospitals: "we do 13 acute hospitals now. So that’s great.” 

About Welfare to Work (“when that’s clocked in next year that will be £130 million”), Taylor-Smith joked: “I’m just reminding those taxpayers, if there are British taxpayers in this room, £159 billion spent in this area of government.” G4S will be paid by results, managing subcontractors getting long term unemployed people back into work (or at any rate off the state’s books).

“We see this as providing significant additional growth opportunities,” said Taylor-Smith, confiding: “Two nights ago I was with [government ministers] Iain Duncan Smith, Oliver Letwin, Crispin Blunt and they’re talking now also applying this into the prisons programmes, into drug programmes and also benefit fraud.  (It pays to get friendly with G4S. Former Labour Home Secretary John Reid was trousering G4S fees of £50,000 a year even before he’d left Parliament. Now Lord Reid is a G4S director.)

The analysts asked about Australia. The year after Mr Ward’s death G4S lost its contract to run Australia’s refugee detention network and last month it lost the Western Australia court security and custodial contract as well (both pieces of business picked up by Serco).

Nick Buckles, who is paid £27,000-a-week, said of the Australian market: “We haven't had a good run recently on care and justice because of a major incident that happened about three years ago.”

But, looking on the bright side, he said: “there is only two or three major players, typically sometimes only two people bidding for care and justice. And with . . . our global expertise, in time we will become a winner in that market because there's a lot of outsourcing opportunities and not many competitors operating down there.”

Serco: profiting from failure, lack of accountability and a disregard for human life

Here are the results of privatization and Serco running public services. A complete lack of accountability for public funds, extreme profit gouging from the public purse, an obsession with secrecy, unauthorized use of force, poorly trained and under prepared staff and a disregard for human life that leads to self  harm, suicide and death of those in Serco's care.

Each day there are more exposures of Serco's shocking record in running Australia's immigration detention centres.

Detainees in Villawood  were forced to use a cigarette lighter to try to burn through a rope used by a detainee to take his own life. Serco staff were ill prepared and untrained to respond to attempted suicide. according to ABC Online which reports:

Detainees say they tried to burn through the rope 41-year-old Ahmed Al Akabi had used to take his own life.

They say they have borne witness to a string of suicides at the centre in the past year, including that of Iraqi-born teacher Mr Akabi.

The detainees, mostly of Kurdish origin, relayed numerous concerns over their indefinite detention, with several afflicted by illnesses related to stress and depression.
Tensions at the centre came to a head last month when riot police were called in during a night of rioting that saw several buildings destroyed by fire.

One of the men who found Mr Akabi says guards employed by Villawood's privately owned operator, Serco, were ill-equipped and not adequately trained to respond appropriately to the suicide attempt.

The man says the guards did not have a sharp instrument available to cut Mr Akabi down and did not know how to respond.

The detainee, who did not want to be identified, says he and others tried to hold Mr Akabi aloft in a bid to save him from suffocation until help arrived.

He says they were forced to use the cigarette lighter to try to save the father of three, but were too late; he was pronounced dead a short time later.

Serco declined to comment on specific allegations, but in a statement to the ABC said it runs a comprehensive staff training program that goes beyond its contractual obligations.

"Serco is committed to doing everything we can to prevent those in our care from coming to harm," the statement said.

"Our staff take this commitment extremely seriously and work hard to keep those in our care safe and secure."

The amount of public funds paid to Serco was secretly doubled by the Federal Government and is expected to reach $1 billion within months. This is despite the Federal Government claiming that Serco was only paid $370 million. This windfall has massively boosted Serco's Australian revenue by 30%:

Serco originally signed a five-year contract worth $370 million to run the facilities, including the Maribyrnong Detention Centre, until mid-2014.

But immigration industry experts said this figure was now likely to burst through the billion-dollar barrier.

Figures obtained from government tender records show the total size of Serco's contracts in relation to asylum-seekers was quietly doubled in November to more than $756 million.

But immigration industry sources are saying the latest contract amount for Serco is already six months out of date, and it stands to make hundreds of millions more from the taxpayers with continued boat arrivals.

One source said the asylum-seeker boom since November had already added up to $200 million to the total value of Serco's detention contracts. That would value them at up to $950 million as of this month.

Industry experts said Serco's bonanza was set to easily crack the $1 billion barrier if the Government's new "Malaysia Solution" does not work and refugee boats keep coming.
An Immigration Department spokesman refused to speculate on the Serco bonanza. A Serco spokeswoman said these were "questions for the Government".

 Serco is so fearful of exposure of its activities that it considers the unauthorized presence of media near a detention centre to be a critical safety threat- the highest possible threat level. This report found that:

The company running the country's immigration detention centres has upgraded how seriously it takes the unauthorised presence of media, putting it on par with a bomb threat or an escape.

The Serco document says "unauthorised" media presence at a detention centre is now considered "critical" - the highest possible threat level.

Accounts of events from within Christmas Island detention centres show that Serco's use of force, its under-staffing and ill preparedness and poor management were major contributors to recent riots and protests on Christmas Island. A full account of the claims can be read here.

Gerry Georgatos: Despatch from Curtin Detention Centre in Derby

This piece was written by Gerry Georgatos, human rights and social justice activist from outside the Curtin Detention Centre near Derby in the north west of WA.

 

Gerry is among 60 activists who are at this moment converging on the Curtin Detention Centre to express solidarity with the 1500 asylum seekers detained there. Gerry provides an update on events over the last two days.

(I have not had the chance to proof this article, it has been written on a laptop powered by a generator with a limited power supply, from nearby the Curtin Detention Centre as we are in grip of divisiveness between peoples.... please read and circulate widely. Please.)

60 human rights advocates and social justice activists made up of doctors, lawyers, mental health workers, nurses, teachers, social workers, tradespeople, academics, students and others, from various social justice organisations and campaign groups, and others not affiliated to anyone, have arrived this day, Easter Saturday, April 23rd, to Curtin Detention Centre.

 

We journeyed under the banner of the Refugees Rights Action Network from Perth in a hired bus and with a support vehicle with a trailer of food and camping equipment. The bus was driven by three of the advocates who recently acquired the licence, at their own cost, so as to ensure this journey. We left on Thursday, 7pm from East Perth, with fifty on board the bus and after 24 hours of driving camped at Eightly Mile Beach, arriving near midnight on Easter Friday.

 

We arrived at Curtin Detention Centre at 3pm on the Saturday. During the last month forty of us had submitted to the Serco managed Curtin Detention Centre therebouts 100 visitor applications. We have been in contact with hundreds of our Asylum Seekers for many months. They are despairing, many are at the brink of mental and physical despair. Their maltreatment in these illegal facilities which incarcerate them have reached a critical mass of rising self harm, depression, acute and chronic trauma, suicide and multiple suicide attempts, and suicide. There have been six Detention Centre deaths (in custody) during the last eight months and undisclosed numerous suicide attempts. Reports to us clearly describe self harm and suicide attempts as a daily occurrence.

 

Curtin Detention Centre today is on the brink of a pending crisis brought on as per usual by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship and Serco management. They are literally driving people into mental illness and literally killing people. Australian of the Year, in 2010, psychiatrist Patrick McGorrie described these Detention Centres as "mental illness factories". Australia has 23 Detention Centres and is now building another three Detention Centres. The budget for Detention and processing blows out every year, and is now up to 1.5 billion dollars per annum. How better could we spend this?

 

Our bus travelled down the beginning of the seven kilometre road leading to the Curtin Detention Centre where we were met by a gated blockade. Behind this gate stood Serco guards, federal police and an Australian Defence Force official. We were instructed that visits may not be possible, then we were told that some visits would be scheduled. We were then told that eight visits would be allowed and that we had to wait. We were lectured by the ADF and the AFP that we would be arrested if we proceeded unauthorised through the gates.

 

As the afternoon wore on it became evident visits would not be enabled and that we were being lied to. We soon learned from an Asylum Seeker who we made contact with by phone that the detainees had been told by Serco management that we were 'not coming'. They did not believe this and despaired. Some fifty of the advocates civilly approached the fence and we spoke with the Serco frontline employees. Conflicting explanations and depictions were deployed on behalf of Serco management. I phone the Centre manager on his mobile from outside the gate however on this occasion someone else answered. I asked that Michael Puglisi, the Serco employed Centre manager come to the fence to discuss the situation rather than exploit his personnel whose job it was not to defend Serco management decisions. Prosocially I argued this case with the Serco staff at the gates who most appeared to be in a drone like state bar one individual who expressed his ethos of care for the detainees and who appeared to well with tears.

 

Eventually Michael Puglisi, Curtin Detention Centre manager drove to the fence to meet us however remained on the other side of the barricade, and did not unlock the gate. Throughout the discussions with many of us he often contradicted himself and clearly demonstrated an agenda to inhibit the visits. At times Serco officers had explained to us that they had not received our visitor application forms however Michael could not speak in this light as I had scanned and emailed forms to him and had spoken to him over the phone and had his acknowledgment of the forms in writing. However he disgraced himself by declaring that it was not possible for any visits to occur on the Saturday. This outrage incurred the frustration and disappointment of the civil advocates. Unperturbed Michael used a number of excuses, that appeared concocted, to describe why this could not happen, this including that new constructions were underway and one on one meeting rooms were not available and that evening visits were not possible because of the onset of poor lighting issues. However these were disproved as we learned visits by others who they did not know knew us and were part of us, however they had joined us from the eastern states, arriving earlier, were occurring and continued into the evening.

 

I explained to Michael that they were only exacerbating tensions in the Detention Centre and that these lies would backfire however at the price of human life. Ultimately he insisted that some visits would be scheduled for Sunday and Monday however he would make us aware of them on the Sunday morning and not before.

 

I asked Michael if he had been instructed by the Department of Immigration and Citizenship to inhibit our right to visit our Asylum Seekers and therefore their right to be met by us. His body language indicated this was the case however he remained silent on the question insisting that he would organise some visits. He then changed his language to as many visits as possible. I asked him if it was true that Serco management, of which he is the Manager, told the detainees that we were 'not coming'. He seemed startled by this revelation however he firmly denied any knowledge of this. However we have it evidently that this is the case.

 

The detainees urged Serco officers and management for the visits to be upheld. They even organised today (Saturday) for a petition for them to proceed signed by 700 Asylum Seekers trapped, incarcerated in the Curtin Detention Centre. There are now 300 Asylum Seekers protesting at Serco's and DIAC's actions with a Hunger Strike. Serco's and DIAC's deliberate mismanagement has created an unwarranted and unnecessary situation and has directly led to a Hunger Strike and the potential for protests.

 

Some of 50 of us have camped nearby, and will arrive at Curtin Detention first thing in the morning, 7am for the visits. The visits must occur so we can continue to shine the light on the plight of those wrongly, immorally and cruelly incarcerated in these concentration like camps. The world must know what we witnessed and endured today and what our Asylum Seekers are enduring in these facilities, which are wrapped in cultures of secrecy and silence. You had to be here to see it to believe it. We do not know what Easter Sunday holds however we hope that a significant number of visits eventuate. We will not go away, and we will come again and again.

 

We have arrived at Curtin Detention, a place that wrongfully incarcerates 1500 souls, armed only with 1500 Easter eggs, bi-lingual dictionaries, books and gifts. We have been treated by Serco, DIAC, the AFP and ADF with a disregard for humanity. Their conduct is a threat to a civil and just society.

 

Australians are a caring people and we need to unveil our racial layers, end our racism, refuse to be hostile to those seeking Asylum and allow the caring that is in Australians to not be hindered by ignorances, prejudices, biases and other evil. We are better than this.

 

Our journey of 2,500 kilometres pales to a mere raindrop when compared to the Homeric Odyssies of our Asylum Seekers.

Serco and a privatized system in crises

So another privatized detention centre burns. Only weeks after the Christmas Island detention centres erupted in protests, riots and fires, the unrest has spread to Sydney's Villawood Detention Centre.

Former staff of Serco, the UK multinational corporation that runs the privatized detention centres, are already pointing the finger directly at the corporation, claiming that it contributed to the crises. Serco whistle blowers claim that at Villawood (like Christmas Island), Serco's incompetence and mismanagement were a primary cause of the riots.

The whitleblower claims that:

• Serco management threw raw and untrained recruits into the detention centre without proper training
• Training courses for new staff were dropped
• Serco staff lack basic training and are forced to learn "on the job" 
• Serco management constantly understaff the centre
• Serco has no effective emergency management procedures for such events.

These are precisely the claims made against Serco at Christmas Island; claims that are now the subject of multiple investigations into Serco's management of the Christmas Island Centres, and it looks likely that the investigations will be extended to include Serco's management of Villawood.

The ABC reports that:

The detention centre was set on fire, while asylum seekers overwhelmed staff from the detention centre service provider, Serco.

The former guard says there would have been 11 staff members rostered on the night the asylum seekers rioted. 

He says his former employer, Serco, does not train staff properly and would not have known what to do when trouble starts. 

"From what I've seen, new recruits are basically put on the floor with no training whatsoever," he said. 

"They were told that they would be trained as they worked and that also has never happened before. Basically what is supposed to happen is, they go through at least a six-week minimum course and then have a year of on-the-job training. 

"Serco basically got rid of the six-week course using staffing levels as an excuse and basically threw the staff onto the floor and expected experienced staff to train them as well as do their normal jobs."

He says Serco has never emphasised emergency response training for incidents like fire and riots experienced on Wednesday night. 

"I am led to believe they still don't have any real effective emergency operational procedures. So basically (Wednesday night) would have been every man for themselves," he said.

In a statement, Serco acknowledged an increased number of arrivals and longer periods of detention have placed significant pressures on their operations. 

The company said its staff training program meets it contractual requirements and that it has provided additional training beyond what is contracted and has invested $1.5 million in staff training.

This is the second Australian immigration detention to be set on fire this year. Riots at the Christmas Island detention centre in March led to tear gas and bean bag rounds being fired at asylum seekers.

The former Villawood guard says the Federal Government should review Serco's contract. 

"They've had pretty poor performance. Basically the spate of incidents, major incidents, under Serco's control have been ... there's just been too many. So I really think that the contract should be reassessed," he said.

When mandatory detention kills people protest is a necessary moral act

On Monday night I attended a public seminar on Australia's refugee policies and the unfolding crises in immigration detention. Not surprisingly much of the discussion focused on recent riots, protests and property destruction at the Christmas Island Detention centres.

A number of speakers and audience members expressed the view that whilst they understood the reasons behind the protests, such action was harmful to the cause of the asylum seekers themselves and to those working on behalf of asylum seekers and refugees.

Although the argument is understandable (and common), it is in my view limited and fundamentally flawed.

In fact, it could be argued that opposition and resistance to mandatory detention by detainees (and civil society) is a necessary moral action to prevent the death of asylum seekers, to protect the human life and well being of detainees, and to make visible and highlight the reality of state-corporate crime.

The Australian lawyer and academic Michael Grewcock argues that resistance and protest by detainees is a legitimate response to state inflicted harm and to a criminal system based on violence and abuse and denial of humanity. Grewcock argues that Australia's treatment of asylum seekers should be regarded as a state crime. Protest is a claim to legitimacy and visibility by those whose humanity has been systematically denied or challenged:

" resistance makes detainees visible; it can highlight the contemporary reality of state organized abuse".

The death on Monday of another asylum seeker at the Curtin Detention Centre (the 6th death in immigration detention in 7 months)  is further evidence that Australia's system of mandatory detention is increasingly killing people.

As Ian Rintoul from the Refugee Action Coalition and Pamela Curr from the Aslum Seeker Resource Centre point out mandatory detention for many asylum seekers has become a death sentence. As Pamela Curr points out if these were deaths of people other than asylum seekers there would be a public and political outcry.

In addition to causing deaths, the evidence is clear that mandatory detention is a form of state sanctioned violence and abuse. It traumatizes people, abuses children and destroys the mental health and the physical and psychological health of thousands of detainees. Incidents of self harm and suicide continue to grow exponentially. Ian Rintoul writes that in just one detention centre:

"Self-harm in Curtin is at epidemic proportions. There is an incident almost every day"

Mike Grewcock argues that Australia's refugee policies, including mandatory detention and border policing, are "crimes" committed by the state ( in conjunction with corporations such as Serco). Grewcock argues that in criminalizing and demonizing asylum seekers, the Australian state has systematically employed criminal strategies to achieve its ends.

For Grewcock various features of mandatory detention that make it a form of state crime include:

• alienation (lack of lawful status, restricted access to legal redress, physical separation from civil society, ideological construction as illegal and dangerous outsiders)
• systematic and intentional breaches of human rights and legal obligations
• the infliction of systemic abuse, death or harm on children, men and women (psychological impact of detention, mental illness and depression, self harming and destructive behavior, suicide).
• forceful denial by the Australian state of the legitimate expectations of asylum seekers and unauthorized arrivals to free movement and protection and due process before the law
• use of illegal  and criminal regimes (incarceration, regimes of force.

Grewcock's work demonstrates that a system that uses criminal strategies to inflict death, harm, pain and suffering  upon children, men and women, all to serve political ends, is frankly illegitimate and acting criminally. Opposition, resistance and protest are not just legitimate but necessary. As Grewcock argues those who fail to oppose or resist these policies are accessories to a crime.

So rather than criticize and vilify those detainees who protest and demonstrate inside (and outside) detention centres we should support and applaud their courage and willingness to take a stand against  what is fundamentally a criminal regime.

When a fine for breach of contract is not a fine but an "abatement"

Tom Cowie on Crikey has published a longer piece today on the saga of Serco's $4.5 million fine for breaches of its multi- million dollar immigration detention centre contract with the Federal Government.

However, the real truth about Serco's contract breaches remains to be told. It appears that the $4.5 million in fines applies only to contract breaches that occurred at one of the Christmas Island facilities and does not reflect additional breaches that have occurred for contract breaches at other detention facilities on Christmas Island and the mainland.

As Pamela Curr from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre points out the real victims of these fines are the detainees, who are being supervised by staff fearful of their company being sanctioned. Furthermore, we the wider public are denied access to any information about these publicly funded services and the expenditure of huge amounts of public money to a UK based multinational corporation with a history of constant contract breaches and a record in the UK of the use of illegal regimes of force.

Curr points out that:

"The government, in order to ensure they’re protected in the media from any escapes, impose punitive fines on the private contractor, who in turn impose punitive conditions on detainees".

Here is an extract from the Crikey piece

"A DIAC spokesperson told Crikey they couldn't confirm the fine, the amount or what it was for, because those details are "commercial in confidence". All Crikey could ascertain was that there is a provision in the contract for DIAC to sanction its partner: "The contract between the department and the detention services provider has provisions that allow Serco to be financially sanctioned for failure to meet agreed service delivery standards."

The minister's office was also less than forthcoming. Details of the fine and the figure fall under the contractual agreement, a spokesperson for Minister Chris Bowen said, and to provide any more information would breach "commercial-in-confidence".

Serco also would not provide any details on the fines. A spokesperson even took umbrage with that description -- "they're abatements, not fines" -- and said any sanctions issued were part of an ongoing review of Serco's performance.

"The contract between DIAC and Serco has provisions that allow Serco to be financially sanctioned for failure to meet agreed service delivery standards," the spokesperson told Crikey. "We cannot go into detail on the total amount of any fines imposed as this information is considered commercial-in-confidence.

The spokesperson said that the confidential contract between Serco and DIAC was "growing" and that it was "particularly complex": "This long-standing practice to not disclose such details has been in place over successive detention service providers, and covers governments over many years."