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Immigration Daily News You’ll be shocked at how much the government spends on offshore processing centres.
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You’ll be shocked at how much the government spends on offshore processing centres.
"It's disgraceful that families, including young children, are detained in shocking conditions offshore and the Australian taxpayer is left to pick up the multi-billion dollar bill," Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young recently told the Sydney Morning Herald.
Some $1.2 billion was spent last year alone to run detention centres on Manus Island, Nauru and Christmas Island, according to newly release Senate Estimate documents. This amounts to over $529,000 per detainee on Manus Island and Nauru which together currently hold about 1930 asylum seekers. The balance was spent on the Christmas Island detention centres which this year is expected to have its numbers dramatically reduced with the removal of children and their families to Darwin.
The figures were released in response to parliamentary questions and come just after the United Nations refugee agency criticised the recent High Court decision over the detainment of 157 asylum seekers on the high seas for a month. In a close 3:4 decision, the High Court ruled that the government’s action was lawful.
The government has said it plans to reduce its spending on the offshore detention centres with big cuts to welfare services this year. However, Senator Hanson-Young told The SMH,"If the government really wanted to save money, they'd shut down these multi-billion dollar gulags on Manus Island and Nauru."
During 2014 the number of people who arrived by boat to Australia significantly plunged. Last year 164 people successfully made it to Australian land to seek asylum. This is in stark contrast to the 20,719 people who successfully sought asylum by boat in 2013, according to the report.
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More than $2billion was spent the previous year so this is an improvement. These costs are entirely due to the disastrous Labor policy which supported the people smuggler model. It would be interesting to see the true total financial costs of this failed policy including Naval, IAAAS fees and the ongoing public housing, health,education and welfare for those [the majority] whose applications were successful.
Sadly, the cost in hundreds of human lives seems to be irrelevant to Senator Hanson-Young whose "tragedies happen, accidents happen" attitude shows that her moral compass is way out of balance.
It is also amazing that no Australians lost their lives in dangerous rescue efforts and overloaded charter flights to Christmas Island; a circumstance I witnessed first hand when on an IAAAS task force. An attempted landing to refuel at Learmonth Airbase was aborted. Upon landing, a ground crew staffer stated "lucky you went round" and an aircrew member said "we are 2 tonnes over" This conversation was also heard by two interpreters.