Australian doctors will launch a High Court challenge to controversial laws they say gag them from speaking out over child abuse and other threats to asylum seekers in detention centres.
Lawyers for the doctors in the case, due to be filed on Wednesday, will argue that the court should declare invalid laws that threaten detention centre staff with two years' jail for disclosing information about conditions they observe behind the wire.
Doctors for Refugees, represented by the Fitzroy Legal Service, said the case will question if the secrecy provisions breach health professionals' constitutional freedom to engage in political communication – in this instance, highlighting and debating the effects of the detention regime on their patients.
"If doctors stand by and allow people [in detention centres] to walk through raw sewage, just to get to the meal area, they're failing their patients and their profession," said Dr Barri Phatarfod, the group's convenor.
"If doctors and nurses remain silent about women and young children having showers in view of male guards, they're not fulfilling their professional responsibilities."
She said doctors working in offshore detention risk criminal charges for reporting children at risk of physical or psychological harm.
The federal government enacted the laws in July last year as part of the contentious Border Force Act. It insists the laws are not aimed at doctors, and do not prevent detention centre workers from speaking out on matters of public interest or from reporting child abuse.
However, Dr Phatarfod said doctors who feared legal or career repercussions were being "forced into silence about serious issues they witness".
"As far as we are aware, no one has been charged under the law. The issue is the chilling effect, that [doctors wishing to disclose information] often say things like 'I don't want to end up in court for months and months' or 'I've got a young family and I've got concerns about going public'," she said.
The government says detention centre staff and contractors have never been allowed to publicly disclose detail that risks the safety and security of others or affects official operations.
In addition to the laws, the Nauru government prevents journalists seen as unsympathetic to the offshore detention regime from visiting the island and its detention centre – effectively creating an information blackout.
Fitzroy Legal Service lawyer Meghan Fitzgerald said the case would "determine whether doctors and nurses are allowed to advocate in the interests of their patients".
The office of Immigration Minister Peter Dutton did not respond to request for comment. A spokeswoman from his department said if the High Court application was served "it will be considered and responded to in due course".
In September last year, the United Nations postponed a planned visit to Australia because it said the federal government could not guarantee legal immunity to detention centre workers who discussed conditions faced by asylum seekers.
The case follows revelations by Guardian Australia in May that the department sought an investigation by the Australian Federal Police, which resulted in a whistle-blowing psychiatrist, Peter Young, having his phone records accessed.
The AFP reportedly compiled hundreds of pages of file notes and reports involving the Sydney-based psychiatrist and detention centre critic, after media reports that contained details of the medical records of Hamid Khazaei, a Manus Island asylum seeker who died in September 2014 after a cut on his leg progressed to septicaemia.
