Nala Mansell, campaign coordinator for the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, has called on the Tasmania’s Liberal government to immediately close the Ashley Youth Detention in Deloraine, Tasmania. A commission of inquiry several years back had recommended the same.
“This decision condemns vulnerable children to even more years of state-sanctioned violence and abuse,” Mansell said on May 6, after the government announced it would delay its closure until 2028.
“Instead of closing the child torture chambers, Minister [Roger] Jaensch is now fast-tracking plans to relocate and rebrand the very same broken system that has already devastated so many lives.”
Mansell said locking children in cages, instead of caring for them, is “not a solution”. “You don’t fix abuse by renaming it. Every extra day that Ashley stays open is another day this government is complicit in trauma.”
The Ashley Youth Detention Centre was a focus of the state’s Commission of Inquiry into Government Responses to Child Sexual Abuse in Institutional Settings in September 2022.
The Keeping Children Safe and Rebuilding Trust report, signed by senior government MPs among others, conceded: “We accept that there is more we can do to change our cultures, systems and processes” and outlined 191 recommendations to better protect Tasmania’s children from sexual abuse in institutional contexts.
The inquiry, announced in November 2020 by then-premier Peter Gutwein, came after a year of horrific allegations of child sexual abuse committed in out-of-home care, schools, Ashley Youth Detention and the Launceston General Hospital.
The final report criticised the government’s lack of response to child sexual abuse allegations since 2000, saying it had “too often been inadequate” and more needed to be done to improve children’s safety in institutions. It concluded that the Tasmanian government did not have the right systems in place to effectively address the risks and respond to incidents of child sexual abuse in institutions, and the culture did encourage feedback or reporting.
Mansell said Ashley Youth Detention was known to be a violent and abusive institution. “Aboriginal children, already the most overrepresented in prisons and the most vulnerable to harm, continue to bear the brunt of this failure.
“These children are not criminals: they are victims of a society that criminalises poverty, dispossession and trauma. What they need is connection to culture, to land, to healing. They need support and safety, not punishment,” Mansell said.
Research shows that Aboriginal children benefit greatly from cultural connection and community care, she said. Locking children in cages, without access to community care and therapies, simply recycles trauma. “The government cannot be allowed to keep torturing children in new buildings with the same brutal system.”
The Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre is demanding the “immediate and permanent closure of Ashley Youth Detention Centre” and investment in culturally safe, community-led alternatives.