Having introduced concentration camps (detention centres) for refugees in 1992 (under working class politician turned — gasp! — businessman Gerry Hand), and having witnessed them flourish under HoWARd, the ALP under KRudd has finally decided to alter the way in which the Federal Government will decide who comes to this country, and the circumstances under which they are imprisoned and tortured may apply for refugee status. Working families are united in joy, but GSL — one of the primary beneficiaries of the hundreds of millions of dollars HoWARd splurged on the prison industry — must be making like baby Jesus on hearing Collingwood lost to Essendon last round.
Labor unveils new risk-based detention policy
Tuesday 29 July 2008
The Minister for Immigration and Citizenship, Senator Chris Evans, today announced a suite of reforms to Australia’s immigration detention system. Senator Evans said that under Labor’s reforms, detention in immigration detention centres will only be used as a last resort and for the shortest practicable time. The Government will retain mandatory detention to support the integrity of Australia’s immigration program. Senator Evans said the Government’s new policy will see the Department of Immigration and Citizenship take a risk-based approach to detention. ‘A person who poses no danger to the community will be able to remain in the community while their visa status is resolved,’ Senator Evans said. ‘The department will have to justify why a person should be detained. Once in detention, a detainee’s case will be reviewed every three months to ensure that the further detention of the individual is justified. ‘Children will not be detained in an immigration detention centre.’
Profile: GSL (Australia)
Line of Business Corrective Centres in Australia
Annual Turnover (AU) $173,606,000
Head Office Level 4, 441 St Kilda Road
MELBOURNE 3004 VIC
AUSTRALIA
Website http://www.gslpl.com.auProfile
INTRODUCTION
GSL (Australia) Pty Limited is a privately owned facilities management company. The company derives its revenue from the management of immigration detention facilities throughout Australia, prisons in Victoria and South Australia, forensic psychiatric facilities in Victoria and Tasmania, prisoner transport and court security in Victoria and South Australia, and public non-emergency ambulance services in Victoria. GSL (Australia) employs more than 1,300 staff throughout its operations.
HISTORY / BACKGROUND
1994 – GSL (Australia) Pty Ltd was established as Group 4 Correction Services, a wholly owned subsidiary of UK – based Group 4 Securitas.
1995 – Began to manage and operate Mount Gambier prison, South Australia’s only privately managed prison.
1997 – Port Phillip Prison commenced operations.
– GSL began providing prisoner transport services to Corrections Victoria, the Victoria Police and the Department of Human Services.
2000 – The business was renamed Group 4 Falck Global Solutions, when the parent company merged with the Falck Group.
2002 – Acquired Medical Transport Services Australia Pty Ltd, one of Victoria’s largest and most experienced private non-emergency ambulance services.
2003 – Secured the contract to manage all detention centres in Australia under a contract with the Commonwealth Government, represented by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.
2004 – Following a further merger with Securicor, Global Solutions Limited was created when the businesses in the UK, South Africa and Australia were demerged from the parent company. GSL (Australia) Pty Ltd was subsequently established as a wholly owned subsidiary of Global Solutions Limited.
2006 – Began providing security services to the Wilfred Lopes Centre for Forensic Mental Health.
PRODUCTS
The principal business activities of GSL (Australia) consist of the provision of custodial, patient transportation and detention services.
The company manages the following prisons:
Port Phillip Prison – Melbourne, Victoria
Mount Gambier Prison – Mount Gambier, South Australia
GSL and its business partner, US-based BI Inc, provide the equipment and technical support and training to the Electronic Monitoring Program South Australia (EMPSA).
GSL provides prisoner transport services to Corrections Victoria, the Victoria Police and the Department of Human Services and is responsible for the management of all prisoners appearing before the courts of South Australia.
GSL manages all detention centres in Australia. These include:
Baxter Immigration Detention Facility – Port Augusta, SA
Villawood Immigration Detention Centre – Sydney, NSW
Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre – Melbourne, Vic
Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation Centre – Brisbane, Qld
Perth Immigration Detention Centre – Perth, WA
Northern Immigration Detention Facility – Darwin, NT
Christmas Island Immigration Reception & Processing Centre – Indian Ocean
The company provides security services to secure psychiatric facilities:
Thomas Embling Hospital – Melbourne, Victoria
Wilfred Lopes Centre – Hobart, Tasmania
See also : Lynda Crowley-Cyr, ‘Contractualism, Exclusion and ‘Madness’ in Australia’s ‘Outsourced Wastelands’, Macquarie Law Journal, 2005 | An Indigenous GSL Death in Custody (Project SafeCom)
I can’t believe Chris Evans has put all those little kiddies out on the street.
SHAME SHAME SHAME
A quote from the Refugee Action Coalition’s Jamal Daoud:
“On the same day of this good announcment, we learned that Chinese asylum seeker, Hongfei Wen, 35 years old, tried to commit suicide around 12 pm, Monday 28 July by stabbing himself by knife. My understanding that he was approached in the kitchen by around 10 security guards with a notice of deportation. He managed to grab a knife and threatened to kill himself if they would try to deport him by force. The security guards did not care and tried to catch him to remove him from the detention centre. He immediately stabbed himself in the stomach. His blood was spilt everywhere. Then he fell unconscious, when he was taken away by security guards. His friend do not know anything about him at the moment. They are very worried about his survival.
Jamal Daoud”
Disgusting.
One can only hope that working families aren’t forced to pay the costs for the damage to GSL equipment that the selfish Chinaman inflicted. Of course, if bleeding heart liberals like Chris Evans can display such contempt for vulnerable children, he’s likely to place the interests of bleeding stomach asylum seekers ahead of those of the long-suffering Australian public and foreign corporations.
PS. What kind of a name is Jamal Daoud?
Extract from Beyond The Razor Wire, supposedly from Sandy Thorne’s diary, Woomera, June 24 2001:
Another boat arrived at Ashmore Reef. The fighting and unrest in Main compound escalated as the Centre became crowded with more and more boat people, many of whom had no concept of queuing and taking their turn, being patient, or sharing and caring for their fellow Man. This fact, coupled with the fact that many of Main Compound’s resis had been rejected, presented an extremely volatile situation.
Many of the rejected detainees would crowd at Golf Three gate, demanding the DIMIA… manager, or the Detention Centre manager, or their lawyer, come to the gate immediately to hear their grievances, shaking their fists, smacking their fists into their palms and yelling furiously, as if they had a right. Their attitude would burr us right up, but we had to remain calm and polite. It would have done the do-gooders good, to have a bunch of angry Arabs in their faces, as we did every day. I’d think of men of my father’s and grandfather’s era – the men who’d fought in the Middle East – what would they think to see these ratbags trying to get into our peaceful country?
“Cert One Medical! Main Compound, detainee self-harm”, became an almost daily broadcast as one of them would scratch at his arm to gain attention. The ensuing melodrama from the slasher and his mates would be like an Italian opera. Then the lip-sewing began. It was a pitiful, sickening sight. That night I sat on my verandah listening to Slim Dusty and comparing the world I’d been used to, with what was going on in the Centre. No way a mother from Thargomindah or Blackall could sew her kid’s lips together… Less than five kilometres away from my flat, alien things were happening. For the thousandth time, I thanked God for giving us razor wire fences.
We all knew Main was going to boil over soon and later that night, it was on. I’d been sleeping in my uniform, expecting to be pulled out of bed any time, so when the pounding began on everyone’s doors, I was instantly awake and on my feet, pulling my boots on, ready for anything. “Main’s going off! C’Mon! Main’s going off!”
Speeding out of town, along the four ks to the Centre, the adrenalin was already pumping and increasing, as we came within sight and sound of our friends, the asylum-seekers, smashing, burning, shouting “F… A.C.M.!” “F… Australia!” over and over. The razor-wire fences were protecting the outside world from these violent people, but we had to go in and take control. There would be people in there, frightened, who wanted no part of the anarchy. I spared a thought for my friends in there. Were Laila, Mina and Masomeh, young Hamid and a few others I really liked, cowering in their dongas, or… the thought suddenly hit me with a shock… would I see them pelting rocks… at me? Mina and Masomeh – no. Hamid and Laila? Maybe… Yes, it was feasible, but highly unlikely, I liked to think.
As we rounded the corner of Admin and came into view of Main compound, the shouting and abuse hurled through the fence at us from the charming residents, was deafening. It sounded like all six hundred were after our scalps. Main was a sea of angry, yelling, spitting, swarthy whiskered faces, beneath a forest of shaking fists – a very scary sight for an unarmed person. Clutched in their fists were the weapons they had accumulated and fashioned: steel posts to ram into our knees, shards of glass, sharp pieces of tin, and knives fashioned from stolen cutlery and razors to stab us with. Their lovely veiled ladies and delightful children were ready to pelt us with the rocks and pavers they’d stacked up in heaps. Buildings were burning in the background and we could hear glass being smashed everywhere.
The kit-up room was in semi-organised crowded chaos, with officers grabbing helmets, shields, batons, elbow and kneeguards, adjusting straps and hanging flexicuffs on belts with grunts and sighs of exasperation. We all walked outside to join the others, now waiting in a formidable formation outside Operations. We could hear buildings being wrecked, Australia being condemmed, and our lives being threatened, as we lined up ready to go in. By then I felt like a leashed Doberman…
Pingback: Tom Switzer : Man of the People | slackbastard