The federal government has spent $2.4bn over
two years maintaining offshore detention centres on Nauru and Manus Island, including the
detention of 90 children on Nauru, a Senate committee has heard.
A total of $403m was spent operating the
immigration detention centre on Manus Island from July 2014 to the end of April
2015, representatives from the immigration department told a Senate estimates
committee on Tuesday.
A further $229m was spent on capital
expenditure on Manus.
Nearly $359m was spent at the same time
operating the Nauru facility, and nearly $57m on capital expenditures.
The total figure of $1.1bn in the 2014–15
financial year is down slightly from the previous financial year, when the
government spent $1.3bn maintaining the two offshore facilities.
About 173 unaccompanied minors have
travelled to Australia by boat since 2012, the committee heard. Most of them –
95 – were 17 years of age, but the youngest was just six. The children either
embarked on the boat trip alone, or their parents perished while making the
journey to Australia.
Ninety children remain on Nauru, with a
further 136 kept in onshore detention centres. Seventy children live in
Darwin’s Wickham Point facility.
The average time a child remains in
detention is 345 days, but one child has been in detention for 1,774 days –
about 4.8 years.
The majority of asylum-seeker children –
nearly 1,100 – are in community detention, following the government’s promise
to remove children from Christmas Island by Christmas 2014, as long as the Senate passed its
omnibus asylum legacy caseload bill.
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