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Showing posts with label offshore detention costs. Show all posts
Showing posts with label offshore detention costs. Show all posts
The item below was
printed on the Bellingen Courier Sun web site
Asylum Seeker Rights
Last
weekend marked the seventh anniversary of the Rudd government’s
announcement that people arriving in Australian waters seeking asylum
would be detained in offshore detention and would never be allowed to
settle in Australia. As a result of that momentous decision, thirteen
men have died in offshore detention, hundreds have suffered both
physical and mental torment, families have been separated and lives have
been ruined.
Refugee rights
Seven
years later, some 400 men, women and children continue to be trapped by
our government in PNG and Nauru. Hundreds more are held in detention
in Australia. Some 120 people are stuck in hotels in Brisbane and
Melbourne, having been transferred to Australia for urgent medical
treatment, which many of them have yet to receive.
Our government has completely abrogated its responsibilities to fulfil its obligations under the UN Refugee Convention.
It
is shameful that our government continues to treat these innocent
people with such cruel disdain. They have committed no crime, but,
unlike convicted criminals, they have no release date from their pain
and punishment. Across Australia at the weekend, thousands
of refugee
supporters participated in peaceful demonstrations to protest at the
government’s cruel intransigence.
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Our local demonstration in Bellingen on Saturday attracted more than twenty
supporters, who lined Waterfall Way with their placards and banners.
The support from passing motorists was overwhelmingly supportive of the
action. The organizer of the demonstration, Mike Griffin, explained:
“We believe that, in spite of all the other difficulties that we are all
facing at the moment, it is still important to remind the public about
what the government is doing in our name. This is a cruel, inhumane and
unlawful policy that the government could bring to an end within weeks,
if it had the political will to do so. It should accept the New Zealand
government’s offer to accept 150 refugees immediately, and commit to
resettling the remaining refugees and asylum seekers by the end of the
year. They have suffered enough.”
Next Roadside Demo -
Coffs Base Hospital Thursday January 25th 2:30pm
Next Market Bellingen
Sat 20th
Duttons cruelty
Duttons racism
An antidote to Dutton
Roadside
demonstration report
We had a small but
enthusiastic band of supporters for our roadside demo in Bellingen last
Thursday. The response from passing motorists was overwhelmingly positive
–enthusiastic even! – with lots of honking of horns for an hour and a half. You
will find a picture of the group on our Facebook page. Just click on the link
at the end of this newsletter. Our next demonstration will be in Coffs
Harbour, on the Pacific Highway opposite the Base hospital on Thursday
25th January from 2.30 until 4.00 pm. Please join us if you
can.
Next market:
Bellingen, Saturday 20th January : 9.00 am until 1.30 pm.
Our next market stall
will be at the Bellingen market this Saturday from 9.00 am until 1.30 pm. We
have a new open letter for people to sign, new leaflets to hand out and lots of
merchandise for sale. If you can lend a hand on our stall for an hour or two,
then please email Mike at : mandm.griffin2@bigpond.com to
let him know. You will find us in Section C of the market. The Bellingen
market is always a busy and enjoyable event, so please come and join us if you
can.
Dutton’s cruelty
continues
In recent days it has
been reported that a refugee suffering an acute mental health crisis and a
broken ankle that requires surgery has been waiting for more than a year to be
transferred from Nauru to Australia. Doctors have repeatedly called for his urgent
transfer, stating: “risks are of brain damage occurring as a result of ongoing
seizures, and also harm and death.” Why has this man not been transferred to
Australia for treatment? Apparently it is because he is now so terribly unwell
that, if he is brought to Australia, he may never be well enough to be sent
back to Nauru. It seems that Minister Dutton is prepared to let this man die on
Nauru than allow him to set foot on Australian soil, where his wife and baby
are already living.
First it was the
Muslim community, and now it’s the turn of the Victorian South Sudanese refugee
community to be picked on by Minister Dutton. In relation to crime, we know
that race is neither correlative nor causative. We know that the key factors
that correlate with crime amongst youth are poverty and alienation from society
and its institutions. Dutton, however, likes to play the race card in order to
stoke fear, panic and mistrust, rather than tackle the real issues. Just as
Australian Muslims are constantly forced to defend their Australianness and
assert their abhorrence of violence, now it’s the turn of the South Sudanese
community to prove that they, like the rest of the Australian community, are
mostly peace loving, hardworking and honest citizens.
Meanwhile, in
Torquay, not far from Melbourne more than 100 “lawless youths” set upon police
on the night of 4th January, forcing the local police to call for back up from
Geelong and Melbourne. It took hours for the police to get the situation under
control. Five youths were arrested and charged with a number of offences,
including assault, riotous behaviour and drunk and disorderly.Minister Dutton
did not take to the airwaves to condemn this wanton violence. The youths were
white Australians, so did not fit into his racist agenda.
Caroline’s Twitter
antidote
“Hey Peter Dutton.
I’m heading to western suburbs of Melbourne for dinner – alone. Not scared,
because I’m pretty sure you won’t be there”.
I am utterly dismayed
to learn that your company has accepted a contract to maintain the misery and
torment of asylum seekers and refugees on Nauru. Are you not aware of the many
reports from international bodies and from our own Human Rights Commission
which rightly conclude that the conditions under which these people are
unlawfully detained amounts to torture? Other Companies have decided to
withdraw from their involvement in this abuse. By taking on this contract, you
will be complicit in the abuse and torture of the detainees, who have broken no
laws and who have fled violence in their home countries to seek safety on our shores,
as is their right under international law. You will pay a high price for your
collusion in this appalling situation, which has already led to physical and
mental abuse, self harm on a massive scale and numerous deaths. Shame on you.
Clearly money comes well ahead of principle and humanity.
What if our government really wanted to save money? As well as going after $6.7 billion in its omnibus savings bill, it could go after the billions more it costs to run our immigration detention centres: $9.2 billion in the past three years, $3.9 billion to $5.5 billion in the next four, according to the most complete accounting yet of the costs normally hidden in inaccessible parts of the the budget.
It comes as an Audit Office report identifies the cost per offshore detainee: a gobsmacking $573,100 per year.
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Detention's mind-boggling cost
It costs tax-payers more than half-a-million dollars for each asylum seeker detained on Manus Island and Nauru, a new report concludes.
For that price – $1570 per day – we could put them up in a Hyatt and pay them the pension 15 times over.
It costs less than half that, $200,000 a year, to house a typical onshore prisoner; a mere fraction of that, $72,000 including super, to pay a typical full-time worker, and just $20,700 a year to pay a full pensioner.
Ninety-nine per cent of the population don't come anywhere near $573,100 a year in income or cost. The census stops asking when income sails past $156,000.
But the comparison with wages isn't strictly valid. It understates the outrageousness of the $573,100 price tag. The $573,100 isn't being paid in return for a detainee's labour, in return for a contribution to society, as are wages. It is being paid to prevent the detainee contributing to society. It is what economists call a deadweight loss. We get nothing in return for it, apart from less of what we could have had.
And perhaps because it is not meant to make economic sense (and perhaps because the Department of Immigration and Border Protection has operated as something of a law unto itself), it hasn't even made financial sense.
The Audit Office says the department breached public service guidelines by not conducting proper tenders for the contracts to provide services to Manus Island and Nauru, at times falsely claiming it faced urgent and unforeseen circumstances.
Illustration: Joe Benke
"The available record does not indicate that urgent or unforeseen circumstances existed," the Audit Office says. "The record suggests that the department first selected the provider and then commenced a process to determine the exact nature, scope and price of the services to be delivered."
The department's approach to selecting one provider to service both centres from 2014 "removed competition from the outset". There is no record of staff completing conflict-of-interest declarations, no record of the checks that would have discovered that a director of one of the subcontractors had faced bribery charges and was later acquitted.
Manus Island: Causing suffering to complement and reinforce the 'turnback' strategy was always morally questionable, but it is now unnecessary. Photo: The Australian Department of Immigration and Citizenship via Getty Images
After being selected without a proper tender, the new provider extracted an extra $1.1 billion from Australian taxpayers, which was agreed to without going back to the contractors who had just been sacked. The price per detainee shot up from $201,000 to $573,100.
Astonishingly, the report says the department didn't tell its minister at the time, Scott Morrison, that the deal required the Commonwealth to pay a "significant premium over and above the historical costs". Nor did it tell him the price per head.
For that price - $1570 per day - we could put them up in the Hyatt and pay them the pension 15 times over.
The department was not only shielded from public accountability, it also managed to hide things from its minister.
UNICEF and Save the Children get the $9.2 billion figure in their report At What Cost? from the numbers scattered around various parts of the official record. They say there are less specific other costs they haven't included, among them regular independent and senate inquiries, the defence of High Court challenges, and compensation for detention centre employees who have suffered as a result of what they have been exposed to.
Intriguingly, the cost of boat turnbacks, the part of the government's policy that has probably been the most effective in deterring asylum seekers, is tiny by comparison: just $295 million over three years, compared with $9.2 billion for continuing to hold asylum seekers in detention.
And there's a whole other set of costs, which At What Cost wrongly labels non-economic, hidden from the public by gag clauses: self-harm, suicide attempts and mental deterioration, especially among children. Economists would say they destroy human capital. Adam Smith, the father of modern economics, titled his magnum opus An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nationsbecause he had discovered that that's what gave nations wealth – not gold or notes or coins, but human beings who could provide goods and services.
Deliberately or carelessly deprecating human capital is perhaps the worst crime against humanity. The Commonwealth Treasury thinks so. Chief among the goals in its wellbeing framework is giving people "substantive freedom to lead a life they have reason to value".
It has fallen to Malcolm Turnbull to end a system that has passed its use-by date. Even criminals aren't locked up indefinitely on the pretence that their cases are being "processed". The decision of Papua New Guinea to close the Manus Island detention centre makes a decision more urgent. On Friday he meets the president of the Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, to discuss the way forward. She says we should move from deterrence to prevention. It would cost so much less.
the political will to do so. It should accept the New Zealand
government’s offer to accept 150 refugees immediately, and commit to
resettling the remaining refugees and asylum seekers by the end of the
year. They have suffered enough.”
the political will to do so. It should accept the New Zealand
government’s offer to accept 150 refugees immediately, and commit to
resettling the remaining refugees and asylum seekers by the end of the
year. They have suffered enough.”
