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Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has slammed the country's human rights commission, saying it should be "ashamed of itself" for recommending a major public inquiry be established into Australia's detention of immigrant children.
Abbott said instead of criticizing the conservative government' s record on immigration, the human rights commission should be sending former Immigration Minister Scott Morrison a note of congratulations for the outstanding work he did in that difficult portfolio.
Following the world's largest survey on children behind bars, a report released late on Wednesday by the government called for a royal commission to examine the impact on hundreds of children of being detained long-term in immigration detention centers.
Through interviews with 1,129 children over a 15-month period to March 2014, it found prolonged and mandatory detention has caused significant mental and physical illness
Hundreds of assaults, including 33 incidents of sexual assault and 128 cases of self harm, were reported.
However, Abbott called the report a "blatantly partisan" exercise.
"Where was the human rights commission when hundreds of people were drowning at sea? Where was the human rights commission when there were almost 2000 children in detention?" he told Fairfax Radio on Thursday.
Abbott said there were more than 90 percent fewer children in detention since mid-2013 under the previous Labor government when numbers almost reached 2,000.
"I reckon the human rights commission ought to be sending a note of congratulations to Scott Morrison saying 'well done, mate', " Abbott said.
The Forgotten Children report also called for the "harsh and cramped" Christmas Island immigration center to be closed and for all children to be released from detention facilities on the mainland and on Nauru.
An immigration minister in the previous Labor government has said both sides should take heed of the report's findings.
"The message here is really simple -- we've got a report that says the care of children has not been good enough," Tony Burke told Sky News on Thursday.
