A lawyer advocating for detainees being held in a Melbourne hotel with infectious COVID-19 patients has told a court their lives are in jeopardy.
Daniel Taylor asked the Federal Circuit Court for an urgent injunction to stop representatives of Australian Border Force preventing paramedics from assessing detainees if ambulances are called.
ABF confirmed this week that there had been an outbreak of infections at the Park Hotel, an alternative place of detention.
As at Wednesday morning 13 detainees out of 46 had tested positive, eight were awaiting results and 25 had tested negative.
"It's just not fair to treat them as prisoners who are subject to coronavirus infection as part of a punishment," Mr Taylor said, also urging the evacuation of the hotel.
Judge Rolf Driver noted there was precedent for keeping people together in buildings when there's been a COVID-19 outbreak, pointing to Melbourne's tower block lockdown.
"One can debate the rights and wrongs of that, but it happens in the community," he said.
The court heard that Jane Alcorn, an advocate for infected detainee Ahmad Zahir Azizi, had called an ambulance for him on Thursday morning.
"They attended the hotel but were not permitted to enter. (He) was told by the nurse never to call the ambulance again," she said.
That claim was rejected by ABF lawyer Claire Roberts, who said the ambulance called for Mr Azizi hadn't arrived at the hotel yet.
She said ambulances had been called for other detainees, including one who had been taken to hospital.
Medical staff had assessed that Mr Azizi did not require hospitalisation, but when paramedics arrive they would be granted access to make their own assessment. She gave an undertaking to the court that he would be assessed by paramedics.
"There are a lot of people calling ambulances at the moment and he's not assessed (by Ambulance Victoria) as somebody of very high need, which may be why the ambulance is taking a little while to get there," she said.
Mr Taylor also wants the court to order that the hotel is an unsafe environment and for COVID-negative detainees to be moved to an outside facility.
"To hold them there simply exposes them to an extremely and unacceptably high risk of infection and death," he said.
The case is due back in court on Tuesday.
Australian Associated Press
