Profiteering from offshore detention

This article in The Guardian (‘Nauru detention centre operator makes $101m profit – at least $500,000 for each detaineee’ – Ben Doherty and Ben Butler, The Guardian, 12 February 2022) is quite shocking reading. It details the obscene profit made by the company responsible for the Nauru detention centre.

The company behind Australia’s offshore processing regime on Nauru made a $101m profit last financial year – more than $500,000 for each of the fewer than 200 people held on the island. It currently costs the Australian taxpayer more than $4m each year to hold a single refugee or asylum seeker on Nauru, or nearly $12,000 a day, according to government figures.

Rard No 3 (the holding company for Canstruct International), which has the government contract to run the Nauru offshore processing centre, has more than $340m in cash and investments, according to its most recent accounts filed with the corporate regulator. When Canstruct International was initially awarded the Nauru contract in 2017 the company had $8 in assets. Rard No 3 now holds $236m in financial investments and owns three investment properties worth more than $14m. The company also reaped $6m in interest and dividends from its investment portfolio. It made an after-tax profit of $69.5m in 2018-19 and $101m in 2019-20 and again in 2020-21.

There are currently 115 people held by Australia on the island, with the transfer of people from the offshore regime on PNG to Nauru, and the departure of some refugees for America.

Australia’s unjust and inhumane offshore refugee detention policies need to be overturned, and this obscene profiteering needs to come to an end. What a colossal waste of financial resources… What a tragedy for refugees stranded in limbo.