On Air Highlights
Backstory: Former Villawood chief blasts mandatory detention
31 August 2011
Listen and download: MP3
This week’s Backstory is about the immigration official who’s speaking out after more than a decade on the frontline of Australia’s controversial immigration detention network.
Peter Mitchell started working with the Department of Immigration in 1990, rising to become the manager of Sydney’s Villawood Detention Centre.
Over that time, he witnessed the birth of mandatory detention under the Keating Labor government in 1992, as well as the off-shore processing policy – dubbed the ” Pacific Solution” and adopted by the Howard government in 2001.
He also saw a shift in public attitudes from the support offered to refugees from Kosovo and East Timor to a hardening of attitudes as boat loads of asylum seekers arrived after fleeing unrest in the Middle East.
He says the desperation he saw among asylum seekers, including children, as they faced prolonged periods in detention convinced him the policy must be abandoned.
Presenter: Joanna McCarthy
Speaker: Peter Mitchell is the former manager of Villawood Detention Centre in Sydney and the author of “Compassionate Bastard: How an Ordinary Bloke Came to Manage Villawood Detention Centre and Still Live With Himself.
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