Fed: Oxfam report calls for end to Pacific solution

AAP General News (Australia)
08-25-2007
Fed: Oxfam report calls for end to Pacific solution

EDS: Embargoed to 0001 AEST Saturday, August 25



By David Crawshaw

CANBERRA, Aug 25 AAP - The so-called Pacific solution for asylum seekers is a taxpayer
rip-off that fuels mental illness among refugees and should be scrapped, a new report
claims.

The findings are from an analysis by aid organisation Oxfam Australia and refugee advocacy
group A Just Australia released on the sixth anniversary of the arrival of the Tampa and
its cargo of asylum seekers rescued from the Indian Ocean.

The report analyses the financial, legal, human and regional cost of the so-called
Pacific solution which sent asylum seekers to offshore detention centres.

The solution was developed by the government in 2001 in a crackdown on unauthorised
immigration and to try to stem the numbers of asylum seekers accessing Australian courts
in an increasingly costly litigation process.

But the report said taxpayers have spent more than $1 billion since 2001 to process
fewer than 1,700 asylum seekers in Nauru, Manus Island and Christmas Island - a cost of
more than $500,000 per person.

"By comparison, the latest estimates from (the immigration department) suggest that
to process 1,700 asylum seekers for 90 days each at Villawood detention centre in Sydney
would have cost around $35 million - around 3.5 per cent of the cost of processing them
offshore," the report said.

Most detainees have spent two years on Nauru, it said, with some being held for up
to six years and many developing psychological illnesses in detention.

"Most, if not all, of these asylum seekers have paid a substantial personal toll through
poor mental and physical health and wellbeing," the report said.

"There have also been detrimental impacts on Australia's democratic and legal system,
Australia's regional relationships and the international system of protection of refugees
and asylum seekers."

Oxfam and A Just Australia recommended offshore processing be abolished.

"We believe it is critical that the Australian government end the Pacific solution
and the offshore detention and processing of asylum-seekers on Nauru, Manus Island and
Christmas Island," the document said.

"Instead, asylum-seekers reaching excised areas of Australia by boat should be processed
in mainland Australia in the same way as other asylum-seekers."

The report demanded an audit into the full financial costs of running offshore detention
centres, and the scrapping of arrangements that allow refugees to be resettled in the
US and other third countries.

The report also called for an inquiry into whether offshore processing and the excision
of islands from Australia's migration zone had decreased the number of refugee boat arrivals,
as claimed by the government.

The federal government is expected to open a new detention centre on Christmas Island
later this year, built at a cost of about $400 million.

AAP dcr/sb/jt/mn

KEYWORD: ASYLUM (EMBARGOED)

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