Not content with locking up its own citizens as illegal immigrants the Australian Government has now managed to win friends and influence people by locking up a French tourist who they (mistakenly) thought had a false passport in a detention centre and then forgetting to tell the French embassy about him.

It took Mr Sacko two days to get in touch with the French embassy and he remained locked up in Villawood for four days.

“They’re asking me if I want they call French embassy, I say ‘ok, yes’ [but] they didn’t do,” Mr Sacko told the ABC’s Investigative Unit.

“Why not? They say is not their job for do that, if I want I must do by myself.”

The Australian government has paid AU$25,000 in compensation and the French Government has sent an official protest through their consul in Australia to DFAT.