By Cam Lucadou-Wells
Greater Dandenong Council will lobby for the immediate release of refugees from Australian hotel detention.
It will advocate to Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews and Immigration Minister Alex Hawke on behalf of more than 60 hotel detainees in facilities such as the Park Hotel in Carlton.
The council will also support the resettling of the detainees to “live freely and peacefully” in Greater Dandenong.
Hobart, Yarra and Moreland city councils have passed similar motions.
In a notice of motion on 14 February, Cr Rhonda Garad said the refugees’ release was the “humane thing to do”.
Tennis champion Novak Djokovic’s recent detention at the Park Hotel drew international attention to the ordeal of 30 refugee ‘inmates’, Cr Garad said.
Similar numbers were in Sydney, Brisbane and Perth facilities.
Some of the detainees had been locked up for up to nine years.
According to one of the detainees Zahid Hussain, it was “depressing” to have “voices raised” for Djokovic who was at the hotel for two days, Cr Garad said.
“We’re also human. We also have a family. We also have a life and a lot of dreams,” Mr Hussain reportedly said.
The motion notes that about 60 people transferred from Papua New Guinea and Nauru remain detained in closed immigration facilities such as Park Hotel.
Most had been granted refugee status.
There was no “apparent difference” between their cases and the 1230 released into the community in the past year, according to the Refugee Council of Australia.
“The continued detention of this group cannot be justified.
“The ongoing detention of this group is harmful and is contributing to a deterioration of detainees’ mental health.”
At the Park Hotel, the impact was more severe. There were no open areas for people to walk.
In Parliament on 17 February, Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews said the Government was dealing with 10,000 people in detention as a “legacy of Labor”.
“What we have committed to as a government is to work to make sure that as many of those people are resettled as we can possibly manage in the shortest possible amount of time.”
Some would be resettled in the United States, as well as New Zealand “as soon as there is an arrangement that is in place”.
She said some detainees couldn’t be released into community detention because of “character grounds” or “quite considerable health issues”.
