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Incident and inspector reports

In 2016 the Australian Lawyers Alliance published its ground-breaking report, Untold Damage: Workplace health and safety in immigration detention under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth). That report was based on documents released under freedom of information requests made to Comcare over a two-year period. Here are the key documents that were released.

Incident Reports

Incident reports are how the Department of Immigration and Border Protection (DIBP) fulfils its obligation to report incidents to Comcare. The DIBP is required to report all 'notifiable incidents' such as deaths, serious injuries and serious illnesses that arise as a result of the conduct of the business or undertaking, according to the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth). Our investigations reveal that such incidents were not always reported as required. Even where incidents were reported, Comcare has assessed incidents inconsistently.

Where incident report numbers are listed, there are selected incidents in the range that have been supplied to the Australian Lawyers Alliance. The selection is based on the requests that we made for information.

Incidents reported by DIBP to Comcare:

Inspector Reports

Inspector reports are generated when Comcare inspectors conduct an inspection following an incident being reported by the DIBP. The Australian Lawyers Alliance believes incident report #129 relates to the death Mr Hamid Khazaei, although that has not been confirmed by the DIBP or Comcare. Again, only selected incident reports are available within the ranges specified.

Inspector reports from inspections of immigration detention faciliites conducted by Comcare:

All incidents reported by the DIBP to Comcare

Here are complete lists of all incidents reported by the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to Comcare over the period under investigation:

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