The Guardian revealed that Wilson Security, the company paid by the Australian government to provide security in offshore detention centres, ‘hired a private investigator at least twice in 2015 to determine the sources of confidential disclosures to news organisations and activists’. A spokesperson for immigration department secretary Michael Pezzullo stated that ‘The secretary … had no role in the manner Wilson chose to undertake its investigation’.
Fairfax Media spoke with an Iranian asylum seeker who was transferred from Maribyrnong Immigration Detention Centre to the detention centre on Christmas Island. The 26-year-old claimed that he was not told why he was transferred, and that he is suffering from significant ‘mental stress and physical pain’. Currently there are approximately 30 asylum seekers being detained on Christmas Island, along with 200 Australian residents facing deportation for serious criminal offences.