Australia’s offshore processing regime on Nauru will cost taxpayers nearly $220m over the next six months as it holds 107 people on the Pacific island.
Brisbane firm Canstruct International has been awarded a new extension – its eighth non-competitive contract extension – for $218.5m to provide six months of “garrison and welfare services” on Nauru. The company’s total revenue from island contracts over the past five years now totals more than $1.8bn.
It currently costs Australian taxpayers more than $4m a year to hold one person within the Nauru offshore regime – a little over $11,000 per person per day.
The government’s latest figures, revealed in Senate estimates, stated 107 people – 81 refugees and 26 asylum seekers – were still held on Nauru.
The 81 refugees have had their claim for protection formally recognised. Australia is legally obliged to protect them and they cannot be returned to their home country because they face a “well-founded fear of being persecuted”.
While no new asylum seeker arrivals have been sent to Nauru since 2014, the regime continues to cost Australia between $35m and $40m a month on average, the same amount it did when the detention centre held more than 1,000 people.
Canstruct’s tenure on Nauru has attracted significant regulatory and parliamentary attention.
The October 2017 “letter of intent” awarded to Canstruct International was worth $8m. Less than a month after this was signed, the company won a $385m contract awarded by limited tender, meaning there was not an open and competitive process to secure the initial contract.
The auditor general criticised the process, saying “it is not clear why the department could not have secured a replacement supplier using a more competitive procurement method”.
Since then, government figures show eight further amendments, all uncontested, have escalated the total cost to $1.82bn.