From the balcony of a hotel at Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, refugees have silently protested every day for the last month. They hold placards such as, “Virus doesn’t check your visa status” and “I miss my wife and son – they are in the community”. 
The last two Fridays, 60 people walked or cycled nearby in solidarity. Because of the social distancing rules, we couldn’t gather to protest. But we could exercise in groups of two. Heavy-duty chain wire fencing surrounds the hotel’s grey stucco walls to block most of the entrances. Behind black mesh, Serco guards lounged, paced and watched on. As we exercised in view of the refugees, we crossed our wrists above our heads. 
It’s a gesture we picked up from those inside. “Our hands are tied. The government has put handcuffs on our hands. We don't have power”, Farhad Rahmati, one of the detainees, says over the phone. As the sun set, a protestor paused on the driveway to lead warm-down exercises. Four police officers ushered us on, “You can’t exercise in groups!” Farhad is happy we have joined them because the cause is urgent. “This is a pandemic situation, it’s crazy for everyone. We see security guards everyday – imagine if one person brings the virus in”, he says.
In an interview with Al Jazeera, Josh Davis, an infectious diseases expert, agreed that social distancing is not possible for detainees. The virus “will spread like wildfire – as has happened in other closed environments like cruise ships”, he said. Detainees inside the Brisbane hotel have every reason to fear for their health. A Serco guard here tested <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/mar/19/fears-for-refugees-as-guard-at-brisbane-immigration-detention-centre-tests-positive-for-coronavirus">positive for COVID-19 </a>in late March. 
Across Australia, there are more than 1,400 people in immigration detention. The facilities are plagued by shortages of toilet paper, soap and hand sanitiser. Detainees often have to queue for services. In some centres, they share rooms with up to four people. They are often transferred from one immigration detention centre to another. This also makes the spread of viruses more likely. There have been a few COVID-19 scares so far in Villawood Immigration Detention Centre in Sydney and in the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation in Broadmeadows. 
Many of the people locked in the Brisbane hotel have witnessed the full horror of Australia’s detention system. From July 2013 onward, every asylum seeker who arrived by boat was sent to the camps on Manus Island and Nauru. Khaled* was on Manus Island from that time. For the first three years, the camp was a closed prison and those inside protested a lot. Khaled went on a hunger strike and eventually was transferred to the Port Moresby hospital for surgery, he says. In January 2014, the detainees staged three weeks of protests. They wanted answers: when would their claims be processed? Where would they be settled? The official answer came on 16 February. They had no chance of getting to Australia. 
The following day, the camp erupted in protests. Azeta Bokan, who worked as a Farsi interpreter, recalled that a “mood of despair” descended on the camp. “The men had no weapons, so they threw fruit at the guards, mostly peaches”, She told the ABC. The guards reportedly grabbed rocks, metal table legs and other objects to use as weapons. Khaled remembers standing on the grass and looking up a flight of steel stairs to see another detainee above being attacked. His name was Reza Berati, and he was murdered. Eleven deaths followed on Manus and Nauru over the next four years.
In Brisbane, the refugees are confined to a few floors of the Brisbane hotel. Reviews of the establishment on Google read like a dingy student share house: “dead pot plant” with “cigarette butts in it”; a bed “bent in the middle like a banana”; an air conditioner rattled the windows and was “coated” in dust; the kettle water was “turbid”; holes the “size of my hand” in the carpet; “smells like cigarettes and mould”; a “massive cockroach”.
There is no-one for the refugees to complain to, however. They have zero contact with the manager. Rahmati says that is because “the guest here is ABF (Australian Border Force) not us”. Before COVID-19 the refugees could welcome the odd visitor. Now they see no-one but the guards.
Before the lockdown, the refugees could leave for 45 minutes of exercise at Brisbane Immigration Transit Accommodation (BITA). They would be patted down four times: when they left the hotel, when they arrived at BITA, when they left BITA, when they arrived at the hotel. 
Khaled has a low opinion of the guards. On a visit to the hospital, a guard tried to hold him by the wrist, he says. He pushed the hand away and said, “I am not a criminal”. Khaled says that “good people can’t work [as guards] ... They are racist, laughing and make fun of us. Many are retired from army or ex-prison guard”. He says he has been sexually harassed multiple times. During the body checks they sometimes “touch your arse”. There is no privacy when Khaled sleeps and he says that twice a guard entered the bathroom while he was showering. 
“Everywhere there are good and bad people who try to do their job. That doesn't mean they care about us. They don’t care”, Rahmati says. He laughs when I ask if medical requests are ever denied. “Of course! Plenty of times. If you work on it, you can get rid of your humanity. It is the same with people in the army or police.” He says that there is a long queue to get a medical appointment.
“We are asking the government: let us be free even if it is temporary and we can soon come back. Just let us out”, he says. “For us it will never be a total freedom. They take all your rights then give it to you bit by bit.” He identified community detention and temporary bridging visas as examples.
The government has spent almost three decades cultivating the detention industry, which generates human misery to sustain profits. If the government can find the resources to detain refugees in hotels, it can certainly find the resources to set them free. Australia must allow refugees to access Centrelink, to work and to study. 
Khaled encourages people to keep protesting: “I am thankful to all of you, everyone who has helped us for the last seven years. We keep hope. There is still humanity”.
* Not his real name.

Reeshan Zakiyya

Australia's imprisoned refugees are protesting for their safety

An alarming number of children are being held in Queensland police watch-houses for long periods, according to data tabled in the Queensland parliament.
Children as young as 11 have been detained for up to five days at a time with no exercise or visitation rights. Hundreds of young people have been locked in watch-houses over weekends since December. Two 10-year-olds have been detained overnight. One 17-year-old was held in a watch-house for 11 days.
Queensland has long been recognised as the worst state in the nation for holding unsentenced youths in detention. 
Plans by the Palaszczuk government to bring 17-year-olds charged with an offence under the youth justice system were delayed in February due to overcrowding. In March the Brisbane Youth Detention Centre, with a capacity of 130, housed 134 detainees, four being forced to sleep on the floor. The Townsville centre held 105 although it has a capacity of 96.
Queensland is the only state in Australia to hold 17-year-olds in adult prisons. ABC News recently reported that a man is suing the government over his time as a 17-year-old in the adult Brisbane Correctional Centre. 
Between October 2012 and March 2013, he was isolated for up to 23 hours a day and faced daily strip searches, was forced to get on his knees and place his hands behind his head to receive food, and his window was papered over. 
In one incident, he was placed into a body-belt to which his hands were cuffed, and a hood device was placed over his head. He was left alone for more than one hour with no explanation and had difficulty seeing and breathing in the restraints, leaving him with post-traumatic stress and acute stress disorders.

Children detained indefinitely in Queensland watch-houses

Working class migrants will find it harder to reunite with family and to support elderly relatives after changes passed in the 2016 and 2017 federal budgets come into effect.
To prove that they can financially support family members, migrants’ incomes must be double the previous requirement. From 1 April, the changes to the Assurance of Support Scheme mandate that a single person must earn $86,606 a year, and a couple $115,475 a year. 
Also, pension access is being restricted, shifting the cost of taking care of elderly relatives to their families.
Currently, migrants can access a pension if they have lived in Australia for 10 years. From July, pension access will require 15 years of continuous residence, which can be shortened to 10 years if the person has spent a period of time working. 
The changes will increase poverty levels for some migrants. Families will have to find ways to boost incomes, and the elderly may have to work past the age of retirement.

Working class migrant families take a hit 

Behrouz Boochani, a journalist and detainee in Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island detention centre, says the conditions for refugees are worse than ever.
Last year, the men were beaten with iron bars and bussed to three newly constructed detention camps in the eastern part of Lorengau, the main town on the island.
Four hundred people were squeezed into facilities with a capacity of 280. For two nights, 57 men slept on mattresses in a classroom. After rainfall, the ground turned to mud, and workers and construction equipment were still operating.
Boochani reported one occasion when the men had to wait up to seven hours for food, and sometimes only half of them ate.
In late December, the office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees visited the camps and revealed the extent of neglect. It reported that 50 people should be evacuated for medical reasons, that there were no torture or trauma counsellors and no interpreters and that there was no access to phone credit or an allowance.
At West Lorengau Haus, there are 15 squat toilets and 11 showers for 142 people. The shower room ceiling of Hillside Haus has exposed pipes dripping waste water. There is potential for untreated tank water to become a health risk. And there are leaking washing machines but no tools to fix them.
Joinul Islam, a Bangladeshi refugee attacked with a machete in November, was still awaiting follow-up surgery and had no access to painkillers. Boochani reported in the Guardian, “The medical condition is much worse than before because so many people are traumatised by the last incident, when police beat the refugees”.
In another case, Boochani reported that a 42-year-old refugee who had been on hunger strike for 20 days was sent to Port Moresby hospital. On 26 January, he was tied down and force-fed.
Compounding the problems, the facilities are built on customary land owned by locals. They are demanding compensation through protests that have at times blocked access to and from the camps for service providers, the Australian Border Force and also the refugees.
In mid-January, landowners blockaded the entrance in protest of untreated sewage running past the camp mess and causing sickness in the town.
Around 60 refugees from Manus Island and 140 from Nauru were recently flown to the US for resettlement. For those remaining, Manus Island is still a humanitarian disaster.

Manus refugees still suffering

The global arms trade has reached the highest level since the end of the Cold War, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. This is a reflection of both current conflicts and rising tensions between nations.
Between 2012 and 2016, the United States was responsible for one-third of total global arms exports. The next top four exporters are Russia (23 percent), China (6.2 percent), France (6 percent) and Germany (5.6 per cent). Together, these countries account for nearly three-quarters of total arms exports.
Almost half of US exports ended up in the Middle East. Saudi Arabia was the world’s second largest importer, with an increase of 212 percent, and Qatar increased imports by 245 per cent.
Tensions in the Asia-Pacific region portend a regional arms race. India now imports more arms than any other country in the world, Vietnam moved from 29th largest importer in 2007-11 to 10th largest in 2012-16. According to a report by IHS Jane’s, a US defence and intelligence company, China’s military spending will rise to $233 billion in 2020, up from $123 billion in 2010.
Donald Trump’s proposal to add US$54 billion to the Pentagon’s budget, a 10 percent increase, and his aggressive rhetoric against China will likely fuel the regional arms race.
Australia’s military spending will also increase significantly over the next decade: the 2016 defence white paper estimated a rise from A$32 billion to $59 billion per year.

A new arms race?

A pro-choice crowd of 400 rallied in the afternoon shade outside the Queensland parliament on 16 February. Hand-drawn placards declared, “It’s not 1899” and “If abortion is a crime, then jail me now!”
Abortion remains a serious offence under Queensland criminal law. Women can face up to seven years’ jail for obtaining the procedure. Abortions still occur, but can be difficult to access, particularly outside of Brisbane. A small number of private clinics provide the procedure at a cost hundreds of dollars.
Shanna, a 26-year-old social work student told Red Flag: “I think women should have access to safe health care regardless of their location in a regional, rural or metropolitan area. And the fact that people can’t even get care in cities is frickin’ ridiculous”.
The rally was organised in anticipation of two bills that are to be debated in the state parliament next month. The first bill would remove abortion from the criminal code. The second would establish a series of guidelines, including 50 metre anti-harassment “safe zones” around clinics that perform abortions and rules specifying that a woman who is more than 24 weeks pregnant can seek an abortion if two doctors believe it necessary for her health.
It’s not clear how the vote will go. Labor MP Jackie Trad spoke at the rally, but her party has allowed a conscience vote on the bills. Fairfax media surveyed all Queensland MPs; 44 refused to give an answer or claimed to be undecided.
Just a few days before the pro-choice gathering, an anti-abortion march began in the same location. Anna McCormack, who has been involved in the fight for women’s reproductive rights for 40 years, said: “While they don’t have community support, they are able to lasso support from the Catholic Church. And in previous years, they’ve bussed people in from different Catholic parishes”.
The anti-abortion march was led by hard-right politicians: One Nation’s Malcolm Roberts, state Liberal National Party MP Mark Robinson and Australian Marriage Forum president David van Gend – who last year told the Courier Mail that he believed in “sexual reorientation therapy” to “cure” gay teenagers.
The issue has become a battleground in Queensland. A no vote would be a massive win for misogyny.

Abortion should not be a crime

It’s Monday. Fifteen or so people lounge around outside Flinders Street Station. Some people prefer it here because they feel safer. “There’s a certain safety in numbers, and you know, the street lights – it kinda feels better”, we’re told.
People are cheerful enough when we arrive, but the atmosphere is strained when a woman walks up in a bad state. She is agitated, yelling. Two things happen. Six police officers swoop in to grab her, and a Channel Seven camera guy appears. Someone at the camp tells us that police watch constantly via the Flinders CCTV. The reporters – who knows? Maybe the police call them.
A couple of people ask for her to be let go. Her problems are psychological, not criminal. She tries to free herself, but two cops swing her small frame around and slam her face-down onto the pavement. One of her pink wedge sandals is flung into the street by the impact. They throw her into a van and take off. The next day, almost a full page of the Herald Sun is devoted to the arrest of one of the “ferals” and “vagrants” living high on the hog in their “grand slum”.
By Wednesday, the camp is tense. Council officers have promised to evict people some time today. Smirking journalists wait for the show while protesters and campers steel for a forcible removal. Two protesters hold up a sign, “Herald Scum. Parasites of Human Misery”.
People here hate the Sun. The paper has been campaigning against them for weeks. Journalists hang around Flinders Street with their cameras, hoping to capture some small humiliation or transgression and blow it up into a high-selling poverty porn piece. Amanda, a student of community service and counselling, is disgusted: “They’re vultures, waiting to attack”.
The paper gloats about its role leading the campaign to “clean up” the city. But the constant attention of the press has led to greater street level hostility toward and abuse of the homeless. A bypassing man yells from behind sunglasses: “Why don’t you get off your asses? Get off your booze, get off your cigarettes, make some sacrifices … that’s what I fucking did! There’s homeless shelters all around this joint, everyone’s here to help you guys.”
“Get a heart!”, someone shoots back. “We’re all two pay cheques away from homelessness. Even working people are out of their houses! Rents are out of control, mortgages are out of control.”
Journalists press in, cameras at the ready. They’re hoping for some drama, praying for an escalation. Two women, perhaps tourists, perhaps voyeuristic locals, lean against the century-old station walls, phone cameras aloft to record the tense volley.
Lies
In mid-January, chief commissioner Graham Ashton intervened in the campaign, announcing at a press conference that rough sleepers are “choosing to camp” because, at this time of year, there are “more people to shake down for money. There’s more than enough beds and accommodation for people to access”, he said.
This is a lie. Boarding houses are often not an option for people sleeping rough in Melbourne’s CBD. A 2016 Tenants Union of Victoria investigation into more than 100 rooming houses found that only two offered rates affordable to someone on a low income. And almost half were unregistered.
A record 279,000 people attempted to access homelessness services in 2015-16, according to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Every day hundreds of these requests are not met. The mid-winter biennial street count, when council workers walk streets at 4am, indicates that rough sleeping is up 74 percent from 2014.
A number of rooming houses and caravan parks in Victoria have closed, and there is a wait time of six months to 15 years for public housing.
It’s true that there are other spaces, such as the 80,000 empty housing units in Melbourne. But most of those are the investment properties or spare lodgings of people with money, not abodes that will be put to use for real human needs.
Ashton is pushing for a change to council by-laws to give police more power to move on the homeless – i.e. to make poverty an offence.
‘Impossible’
It’s less than 10 minutes’ walk from Flinders Street Station to the swish “Paris end” of Collins Street. Here we meet Barry. He likes to chat. We are parked next to Rutherford Pearls and a restaurant peddling Gippsland grass-fed eye-fillet with red wine jus. Leaning back into an orange folding chair at a mobile laundry van, Barry explains his situation: “I used to own a house but now I don’t have anything much. So I’m on Centrelink and I just try to live within my means”.
He laughs as he recalls former federal treasurer Joe Hockey’s old advice. “Oh yeah, ‘If you’re not happy with the cost of living, get a better job!’ ... A couple of years ago, when you were on Centrelink you could afford to pay for a decent life. Now it’s impossible. Also the way the government is pushing people off the dole.”
The Herald Sun makes good money demonising people like Barry. He and other homeless people have been dragged through the gutter for the sake of a cheap story and harsher laws. The paper and its campaign are an utter disgrace.

Jess Lenehan

A vile campaign against the homeless in Melbourne

Melbourne on Friday night joined the global protests against US president Donald Trump’s anti-immigration executive decree. More than 1,000 people marched through the city chanting, “No ban, no way – immigrants are here to stay!” and, “From Palestine to Mexico, border walls have got to go!”
As the crowd snaked through the streets, dozens and dozens of homemade placards bobbed above the march. “I made it just for tonight”, said Mariam, a young Muslim woman. The message read, “History has its eyes on us”.
Mariam is studying to be a teacher: “We’ve studied the holocaust, genocide, colonisation – we’ve studied all of that and this is basically history repeating itself. Let’s not do it again, let’s stop it at the start”, she said. “I’m sick of being angry on the internet; I decided I’d rather go out and do something about it.”
Other placards and banners read: “Make racists afraid again”, “Free the refugees” and “Off with his toupe”.
Charlie Tumaine, a 19-year-old Coles worker, was awed by the demonstration around her. “This is encouraging because we are all here today to take a stand with our brothers and sisters suffering in the US, who are Black, Latino, Asian, Muslim. Our cause is the same”, she said.
The rally came as news broke overnight that the US Justice and State departments revealed that tens of thousands of visas have been cancelled in the past week.
Greens leader Richard Di Natale gave an uncharacteristically radical speech, in which he called for “a global resistance” on the streets against the “deranged” Trump and the “crony capitalist” order being ushered in by the new administration. Later, speaking to the Guardian, he said:
“I think, like many Australians right now, people are feeling shocked and angry and they are realising the political establishment has let them down. Now’s the time to make it very clear to all those people who are the target of Donald Trump’s vile attack that we stand with them, because I think many of those people feel abandoned right now. They feel ignored.”
Marching along Swanston Street, Tasnim Sammik, 25, held a placard carrying only the name of one of the six victims of the recent murderous attack on a Quebec mosque – Khaled Belkacemi. “I helped organise the Islamic community to come out today”, she said. “Things are getting worse and worse. The more silent and afraid we are the more our rights will be stripped away.”
“Trump is openly saying that Muslims are dangerous, this is a new form of rhetoric”, she said. “Prime minister Turnbull didn’t condemn it either … he hasn’t disagreed with it, all he’s said is that we have even better border control.”
One of the rally organisers, Liz Walsh, said she was pleased with the turnout and the spirit of the demonstration. “It’s inspiring to have such a diverse crowd come out to unite on the streets. The Muslim community, Palestinians, Latin Americans, high school students, and others are here fighting against Trump and building a global movement against racism.”
“There’s been a real energy tonight which comes from the anger at what’s going on in the world. A lot of it is focused on our government too and its own refugee ban.”
The final address to the crowd was by Reem, a Palestinian activist. She implored everyone present to keep fighting and to encourage others join in. “I’d like to see our numbers doubled, tripled, filling all the squares and all the airports.”

Steph Price

Melbourne protest calls for ‘global resistance’ to Trump

The Turnbull-Obama refugee deal is an exercise in human trafficking that further cements the Australian government’s record of human rights abuses.
It is a “one-time deal” in which an unknown number of refugees in Australia’s offshore detention facilities will be eligible for resettlement in the US. The deal throws into question whether the government’s September pledge to accept refugees camped in Costa Rica, Central America, made at Barack Obama’s global migration summit in New York, was only the first part of a now expanded agreement.
The government said it will prioritise families, women and children in this process. The offer is not available to those who have accepted resettlement elsewhere or those arriving in offshore camps after 13 November. Any refugees who remain because they are rejected by the US, or who refuse to accept that the Australian government can extinguish their human rights, will face the prospect of 20-year temporary visas for Nauru.
Behrouz Boochani, Manus detainee and journalist, explained to the Guardian, “Be sure that most people would love to go to America, but some people need to join their families in Australia”. Another reason for Manus Island refugees to stay is that there is a current court case in Papua New Guinea, seeking compensation for their years of detention.
No doubt, as Boochani notes, there will be relief among many refugees that perhaps their ordeal in Australia’s gulag archipelago is finally coming to an end. The detention system is renowned for torture, murders, rapes, and assaults at the hands of security guards, which have been exposed by determined protests and riots by the detainees and numerous leaks from detention centre staff. You can understand that people who have survived this abomination would take whatever opportunity they could to get out.
But human rights advocates in Australia should see this for what it is: a continuing betrayal of the right to seek asylum. With this deal, the government and its backers are only reaffirming that Australia has no obligation under the refugee convention to grant asylum to people with a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country, and that it can engage in human trafficking.
The US deal was quickly followed by the launch of prime minister Malcolm Turnbull’s “ring-of-steel” – the largest ever maritime surveillance effort. According to the Australian, Border Force personnel were sent to Sri Lanka and India to make sure that measures to prevent people exercising their human right to seek asylum would remain in place. So the US deal will clear space in the detention centres only so that any future asylum seekers arriving by boat would again be trapped in Australia’s offshore Guantanamo. As Peter Dutton said, Nauru will remain a detention facility “forever”.
That the deal is a cynical move is also indicated by the language with which it is justified. Turnbull and Dutton continue a long tradition of the ludicrous amalgam of humanitarian and racist rhetoric. They announced to assembled journalists that the aim is to turn back boats and thus limit the “people smugglers’ marketing tool”. But they stressed that the “priority [for resettlement in the US] is very much on the most vulnerable which are family units”.
Three years of offshore processing has given Australia the reputation of international racist pariah. Last year Australia failed to establish a viable “third country” resettlement after investigating options such as Cambodia, the Philippines and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/kyrgyzstan">Kyrgyzstan</a>.
The offshore system became untenable in April when Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court ruled the Manus Island detention centre illegal and unconstitutional. Yet the Australian government refused to take responsibility for the detainees and the centre remained open. In September, the government attempted to bribe detainees with $10,000 to return to their country of origin.
The ongoing failure of the government’s attempts to be as brutal as possible has now led to the US deal, which is only a temporary clearing of the camps. Not only that, the government is clearly pushing a racist agenda – the implicit notion is that Turnbull is swapping “bad” Muslim refugees for non-threatening, probably Catholic, Central American refugees.
Nick McKim from the Greens welcomed the deal as an admission indefinite offshore detention was unacceptable. He also acknowledged there were “still significant levels of uncertainty” for refugees because the number eligible and the timeframe are unspecified.
The Labor Party has responded to the deal with confused and tentative support. “We are pleased if it is an end to indefinite detention”, Shorten said. Labor frontbencher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/anthony-albanese">Anthony Albanese</a> said a deal would be a good thing. “We do want to see people moved out of these facilities.”
More critical statements have come from the ASRC’s Kon Karapanagiotidis, who tweeted: “That Australia is willing to take refugees from Costa Rica but not those we are responsible for shows that this is all about politics not people”. The director of the Human Rights Law Centre, Daniel Webb said in a media release, “Showing decency to one person seeking asylum doesn’t justify or require cruelty to another”.
Refugee supporters in Australia should be clear that the US deal is an escalation of refugee-politicking. After 24 years of deteriorating treatment of refugees, we should maintain our demands for an end to mandatory detention, not cave at a deal that only gives the appearance of change. Anything less than letting the refugees into Australia is unacceptable.
We should take inspiration from Behrouz Boochani who spoke to the Guardian, “I prefer to be in prison than leave this island without my friends, because I cannot accept injustice … I’m not a slave that they use for their political aims. It’s time we show people what humanity is and what human rights are”.

US ‘refugee swap’ is human trafficking dressed up as humanism

The Liberals’ $6 billion omnibus bill will turn student scholarships into loans, crack down on aged care and withhold welfare from new migrants.
But immigration minister Peter Dutton has plenty to bankroll the torture of refugees. UNICEF Australia and Save the Children have compiled a report on the economic cost of Australia’s asylum seeker and refugee policies.
The cost of boat turnbacks and locking up more than 32,000 men, women and children in onshore and offshore detention is huge. From 2012-13 to 2015-16, the government spent at least $9.6 billion, and plans to spend up to $5.7 billion over the next four years.
There are 30,772 onshore refugees, including detainees in detention facilities across Australia, on Christmas Island and in the community on bridging visas and undergoing residence determination. From 2012-13 to 2015-16, the government spent at least $5.5 billion and plans to spend up to $3.5 billion by 2019-2020.
The other 1,556 are on Nauru and Manus Island. Offshore processing costs $400,000 per refugee per year. The report calculates that for every refugee kept on Nauru and Manus, the government could support 12 refugees with housing, health care and basic living expenses in the community.
Instead, the money is spent on charter flights, Australian Federal Police and local police escorts, the building and maintenance of facilities, contractors, staff and supplies. The government of Nauru also charges Australia $3,000 per month for every person transferred to Nauru.
Over the last two years, an additional $275 million was splurged on regional activities that aim to “strengthen relationships” with other governments and on collaboration with international organisations that provide services for irregular migrants. The government expects to spend a further $240 million over the next four years.
The report acknowledges costs that could not be calculated – including myriad independent reviews, Senate inquiries, legal counsel and court fees in High Court cases and the repairs after defiant riot<a name="Editing" id="Editing"></a>s on Christmas Island and Nauru. Also unaccounted for are the people who have been recognised as refugees on Nauru and Manus Island who are no longer residing in the regional camps.
We should reject the Canberra doublespeak of “tightening our belts” while billions are spent torturing people. Our side does not need to compromise; close the camps and spend the money on health, housing and education.

Australia's imprisoned refugees are protesting for their safety

Children detained indefinitely in Queensland watch-houses

Working class migrant families take a hit

Manus refugees still suffering

A new arms race?

Abortion should not be a crime

A vile campaign against the homeless in Melbourne

Melbourne protest calls for ‘global resistance’ to Trump

US ‘refugee swap’ is human trafficking dressed up as humanism

No money for welfare, plenty for misery

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