Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott yesterday savaged a Human Rights Commission report into the struggles of asylum-seeker children held in detention as "blatantly partisan" and said he felt no guilt "whatsoever".
In a damning report to parliament, the government-funded commission said its 10-month investigation of 11 detention centres found widespread sexual assault, self-harm and severe mental disorders among children locked up.
"There appears to be no rational explanation for the prolonged detention of children," stated the report titled The Forgotten Children.
"The mandatory and prolonged immigration detention of children is in clear violation of international human rights law."
Australia has long been under international pressure over the detention of asylum seekers arriving by boat, particularly in offshore camps on the Indian Ocean territory of Christmas Island and on Nauru and Manus Island in the Pacific.
The numbers of children in immigration detention peaked at 1,992 in mid-2013 under the former Labor administration, but they have been significantly reduced to several hundred since the Abbott-led government was elected in September 2013.
An angry Abbott said his policies to stop the boats had cut the numbers in detention and questioned why the report was not launched under Labor.
"Frankly this is a blatantly partisan politicised exercise and the Human Rights Commission ought to be ashamed of itself," he told reporters.
Under the government's tough stance, boats are turned away at sea and anyone who makes it to Australia is denied resettlement and sent to camps in Nauru and Papua New Guinea.
Only one boatload of asylum seekers has reached the Australian mainland since December 2013. Before this, boats were arriving almost daily, with hundreds of people dying en route.
The study, which covered 1,233 interviews with children and parents between January 2013 to March 2014, records 233 assaults involving a child and 33 incidents of sexual assault.
Some 128 children harmed themselves, while there were 27 cases of voluntary starvation.
Human Rights Commission chief Gillian Triggs said both sides of politics were responsible and described the report as unprecedented first-hand evidence of the impact prolonged immigration detention has on a child's mental and physical health.
The average time children are held is one year and two months, and Triggs said the findings on mental health disorders in particular were "deeply shocking".
"Thirty-four per cent of children detained in Australia and Christmas Island have a mental health disorder of such severity that they require psychiatric support," she said, adding that "fewer than two per cent of children in the general community have mental health disorders of this severity. Children are self-harming in detention at very high rates".
Asked whether he felt any guilt over the findings in the 315-page report, Abbott replied: "None whatsoever."