Detention gulag comparison offensive

Comparisons of detention centres to gulags and Nazi Germany are highly offensive, the immigration department boss has warned.

Department secretary Michael Pezzullo launched a vigorous defence of his agency's conduct and policies around the detention of children, in a statement on Tuesday.

He was responding to a Australasian Psychiatry journal paper published in February by Dr Michael Dudley from the Sydney Children's Hospital.

"Recent comparisons of immigration detention centres to gulags, suggestions that detention involves a public numbing and indifference similar to that allegedly experienced in Nazi Germany and persistent suggestions that detention facilities are places of torture are highly offensive, unwarranted and plainly wrong," Mr Pezzullo said.

"And yet they continue to be made in some quarters."

He denied the new uniformed-arm of his department Australian Border Force was a "immoral rogue agency".

Mr Pezzullo also hit back at claims "prolonged immigration detention represents reckless indifference and calculated cruelty, in order to deter future boat arrivals".

"The number of children in detention would not be falling if that were the case," he said, adding that there are now 58 children in detention down from a peak of 2000 in 2013.

"Ultimately, the department shares the same goal as its critics - to have no children at all in immigration detention."