IN Australia we hear much about balancing the budget and cutting expenditure so I wonder why are we spending billions of tax payers’ dollars on offshore detention processing centres in Nauru and PNG?
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Did you know that the government’s own figures show that keeping an asylum seeker in the community in Australia while their claim is assessed costs $30,000 per person per year but keeping someone on Nauru or PNG costs a whopping $400,000 per person per year?
What is the logic in that expense?
Remember that a person seeking asylum has not committed a crime and the vast majority are found to be refugees once their claim is processed.
Yet we in Australia are subjecting these innocent people to horrendous conditions offshore.
Two people have died while in Australia’s care on PNG.
And there have been countless reports of sexual assaults against women and children on Nauru as well.
Our government knows about this and yet continues to send people offshore to these processing centres and we pay through the nose for it.
Is this a good use of taxpayers’ money?
Surely we can do better than this in our lucky country.
— CLARE CUNNINGTON,
Yackandandah
