Immigration minister turned backbencher Peter Dutton said on Tuesday that he would have loved to get all refugees and asylum seekers off Nauru and Manus Island on a charter flight overnight.
"In the immigration portfolio you’re defined by Nauru and Manus," he told Sky News. "Now I didn’t put any people on Nauru and Manus. I got people off.
"I’d love to get everybody off there tomorrow. If I could have brought them to Australia on a charter flight overnight I would have. But I would have seen people drown at sea which would have been tragic, obviously."
As the responsible minister, Dutton certainly had the capacity to get everyone off Nauru and Manus Island. But he chose not to under the long-running government justification of stopping the boats, and therefore deaths at sea.
And in recent months, the department has fought tooth and nail against a number of very sick kids and adults coming to Australia for urgent medical treatment — even when doctors have warned they face an imminent risk of death.
He likes a drink, a laugh, a bit of footy, going to court to prevent critically ill children from getting urgent medical care
Over the past six months in particular, there has been an influx of legal battles to get extremely sick children off Nauru.
Lawyers involved in the cases from the National Justice Project and Maurice Blackburn told BuzzFeed News that the immigration department often pushes back against medical advice to move people until the matter is taken to the Australian Federal Court, where sometimes it is resolved just before a hearing, and at other times, goes all the way to a court order.
Advocates say more than a dozen children have been brought to Australia in this way. The published court orders reveal some of the medical conditions suffered by these kids.
In December 2017 the government was ordered to remove a suicidal young girl from Nauru. A suicidal 10-year-old boy followed in March 2018. On July 3 it was a seriously ill 2-year-old, and on July 11 a suicidal 17-year-old. On July 26, an adolescent girl diagnosed with major depressive disorder and with resignation syndrome.
Resignation syndrome is a rare psychological condition caused by trauma in which children withdraw from the world. They cease to talk, eat, move, use the toilet, and at the most severe stage of the condition, can fall into a seemingly unconscious state and require nose tube feeding. There are a number of other children on Nauru showing symptoms of the syndrome, BuzzFeed News reported last week.
On Tuesday, the same day Dutton said he would have loved to get everyone off the island, a critically ill 12-year-old boy who had not eaten in 19 days was airlifted to Australia, the Guardian reported.
BuzzFeed News understands there are more sick children of great concern who remain on Nauru.
Last week, independent MP Andrew Wilkie said Dutton's argument of keeping people on Nauru and Manus to avoid deaths at sea is just not good enough.
"There’s a range of things Australia can do to 'stop the boats'," Wilkie said. "It’s a spectrum, and somewhere along that spectrum things become deeply wrong.
"Somewhere on that spectrum there’s a line — the difference between proper and improper conduct. Doing that right thing and doing the wrong thing. I don’t know where that line is, but continuing to operate Nauru and Manus is on the wrong side of the line."
Greens senator Nick McKim said the way Australia uses people on Nauru and Manus as a deterrent is "barbaric and needlessly cruel".
"I’ve used the analogy before that people in offshore detention are like the corpses we used to impale on the wall of medieval cities to try and dissuade other people for trying to enter," he said.
Dutton also told Sky News he had no regrets about what he had done in the immigration portfolio, and mentioned getting kids out of detention as an achievement.
"I’m proud of my success and I don’t regret anything I did in securing our borders, making sure we got kids out of detention, closing those detention centres, the work with ASIO and with the federal police," he said. "All of that is crucial to the security of our country and I think I’ve established my bona fides in that regard."
He also said he would take the opportunity as a backbencher to talk about his "lighter side" – including a self-deprecating sense of humour and enjoying a drink.
The latest available figures show 14 kids are still detained in the Regional Processing Centre on Nauru. There are about 100 more who live in the Nauruan community.
The #KidsOffNauru campaign, launched by World Vision on Monday, set a three-month deadline for the government to bring all 119 children who remain on Nauru to Australia or resettle them in a third country.
The campaign points out that Nauru is the size of Melbourne airport; that the kids kept there have been held in detention, witnessed suicide attempts, hunger strikes and declining mental health going on around them for years; and that regardless of whether they are held in the detention centre or not, none of the kids can leave the tiny island.
Ian Rintoul from the Refugee Action Coalition told BuzzFeed News he hopes the change in portfolio will result in a softening of the harsh policy. But he also knows the wild week of leadership turmoil could make things worse.
"You can only hope that the government – what’s left of it – will take the opportunity to respond to the World Vision campaign, the calls of the Australian Medical Association, of numerous medical and professional associations to end the offshore detention on Nauru and Manus Island," he said.
"Or even if simply to respond to the coroner’s recommendation that Australian Border Force stop being an obstacle and decisions are made on medical recommendations. That would make an enormous difference to the people on Manus and Nauru who are prevented from getting medical attention.
"The idea that Peter Dutton could become prime minister...people know that may mean an even worse situation.