By Kirsty Needham on Christmas Island
THE detention centre operator, Serco, has sent a legal team to Christmas Island before the arrival on Monday of politicians investigating the immigration detention network.
The High Court will decide today if the government can proceed with its Malaysian refugee swap. However, even if the first transfer of asylum seekers from Christmas Island to Malaysia is approved by the court, the timing is a headache for the government.
Malaysia has shut down for a national public holiday and the end of Ramadan today and tomorrow, ruling out any immediate transfer. But the government is unlikely to achieve its public relations goal of sending a clear message to people smugglers if it conducts the transfer while opponents, including the opposition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, and the Greens Senator, Sarah Hanson-Young, are on Christmas Island on Monday and Tuesday.
Most of the politicians who sit on the joint committee inquiring into the immigration detention network will tour the North West Point detention centre - where the first 16 men who had been slated for transfer to Malaysia are being held, including the Afghan man at the centre of the High Court case - on Monday.
On Tuesday, the politicians will conduct public hearings at the recreation centre opposite the Phosphate Hill camp, where the family groups the government wants to send to Malaysia are being held.
A Serco legal team arrived from Sydney yesterday to ensure its records are in order. The company came under fire at the first committee hearing over its refusal to reveal staffing ratios.
The politicians are also scheduled to visit Phosphate Hill - where the most distressed family groups set to be sent to Malaysia are being held.
The mental health toll of prolonged mandatory detention has become one of the focuses of the inquiry, after data revealed 50 detainees were admitted for psychiatric hospital treatment between April and June this year, double the number admitted in the previous quarter.
The latest case is an Iranian civil engineer, Sina, who was escorted back to Christmas Island yesterday after treatment for psychiatric illness at a Perth hospital.
''I was at the hospital for 12 hours,'' he said. The Christian man has succumbed to severe depression after six months locked up in detention with no certainty about his fate.