‘Church plea on Pontville’: Mercury

Church plea on Pontville by Helen Kempton, The Mercury, February 11, 2012

TASMANIA’S church leaders are lobbying Canberra to keep the Pontville detention centre, despite Immigration Minister Chris Bowen being firm in his commitment to close it as promised.

The Anglican Bishop of Tasmania spoke directly to Mr Bowen on Thursday to add his voice to the chorus of locals asking that the centre’s original six-month tenure be extended.

Mr Bowen has been inundated with correspondence from Tasmania this week, but said the state’s first asylum seeker detention centre would close by the end of the month, as first announced.

Bishop John Harrower said Mr Bowen’s response to him on the phone was in line with his recent public statements but the level of community support justified a change of policy.

Bishop Harrower said Mr Bowen had been wise to set a time limit when he first announced the plan to establish a detention centre just outside Hobart.

He said the time limit gave the Federal Government an out if the centre became an unwanted burden on the community.

But he said this had proved not to be the case.

“The minister should now be assured of the level of local community support. It is more than enough to justify amending his original commitment,” Bishop Harrower said yesterday.

“Those who hold him to the time limit must ask themselves whether they are motivated by principle or politics.”

The church said more than 45 local Anglicans were among the 300 or so people who have already signed petitions calling for the Pontville detention experiment to continue.

Bishop Harrower said he would prefer mandatory detention to play a minimal, or no role, in Australia’s asylum seeker processing policy.

“However, if we are to have detention centres, we should have centres like the one at Pontville where detainees have been able to interact with the local community,” he said.