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ANGE:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ange McCormack. This is 7am.

After a boat of asylum seekers landed in WA last week and were sent to Nauru, old debates about offshore immigration detention have been reanimated.

It comes as the government has admitted $80 million dollars it gave to Papua New Guinea to support asylum seekers that Australia had no solutions for, is unaccounted for and no one knows how it was spent.

So, how did millions of taxpayer dollars disappear? And what does it mean for the asylum seekers who have nowhere else to go?

Today, chief political correspondent for The Saturday Paper, Karen Middleton, on Australia’s management of offshore detention.

It’s Wednesday, February 21.

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ANGE:

Karen, to begin with, I want to talk about a group of asylum seekers that Australia once sent to Manus Island and who are now stuck in Papua New Guinea. What have we learned about how that group is doing right now?

KAREN:

Based on the reports of advocates for those people who are here in Australia. They're not doing very well.

These people are really in limbo effectively. They weren't able to be part of arrangements with the United States or New Zealand to send people there. They can't be sent to Australia because Australia has said under successive governments they will not have anyone who came by boat.

And so they just left in a situation where even in the country where they are living, some of them can't work, some of them can't have any official status because they're not deemed to be refugees.

Audio excerpt – Refugee:

“It's been ten years, you know, ten years multiplied by 360. It may be a lot of days, you know, without families.”

KAREN:

So they really stuck. And in what seems to be an increasingly dire set of circumstances.
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Audio excerpt – Refugee:

“I have faced a lot of difficulties, like stress, hmm, depression. Even I don't have words. I can't explain what I have been through in these ten years.”

KAREN:

We are hearing really terrible stories. I spoke to Advocate Ian Rintoul, and he told me the story of an Iranian man who'd been arrested just a week or so ago for trying to steal food because he hadn't got any food and couldn't feed his family. There's no money for, for rent, there's no money for electricity. There's no money for food or for medical treatment.

I've been contacted by another Australian advocate for some of these people. One of those men has now got a terribly badly infected mosquito bites on his leg. She's got a video of that which looks horrendous. They looked to me like the amount of turned septic, and he has tried to get medical treatment and has been refused medical treatment. They're living in boarding house conditions in low rent places where they can find accommodation.

But the money that Australia has sent to support them has not got through to them.

ANGE:

Okay, so can you explain more about this money that was meant to be supporting this group of people in PNG? Where had it come from, and why hasn’t it gone through to them?

KAREN:

Yes. Well, the why is a big mystery, Ange. The money itself was part of an agreement between the Australian government under the Morrison government prior to the 2022 election and the Papua New Guinea government. It involved what we believe to be about $80 million in total, to be paid in three separate tranches. The last of those was actually paid under the Albanese Labour government in 2022.

The money was going to the Papua New Guinea government to then be distributed to these 57 people and their families to assist in supporting them getting established in Papua New Guinea. Now, some of them aren't able to take paid work because they've been found not to be refugees, and they're therefore not allowed to work in Papua New Guinea. So they really need independent assistance financially.

The money was meant to have been to support these people and their families, who we believe total about 130 people all up until the end of 2025. But that money is the money that's disappeared.

It came up last week in the context of some questioning in a Senate estimates committee hearing that was dealing with a range of issues relating to the offshore detention regime, as it now is and as it once was.

Audio excerpt – Stephanie Foster:

“So, Senator, I've been on the record several times today. To say that the department has made significant improvements over the course of this history of contracting for regional processing.”

KAREN:

But the Senate questioning was also looking at this issue about the money in Papua New Guinea. Independent Senator David Pocock and Greens Senator Nick McKim were grilling the Secretary of the Home Affairs Department, Stephanie Foster, about these.

Audio excerpt – David Pocock:

“As secretary of the department, are you confident that all of the money provided to PNG was spent effectively on welfare, medical care, accommodation, support of this cohort of people that we are giving them money to care for?”

Audio excerpt – Stephanie Foster:

“Senator. The, the way in which the arrangement was constructed, gave that responsibility to the PNG government, and I'm afraid I'm not able to give you that assurance.”

KAREN:

And interestingly, she and one of her senior officials both acknowledged quite directly that they cannot guarantee that the money Australia has paid is getting to where it was supposed to for medical support, food and living.

And they also can't guarantee that it hasn't been misappropriated or fallen victim to corruption.

Audio excerpt – David Pocock:

“I'm interested in what fraud and corruption prevention controls were applied to this funding agreement.”

Audio excerpt – Speaker:

“Second, as I said, I can't, can't.”

Audio excerpt – David Pocock:

“Can't tell us?”

KAREN:

We saw the Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape come to Australia just a week or two ago. He had talks with Anthony Albanese. They issued a joint communique about other aspects of the relationship and some financial support that Australia offers to help PNG with its budget repair, but their statement did not acknowledge this agreement or the status of it, or whether Australia has ongoing concerns about the fate of the money.

ANGE:

Yeah, right. So I guess it sounds like neither our government nor the PNG government are really keen to put these people in their conditions, are living under the top of the agenda. So how do we figure out who is responsible here?

KAREN:

Well, it's an excellent question. And we've, we've had a review just recently that was also the subject of some of these questions in the estimates committee last week. And it was conducted by Dennis Richardson, a former very senior bureaucrat, former head of ASIO, the spy agency.

Audio excerpt – News Reporter:

“Dennis Richardson's report has found the Home Affairs Department, run by then minister Peter Dutton, used shortcuts during contracting. It led to hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer funds going to companies now accused of criminal wrongdoing. “

KAREN:

Dennis Richardson's review does not actually go to the arrangement between Australia and Papua New Guinea in terms of supporting those asylum seekers in an ongoing way, but it does look in a very detailed way at the relationship Australia had with a number of private contractors.

Some of whom had connections into the government there to manage the offshore detention system in Papua New Guinea and provide what we call garrison services there to run those detention centres.

And it's the best picture we've got thus far in a comprehensive sense of how all these contracts came about and how they were managed.

So I wanted to talk to him about that. And even though he hasn't found any individual responsible, not the then minister and not the then secretary, he has been absolutely scathing about the way these contracts were let and the way they were managed.

ANGE:

After the break - can the Albanese government have confidence in Australia’s offshore detention regime?

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ANGE:

Karen, you mentioned there's been this review into the management of Australia's offshore detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru. What did we learn about offshore detention from that?

KAREN:

Well, it was a pretty unfortunate picture in terms of the way those contracts were let. Dennis Richardson found that the Home Affairs government just did not do adequate due diligence into the sorts of companies it was engaging with and paying hundreds of millions of dollars to.

And he found that a number of them were small companies without much of a record in terms of delivering the sort of services that were required. And in a couple of cases at least, it transpired that there were executives from those companies under investigation by the Australian Federal Police for potential criminal activity, things like money laundering, violence. Executives may have been involved in trying to bypass United States trade sanctions against Iran.

So a picture had emerged that some of these companies had a questionable record. But it seems that none of this was communicated to the people within the Home Affairs department who were involved in letting the contracts.

So Dennis Richardson was very scathing about the way the contracts had been managed. You know, there should have been a much better process. Alternative contractors should have been examined.

And he also made an observation about the creation of the Home Affairs department in the first place, which was quite controversial back in 2017 when the Coalition was in government. And in fact, Peter Dutton was the minister.

And he said that the creation of that mega department does not appear to have had any positive impact on working arrangements inside it. And he criticised the culture that had involved and said it was not a co-operative culture at all.

ANGE:

And while this review by Dennis Richardson didn't look at the money that we were talking about earlier, which was meant to support these former detainees in Papua New Guinea. What did he say to you about how that arrangement has gone?

KAREN:

Well, I asked him, obviously, about what he did look at when we talked about that at length.

Audio excerpt – Dennis Richardson :

“Every time there's a problem, people come up with a dozen different rules which, if applied and followed, would avoid the problem.”

KAREN:

And then I asked him about this other issue that had emerged in in media reports and in questioning about the way these kinds of arrangements are forged between two countries, because his report does note that there are limits to what you can examine or the way the law treats, contractual agreements between the Australian government and a foreign government. He he was restricted in what he could look at to the contracts with private companies and individuals.

So I said to him, well, what do you make of such an agreement when money is flowing, is it possible to, to place conditions on an agreement like that?

Audio excerpt – Karen Middleton:

“Is it unreasonable to expect that an Australian government could set up a system that could place caveats on ongoing payments like that?”

Audio excerpt – Dennis Richardson:

“You could. No, no, you could, you could do that. You would have to do it obviously in agreement with the foreign government.”

KAREN:

And he said you could still put them on if an agreement is still flowing. So if it was part way through and you had concerns about where the money had gone, you could insert almost retrospective, I guess, conditions into an agreement.

Now we understand that this agreement is completed and that there is no plan for further transfer of money. So in that respect, it may be too late in this case. But it was interesting that he did say that he felt that it's a good thing to do, to have an accountability clause effectively to ensure that the money is doing what it's meant to.

ANGE:

And Karen, as we know, people did arrive in Australia by boat last week. And the Prime Minister said he was comfortable with the current regime of processing these people offshore. Given what we've learned about that system, how much confidence can he really have in it?

KAREN:

Well, this is the big question, isn't it? Now, the people who've just arrived and been found wandering around in the north west of Western Australia have been transferred to Nauru, which has still got an arrangement with the Australian government to receive asylum seekers in these kinds of circumstances. That's different to Papua New Guinea. And I guess the review was looking particularly at the situation in PNG and those contracts that were let there.

But it does raise the whole question again, about the offshore detention regime, about not only a country's legal obligations when people seek asylum, but also their moral and ethical obligations. And these are the kinds of debates we've had for many, many years.

Now the pressure is on the Labor government, which has long been on the side of the critics of this regime. It's certainly it was continued under Labor governments when Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard were in power.

But some of those in power now, like Anthony Albanese, had been very critical of the offshore detention regime and have Operation Sovereign Borders, and they now find themselves under a lot of political pressure to defend the system that they were uneasy about and in fact, to engage it and, actively maintain it.

So it does place them in an interesting political position going ahead to the next election. And it's quite clear that the opposition intends to only increase the pressure on them and highlight every time we hear speculation or confirmation of a boat coming to Australia. And so that makes this whole situation an ongoing difficulty, I think, for the Albanese government, both in practical terms and certainly in terms of the politics.

ANGE:

Karen, thanks so much for your time today.

KAREN:

Thanks, Ange.

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ANGE:

Also in the news today,

Independent MP Zali Steggall has called for random drug and alcohol testing of politicians, saying it would act as a deterrent for poor behaviour in Parliament House.

The Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has rejected such testing, saying politicians should act “responsibly at all times”.

And,

A NSW police officer has been charged over a crash that killed an Indigenous teenager in Sydney.

16-year-old Jai Wright was riding a motorbike that collided with an unmarked police car in February 2022. The police officer will face court next month for one count of negligent driving occasioning death and one count of dangerous driving occasioning death.

I’m Ange McCormack, this is 7am. We’ll be back again tomorrow.

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