This interactive map documents hotels known to be used for immigration detention across Australia, creating the first coast-to-coast visualisation of a practice that has operated largely in the shadows for two decades.
罢丑颈蝉听聽documents hotels known to be used for immigration detention across Australia, creating the first coast-to-coast visualisation of a practice that has operated largely in the shadows for two decades.
Australia first introduced Alternative Places of Detention (APODs) 20 years ago. Since then, hotels 鈥 including both major chains and independent operators 鈥 have been used as places of detention, including for people who have sought asylum. Yet, there is聽聽of APODs in current or previous use.聽
APODs were originally conceived as a more sensitive alternative for vulnerable people with needs that immigration detention centres couldn鈥檛 accommodate. The policy allows for hospitals, aged care homes and hotels to be used as APODs for people who need medical treatment, are elderly, or have other particular needs. However, the Commonwealth Ombudsman and Australian Human Rights Commission聽聽that hotels have been used as APODs for reasons unrelated to the needs of detainees, including聽.
The interactive map, developed by researchers from Macquarie University and 国民彩票鈥檚 Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, identifies 34 hotels that have been used as APODs and聽. To the best of our knowledge, the hotels identified on the map are former APODs, rather than sites that are currently in use.
The map shows all known former hotel APODs used across Australia, between December 2002 and December 2022. These are presented alongside the current four Immigration Detention Centres (IDCs) and three Immigration Transit Accommodation (ITAs).
By clicking on each pin on the map, a location of the hotel APOD is shown, along with any known data (eg date of use/closure, number of people detained) and a street-view image of the hotel from Google maps.聽Links are also provided identifying the original source document from where the data was drawn.
The locations shown on the map provide an indication of the range of hotel APOD sites used across Australia over the last 20 years, while recognising that many more sites remain unknown.聽
The Department of Home Affairs has typically refused FOI requests to establish the full scope of the APOD network, or have provided heavily redacted materials. In April 2022, the Department聽聽that it does not possess a list of places approved for use as APODs.聽
The data presented in the map is drawn from recent Senate Estimates questions, as well as evidence tendered by the government in聽聽challenging the legality of the use of hotels as APODs. It also draws on reports published by the Commonwealth Ombudsman (in its oversight role for places of detention under control of the Commonwealth) and the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), the two independent inspectorates with access to APODs.聽Each entry on the map includes a link to the source material used to identify the location as a hotel APOD.
An APOD is a place of immigration detention approved in writing by the Minister for Immigration or his/her delegate.聽
APODs were introduced on 2 December 2002 as an alternative option to closed detention facilities. The concept was introduced in a Migration Series Instruction issued by the Department of Immigration (MSI 371). As noted in the MSI, the term APOD is not used or defined in the聽Migration Act聽1958 (Cth). Rather the government purports to approve APODs as places of immigration by relying on the definition of 鈥榠mmigration detention鈥 in s 5(1)(b)(v) of the Act, which includes places approved by the Minister in writing. It should be noted that the validity of relying on the definition section of the Act in this manner to create a power to authorise detention in APODs is the subject of a聽.
The stated purpose of the policy when it was introduced was to facilitate the accommodation of 鈥榰nlawful non-citizen' women and children and other persons with special needs in alternative places of detention. The focus was thus very much on the specific needs of detainees that could not be met in traditional closed detention facilities.
However,聽 as the Commonwealth Ombudsman and Australian Human Rights Commissioner have聽:听
鈥渁 practice has also emerged for hotels to be used as APODs to house people where this does not stem from a specific need of the person being held, but for other reasons, such as relieving overcrowding in other immigration detention facilities.鈥澛
This shift in the purpose and scale of hotel-based detention was exemplified by the use of hotels to detain the so-called聽, many of which were single men, brought to Australia from the offshore processing facilities in Nauru and Manus Island for health treatment between 2019 and 2022.聽
Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, there were聽聽raised about the suitability of hotels to provide sufficient care for detainees, many with complex health care needs.聽聽were held by detainees as well as by refugee rights organisations and local community advocates, drawing attention to sites such as the Park Hotel and Mantra Bell Preston Hotel in Melbourne, as well as the former Kangaroo Point Central Hotel in Brisbane. The聽聽of Novak Djokovic at the Park Hotel in Melbourne alongside the Medevac transferees in January 2022 again shone the spotlight on the practice.聽
While it is welcome that many refugees and asylum seekers have been since been聽from hotel detention into the community on bridging visas, other聽, including those who have had their visas cancelled or refused on character grounds.