Since 2012, Australian taxpayers have tipped more than $13 billion into Nauru’s government and controversial private contractors for ‘offshore processing’ of a dwindling number of asylum seekers. Janet Pelly asks if we’ve learned from the past, or perfected the art of repeating it.
Over 12 years ago, another chaotic chapter in Australia’s often cruel immigration history began. It’s ramping up again, so a little history lesson might be helpful.
On July 19, 2013, PM Kevin Rudd announced: “From this point forward…People who come by boat have no prospect of being resettled in Australia.”
This promise – 16 days before he called a federal election – quickly unravelled.
In the 6 months to December 31, 2013, over 3000 asylum seekers were sent offshore, while 2700 stayed in Australia. No one seems willing to explain the secret algorithm that determined this sliding doors lottery.
Then-Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison made it even more confusing when briefing the National Press Club in September, 2014:
“Now, while it will continue to be the policy of the government that anyone who arrives illegally by boat will be transferred to offshore processing … the government is open to alternatives for the earlier July 19 to December 31 caseload, but not those who may arrive now or may have already been transferred.”
Clear? As mud.
The most likely explanation is that PNG and Nauru’s asylum seeker camps reached capacity, and he needed a workaround for those not yet transferred.
This meant that roughly half of the people condemned to no future in Australia got a reprieve,
while the others were condemned to indefinite detention in mouldy tents.
A system rotting from the head
From the outset, the offshore system was rotting from the head: inflated contracts, dire conditions, medical neglect, sexual abuse, self-harm, ineffectual management and a revolving door of companies that treated offshore detention like a gold mine.
The outcry was international, and more than 1100 people were evacuated to Australia for medical treatment, including children with resignation syndrome.
Once claims were processed, Australia slowly brokered deals to take the refugees.
The first were resettled in the USA in 2017 under an inherited deal that prompted new President Donald Trump to tell PM Malcolm Turnbull, “you’re worse than I am”.
Over the next seven years, roughly 1300 refugees trickled into the USA and NZ on deals now expired. Some didn’t make it out – at least 14 died, and
around 40 remain, destitute, in PNG.
“I’ve done my time”
Another 900 evacuees remain in Australia, stranded on rolling 6-month exit visas that prevent study, training and consistent access to Medicare. Hundreds of babies have become a second generation, inheriting a Kafka-esque visa status.
Two women recently interviewed by SBS speak of ongoing trauma and constant harassment by bureaucrats keen to see the back of them.
“It’s either you go back to your home country, or you choose a third country. But Nauru was the third country. I’ve spent five years there, and I think I’ve done my time,” says one ‘illegal’, to use a Coalition term. A similar theme to the refugees who did their time in Australia’s prisons and detention centres, but are now facing 30 years in Nauru.
A couple I’m close to are split. They came by boat shortly after the 2013 deadline, but she was sent to Nauru, and he stayed in Australia. He has permanent residency, but she is a transitory person. She was offered resettlement in the US, but he didn’t qualify.
They now have two kids, a precarious future, and ironically
pay taxes that fund the latest chapter of offshore cruelty.
More humane policy?
When Labor came to power in May 2022 with a more humane immigration platform, it started to look hopeful. But the offshore model stayed in place.
Scandal-ridden Canstruct was exited from its 5-year Nauru contract four months later. The mid-sized family business had won an $8m closed contract in 2017, but it was revised within weeks, then spiralled up and up until it reached $1.6B. At the same time, the camps were emptying, and by 2021, there were no more than 112 people.
Despite this, the next contractor, US private prison megalith MTC, negotiated another sweetheart deal. While Labor didn’t initiate either contract, it has presided over a 16-fold increase in MTC’s contract, bringing it up to $790m, while still overseeing only around 100 people.
When the $2.5B NZYQ deal was signed this year, it was more of the same, but more secret. Details hidden, procedural fairness denied, and a bikie gang signed on to the security contract.
Bikie gangs in Nauru. The hypocrisy of Australian visa character tests
MWM’s efforts to FOI the memorandum of understanding have been met with fully redacted responses. Answers to Senator Shoebridge’s questions prompted him to ask Stephanie Foster, Secretary of Home Affairs:
Is that how the department answers MOUs, playing semantics to avoid production of this document?
Senate inquiry
The upcoming Senate Inquiry will be very important. Not to re-litigate the preceding years, but to see whether anything has changed since 2022.
If the inquiry does its job, it won’t just follow the money. It will examine whether offshore detention has “significantly matured” as claimed, and whether people are treated in accordance with international law.
It may also examine why a country that has been in business with Australia for so long could get the basics of the new $2.5B deal so wrong.
Contrary to President Adeang’s ‘clarifications’, a vast majority of the men facing 30-year exile in Nauru are recognised refugees who – under international law – can’t be returned to their countries of birth.
This is high-stakes stuff. If Australia and Nauru (both signatories to the Refugee Convention) collaborate to send refugees back to danger, this falls squarely into the illegal basket.
The 2026 inquiry looks set to be a test of cross-bench determination versus majority party deflection. Will it trigger a Morrison-like backflip? Or, more hopefully, a tipping point? We’ll know sometime in the next few months.
From Tampa to Nauru. Billion-dollar refugee deal to be scrutinised at last.