Compensation for Indonesian children detained as adults In December 2023, the Commonwealth agreed to pay $30 million (plus legal costs) to settle a class action by a group of young Indonesians who claimed to have been wrongly treated as adults and unlawfully detained in Australia on suspicion of being involved in people smuggling. In 2012, the Commission published a report called An Age of Uncertainty. It examined the cases of 180 young Indonesians who arrived in Australia as crew of asylum seeker boats between 2008 and 2011 and who claimed to be children. A major finding of the report was that reliance by Australian authorities on wrist x-rays to determine a young person’s age meant that many children were mistakenly assessed to be adults. involved them being detained and tried for people smuggling offences when government policy was to return Indonesian children to Indonesia. Further, if a person was mistakenly assessed as an adult, they could be liable for a mandatory minimum prison sentence which did not apply to children. Following the Commission’s report, there was a series of cases seeking to have convictions quashed and compensation paid for unlawful detention. It has taken more than 10 years since the Commission’s report into this issue for compensation to be paid to those affected by a flawed government policy. This case shows the important relationship between the Commission and civil society, and the complementary roles they play to identify and find remedies for human rights breaches. These children were then wrongly treated as adults by the Australian criminal justice system, which Annual Report 2023–2024 • 33