After 10 years of the Australian government's policy of imprisoning asylum-seekers without visas, human rights groups are optimistic that growing community concern at the human and economic costs of this hardline approach is slowly forcing changes to it.

"It's time after 10 years to say 'let's look at better ways of doing this' — and there are better ways of doing it," said the spokeswoman for Amnesty International, Georgina Costello.

"Detaining children for up to five years, frequent rioting and self-harm by detainees, are not acceptable by-products of refugee processing," she said.

The practice of holding those asylum seekers who arrived on Australia's shores without valid visas and passports were introduced in 1991 under a Labor government. The catalyst was the arrival by boat of several hundred Cambodian refugees, after several years of not receiving asylum seekers by boat.

"Initially people were housed in tents in camps in Darwin and then later moved to Melbourne and Sydney. In October 1991 the government started getting the sense we might lose these people," said the executive director of the Refugee Council of Australia, Margaret Piper.

International criticism

Rather than provide community-based accommodation without restrictions, the government opted to establish the first detention centre at Port Headland in remote north of Western Australia.

But this policy has received even more international criticism as violations of human rights in the past year, when the Australian government refused to let asylum seekers land on its shores, shipped them off its shores and looked for countries in the South Pacific to take them — while continuing to keep others in detention.

Given the controversy that Canberra's policy has stoked, Costello is optimistic that Australia — the only government to imprison asylum seekers without the right to appeal to the courts — is gradually being forced to moderate its hardline policies against asylum seekers. "It is probably going to take a while though," she said.

Three weeks ago, the government announced that the use of the Woomera detention centre in the South Australian desert, where asylum seekers staged a hunger strike early this year, would be phased out.

"That hunger strike forced the closure of the centre, though the government will never admit it," said the executive officer of the Catholic Commission for Justice, Development and Peace, Marc Purcell.

The hunger strike and other protests also forced the government to conduct a six-month trial at a cost of US$550,000, under which 25 women and children would be housed in the community outside the detention centre but under 24-hour guard.

Trial release

"The government, to its credit, has implemented the trial release of women and children from the Woomera centre," Costello said.

But while some aspects of government policy have softened following sustained protests and media coverage, in other areas it has hardened.

For instance, Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs Phillip Ruddock has insisted that those found to be refugees were not detained.

"Australia does not have a policy of detaining refugees — we do have a policy of detaining unauthorised arrivals. Where people are found to be refugees they are immediately released from detention," Ruddock told the Foreign Correspondents Association in London in December.

However, when the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and Australian government officials announced in early April that 280 people forcibly relocated by the Australian military to Papua New Guinea and Nauru had been found to be refugees, they were not released.

Instead, Ruddock only promised that Australia will take a "share" of those now awaiting resettlement from the Australian-funded detention centres on Nauru and the remote Manus Island in Papua New Guinea, which took in the asylum seekers last year.

"If people are found to be refugees under our law, they cannot be held in detention," a spokesman for Ruddock said.

But those transported by the Australian Navy and offloaded under the 'Pacific solution' — as Canberra's shunting of the asylum seekers to South Pacific islands is called — are not so lucky. "They're not in Australia, so they are not subject to Australian mandatory detention laws," Ruddock's spokesman said.

Violation of rights

Five years ago this week, the Australian government was criticised by the United Nations Human Rights Committee as being in violation of international human rights standards over a complaint by an individual who had been detained.

In July 2000, the committee expressed concern about the policy of mandatory detention itself.

Despite the criticism, the Australian government takes comfort from the adoption of a tough line on asylum seekers by other countries, like Britain.

"Amnesty is a very worthwhile organisation. They in this case appear to be taking the view that Australia should have no say over who comes through it borders and on that point we will disagree," a spokesman for Ruddock said.

"A number of other countries are moving closer to what we do. Britain last week announced that they are converting another prison into a detention centre."

Still, Purcell said, "I'm not as pessimistic as some people are."

"There is no doubt the (government) are still on a vote winner, but they run the risk of looking increasing inhumane on a whole range of issues. Over time as parliamentary committees and other bodies focus on the reasons behind the level of self harm and the riots, I think it is going to have an impact," he said.

Said Costello: "The growing refugee support movement is incredible. When people hear what is going on in the centres. they are very distressed about it. I think that movement will grow."