The report by the former secretary of the attorney general’s department, Robert Cornall, was completed in March 2020, while Dutton was still minister, and sent to the home affairs secretary, Michael Pezzullo, and Australian Border Force commissioner, Michael Outram, who both still serve in those roles.
The report found that “the immigration detention system as a whole is failing” to meet two “key principles”: to resolve people’s immigration status as quickly as possible and manage them in the community unless they pose a risk to others.
Cornall said the “generally accepted view is that long term immigration detention is damaging to the detainees’ mental health”, meaning that health services provided in detention “may be treating the symptom and not the cause”.