The Morrison Government Is Wasting $220 Million To Detain Nauru Refugees For Just Six Months
It costs $11,000 everyday to detain a single person.
The Morrison Government will spend an additional $220 million of taxpayer money to bankroll another six months of Nauru’s offshore detention centre.
Last Friday, the Department of Home Affairs signed off on the multi-million deal with Brisbane group Canstruct International for the “provision of garrison and welfare services” at the facility, extending their contract from New Years Day to June 30.
The hefty cost is in addition to the estimated $11,000 per day it costs to detain each individual on site, when there are 81 refugees, and 26 asylum seekers currently being held there according to recent Senate estimates. Most of the people being processed on Nauru have been there for nearly nine years with no prospects of resettlement options.
It comes after the Morrison Government signed a new agreement with the island country to continue their offshore processing relationship indefinitely last September. “Australia is working with Nauru to establish an enduring regional processing capability in Nauru,” a spokesperson from the government department told the Guardian of two new arrangements.
Canstruct has overseen Nauru’s facilities since 2017 and there have been no new arrivals on the island since 2014. It was revealed last November that the firm was being paid more between March and August 2021 than they were at the start of their contract — despite a 90 percent drop in the number of people being detained there.
Shadow Minister for Home Affairs Kristina Keneally called Canstruct a ‘shell company’ and criticised the federal government for not “conducting basic due diligence on the company”.
“The Morrison Government has had countless opportunities to renegotiate this important contract to get a better deal for taxpayers, or to put the the contract through a competitive tender process,” she said to the Guardian. “Instead, it keeps extending the contract — paying this private company more and more money to do less and less work.”