It was never meant to last so long.
On Saturday, Australia was about to move the last refugee from offshore processing on Nauru, ostensibly ending the second iteration of offshore processing on the Pacific island, after nearly 11 years.
Several refugees were flown to Canada this week for resettlement, while the rest have been brought to Australia temporarily. Two asylum seekers will remain on the island for domestic legal reasons. A policy that was only ever intended to be temporary lasted more than a decade, at immense human and financial cost.
(August 1, 2012)
Gillard government announces asylum seekers who arrive by boat will be sent to Nauru (and Manus), accepting some of the recommendations of an expert panel, which included re-starting ‘offshore processing’. The first asylum seekers - 30 Sri Lankans - are sent to Nauru in September.
(July 20, 2013)
The detention centre burns down. 125 people arrested for riotous behaviour.
(January 20, 2014)
The cost for a journalist visa to Nauru is increased from $200 to $8000.
(August 20, 2014)
The number of refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru peaks at 1233 (about 10% of the Nauruan population).
(September 20, 2014)
Australia announces its ‘Cambodia deal’, to send refugees from Nauru to Cambodia. The deal costs in excess of $55m and ultimately resettles one person. In a massive data breach, the home affairs department dumps the personal information of thousands of refugees online, potentially exposing them, or their families, to further persecution. Unaccompanied refugee children are assaulted on Nauru.
(March 20, 2015)
The government’s Moss Review reveals assaults, rapes against refugees. The school for refugee children on Nauru is closed.
(August 20, 2015)
A Senate inquiry finds children should be removed from Nauru.
(February 20, 2016)
Let Them Stay campaign for babies born in Australia to asylum seeker parents. Doctors refuse to discharge ‘Baby Asha’ from Brisbane hospital because Nauru is unsafe. Rolling protests at detention centre, including hunger strikes. Omid Masoumali self-immolates on Nauru in protest.
(August 20, 2016)
The Nauru Files published . Australian government signs ‘US deal’ to swap refugees with USA.
(August 20, 2017)
Pregnant and critically ill refugees refused medical transfers from Nauru.
(August 20, 2018)
Widespread suicide attempts by children - including by self-immolation - and resignation syndrome amongst children. MSF kicked off Nauru, doctors argue system is incompatible with medical ethics.
(March 20, 2019)
Introduction of medevac bill giving doctors authority over medical transfers off Nauru. It was repealed in December 2019.
(October 20, 2020)
UK seeks to emulate Australian offshore policy with own detention centres in Rwanda.
(September 20, 2021)
Australia and Nauru sign deal for ‘enduring’ form of offshore processing. Cost of housing refugees on Nauru reaches $4.3m per person, per year. Brisbane Construction firm Canstruct will ultimately make $1.82bn over five years running offshore on Nauru.
(March 20, 2022)
Australia accepts NZ standing offer to resettle refugees from Nauru, nine years after it was first made.
(August 20, 2022)
Scandal-plagued US private prisons operator MTC takes over the contract to run ‘garrison and welfare services’ on Nauru, as numbers on the island continue to fall.
(May 20, 2023)
Australia confirms it will continue to pay $350m a year as a ‘contingency’ to keep a closed Nauru detention centre in abeyance, but on standby. Refugees told all will be moved off Nauru by end of June.
And while the final, quiet flights are an ending, they are not a close. The architecture and policy still remain: Australia retains an “enduring” offshore detention centre on the island, on standby to be re-enlivened at any time.
A short term ‘circuit breaker’
Offshore was never meant to last.
As Madeline Gleeson, senior research fellow at the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW and the author of Offshore, explains, offshore processing was intended to be reintroduced only until a more collaborative, comprehensive regional framework for processing asylum claims could be established.
Offshore processing was just one of the reforms an expert panel encouraged the then Gillard government to enact in 2012, including greater cooperation with Indonesia and Malaysia and boosting Australia’s humanitarian intake.
While the offshore component was swiftly put into place, the rest never followed. Cooperation with south-east Asian neighbours faltered and Australia’s humanitarian intake, instead of increasing, has fallen in the decade since.
“Offshore processing was reintroduced in 2012 on the basis of an expert recommendation that it be a short term ‘circuit breaker’ until more strategic and effective policies could be introduced to address the protection needs of people on the move in our region,” Gleeson says.
“But what actually came to pass was very different. More than a decade later, we have only just removed the last people from Nauru and still the policy is being retained as a core pillar of Australian asylum policy. Meanwhile the real issues – addressing the root causes of displacement and providing safe pathways to protection for those who need it – remain unresolved.”
For a decade, asylum policy dominated election cycles in Australia, coarsened public debate and distorted government policy. The Abbott-led Coalition nearly won power in 2010 on the back of the simplistic promise it would “Stop the Boats”, then did so three years later.
Offshore detention did not stop the boats. In the first 12 months after the policy was implemented, government figures show more people arrived by sea seeking asylum than at any time in Australian history. Within three months, Australia’s offshore processing centres were overfull and the government had to stop sending people there. No one has been sent offshore since 2014.
“Offshore processing failed to achieve its stated objectives of ‘stopping the boats’ or ‘saving lives at sea’,” Gleeson says. “During the height of this policy, more asylum seekers were trying to reach Australia by boat than at any previous time. What it was effective at doing was dehumanising people who came here in search of safety, and scoring political points.”
Gleeson argues the most significant legacy of Australia’s offshore policy has been its extraordinary cost, both human and financial.
“Men, women, families, children were broken down – physically and mentally – in the hope that it might send a message to others not to dare seek safety in Australia the same way.”
It was a message funded by billions in Australian taxpayer dollars – conservative estimates suggest more than $12bn. But the full costs are not yet known, nor are they finished.
The government confirmed last month in Senate estimates that, despite the Nauru detention centre being closed, and all refugees moved off the island, the government would continue to pay $350m as a “contingency”, for its “enduring” offshore capability to be held in abeyance on the island.
A spokesperson for the Department of Home Affairs said ahead of the final flight off the island: “Australia’s border policies have not changed.
“People who attempt to travel to Australia by boat without a valid Australian visa have zero chance of settling in Australia.
“Australia’s turn-back policy remains in place – those who cannot be safely returned will be transferred to a regional processing country.”
The spokesperson said offshore processing remained a “key pillar” of the government’s “Operation Sovereign Borders”, and that the Nauru processing centre – Australia’s “enduring offshore capability” – stood “ready to receive and process any new unauthorised maritime arrivals, future-proofing Australia’s response to maritime people smuggling”.
In Papua New Guinea – host of Australia’s other former offshore site – detention was ended by the country’s supreme court, which ruled the detention centre was unconstitutional and must be shut.
But about 80 men remain there within the offshore policy’s control, most in the capital, Port Moresby.
Australia claims it handed over legal responsibility for the men to PNG at the end of 2021 – a position not supported by international law – and it continues to pay, through the PNG government, for welfare and other support for the men.
International consequences
The Nauru Files, a cache of leaked internal working documents written by staff on the island and published by Guardian Australia in 2016, detailed sexual violence against children as young as six, violent assaults against detainees and systemic neglect. Senior United Nations officials said the Nauru camp was “cruel and inhuman” and a violation of the convention against torture. Médecins Sans Frontières said the mental health suffering on Nauru was “among the most severe MSF has ever seen”.
Gleeson says the way Australia treated the youngest people seeking its protection – the babies and children – stands out as “especially barbaric”.
“Children are particularly vulnerable, especially those who have already fled conflict and trauma and survived the stress of a boat journey,” she says. “They should have been met with compassion, care and humanity. Instead, they were deliberately exposed to further and unnecessary trauma, just to reinforce the message to others not to seek protection in Australia by boat.”
The “active” phase of offshore processing’s second iteration essentially ends with the flights from Nauru on Saturday, but this is the tail of long, slow decline.
The number of refugees and asylum seekers peaked on the island – at 1,233 – in August 2014. The last five people were sent there the next month.
But bipartisan commitment to the policy remains.
“The removal of people from Nauru is a welcome and long overdue move, but by no means brings this saga to a close,” Gleeson says. “There are many refugees living in the community around Australia. Most are now either on or being transitioned to a permanent visa but those transferred back from Nauru and PNG recently are, arbitrarily, excluded, and still being told they must find somewhere else to call home.”
There are potential international consequences too. Australia has served as an exemplar to other countries – notably wealthy liberal democracies, who are seeking to enact similar policies, rather than developing countries which host the vast majority – 76% – of the world’s displaced.
The UK has explicitly cited Australia’s example in its effort to establish its Rwanda asylum deal for those seeking asylum by boat across the English channel.
But Britain’s repeated efforts to enact the plan have been stymied by practical and legal obstacles, Gleeson says.
“Whether Australia’s policies undermine protection everywhere, or are proven to be impractical and unlawful, remains to be seen.”
A fragile future
When Syed* fled Bangladesh by boat a decade ago, his wife was heavily pregnant. He promised her he would bring his family to Australia as soon as he could, that they would start a new life together.
Syed now lives in community detention in Brisbane after being medically transferred from Nauru last year. He is yet to receive medical treatment or news about when he might be granted permanent residency in a third country – not Australia.
The promises he makes to his wife and now 10-year-old daughter remain unfulfilled.
“I always speak to her on the phone and she asks me when [will] she hug me, when [will] she see me? She says ‘I’m big now, I’m grown up’,” he says.
“I say ‘next month or next year’, and she tells me I’m lying.”
Syed still suffers from the years he spent on Nauru. He waits still for an MRI and an endoscopy for painful digestive problems that he developed on the island four years ago.
The uncertainty, too, remains. Any future he can conceive of is fragile. In community detention, Syed is not permitted to work or study, so he spends a lot of time at his local shops. To his surprise, many of the Australians he has spoken with know nothing about their government’s detention regime in Nauru.
“Millions of their money spent on punishing refugees, and they don’t know. I’m shocked,” he says.
“I also don’t know how long I’ll suffer. It’s a painful, painful process … There’s no humanity, there’s no justice.”
*Name has been changed
