Extended detention limbo leads to attempted suicide

"The NSW government has a moral responsibility to provide for the mental health of all the individuals within NSW, including those in detention," Ms Rhiannon said.

"Working together, the federal and NSW governments could implement a community detention program where approved asylum seekers and refugees could be billeted into diaspora communities while their claims are processed.

"These individuals are traumatized when they leave their countries; the Australian government keeping them in indefinite limbo compounds that trauma.

"While conditions in Sri Lanka led these men to flee their homeland by any means they could, conditions in Australia are now leading them to more desperate measures to end their lives.

"The prolonged detention of refugees and asylum seekers maintained by the federal government is borderline torture.

"I recently visited Villawood and spoke to some of detainees. The mental stress inflicted by the uncertainty of their situation is evident and distressing.

"The federal government needs to account for the necessity of extended periods of detention.

"This isn’t about the distinction between resident, citizen and detainee – we’re talking about human beings here.

"I spoke to a Villawood detainee a couple of weeks ago who said his claim had been rejected a second time because his country was now a safe place to visit.

"The man I spoke to lost his mother and sister to the 2006 tsunami, was persecuted and hunted by the Sri Lankan military, and when he finally escaped from his country of birth, his father was beaten by the LTTE.

"Amnesty International have condemned Australia’s freeze of asylum seeker claims from Afghanistan and Sri Lanka as discriminatory.

"Prime Minister Gillard should lift the ban on asylum seeker claims from Sri Lanka and Afghanistan and treat every claim on its individual merits," Ms Rhiannon said.

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