It’s important, but let’s just put all that aside.

The fact is, once refugees and their children are placed in detention, their safety is our responsibility; not just the government, but all of us.

That’s how democracies work. We all have a say because we care. So do we? Care, I mean.

Abuse isn’t just perpetrator gratification, it’s more about power.

That’s what children in detention don’t have, but governments ooze.

Our government has the power to pretty much do with these children as it sees fit. It has proven that, not unlike infamous institutions of our past.

I remember images of little children, orphans, refugees, arriving on boats from an earlier war. We placed them in institutions where they were assaulted and abused. Smiles were wiped from their innocent faces and their hope was destroyed.

Those institutions had power, particularly the power of silence.

For decades few knew what went on behind those walls of silence. It wasn’t until the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse began tearing down those walls that we learned the horrors. They, too, were powerless children in our care. As a nation we failed to protect them.

And now our government wants more power to deal with children in detention. Most of all it too wants – demands – silence.

It wants the power to silence the media from reporting; the power to silence whistle-blowers from revealing. And those it can’t silence, like Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs, it will attack and try to discredit. 

So who will be the losers from all of this? Will it be the media or whistle-blowers? Gillian Triggs? Or is it the children in detention?