Border security billion-dollar budget hole

The federal government's boat people policy is sinking Treasurer Wayne Swan's budget with the cost of detaining asylum seekers blowing out by $1 billion.

As the number of arrivals continues to mount - 10 more asylum seekers arrived by boat yesterday - The Daily Telegraph can reveal the five-year contract with the private firm Serco to run the majority of the country's detention centres until 2014 has blown out by a further $700 million.Contracts for providing public health services have also been revised up by $200 million and the cost of providing residential homes will rise by $50 million.

The total contract cost for Serco to just run the centres is now five times the estimate of the original contract of $279 million in 2009, which was last revised at the end of 2011 to $1.03 billion.

The latest figures for the revised private sector contracts, which all fall within this budget year, are contained in an Australian National Audit Office report released this week, which also criticised the government for allowing the costs to rise before contract variations were agreed.

Other contracts obtained by The Daily Telegraph reveal that the cost for providing contracted health services to detention centres has been revalued up for the five years until 2014 from $70 million to $272 million.

Residential hosting contracts for the same period have also been revised up from $44 million to $93 million.

The blowout comes on top of a disastrous week for the Treasurer, who was forced to defend a collapse in the budgeted revenue from the mining tax and then reassure voters he would not raise income taxes to help plug the budget.

"As a result of the variations, the value of the (detention centres) contract has increased from $279.22 million to $1.67 billion," the ANAO report said.

"Due to the rapid growth in the immigration detention program, many of the valuations were not executed until after the services were in place. These variations should have been formalised much earlier.

"The figures contradict evidence this week to a senate estimates hearing in which Finance Department officials claimed that the annual budget costs for immigration would dramatically fall from the forecast $2.2 billion to $338 million by 2015.

In a desperate bid to limit further damage to the budget in an election year, it has based immigration budget forecasts on an assumption the government will stop boat arrivals.

More than 33,000 asylum seekers have arrived in Australia since Labor came to power.

Mr Swan's spokeswoman said that financial statements released by the finance minister "show that total government spending is running more than $1 billion below MYEFO estimates for the first six months of the year".

A spokeswoman for Immigration Minister Brendan O'Connor, who has been in the job just two weeks, also said the policy of releasing people on bridging visas would bring down costs.

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the ANAO report exposed the government's fudging.

"The increase in Serco's contract is 10 times what the government's mining tax has raised in the past six months."

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/asylum-seekers-ram-a-billion-dollar-hole-in-budget/story-e6freuy9-1226579186603

Immigration worker catches TB

A DETENTION centre staffer who has worked at Christmas Island and Villawood has been hospitalised in Sydney with the potentially lethal infection tuberculosis (TB).

The woman is believed to have been stationed at Christmas Island for 18 months before recently moving to Sydney, where she developed symptoms of the disease leading to her hospitalisation two weeks ago.

A Department of Immigration spokesman said

testing had taken place and there was no concern for the woman's colleagues, other detainees or the community.

Asylum seekers are given chest X-rays and tests for the lung infection TB when they arrive at Christmas Island.

It is not the first case of front line workers falling ill with six Customs staff coming down with TB, caught from asylum seekers intercepted on boats, three years ago.

"The department can confirm a detention services staff member



based at Villawood has a confirmed case of TB," a departmental spokesman said.

"The risk of transfer of the disease to another person at this time is minimal and no further cases have been reported."

It came as the department confirmed PNG police had to be called after 20 asylum seekers fled the Manus Island processing centre on Thursday.

Meanwhile, an Indonesian people smuggling syndicate is believed to have an agent working out of Sydney through whom asylum seekers make payments and book their passage to Australia.

The Australian Federal Police have refused to say whether they are aware of the man.

However, a senior source from the Indonesian National Police has confirmed that details about the man were passed on to the AFP.

Details of the operation and the Sydney-based agent were revealed by an Afghan man, Dawood Amiri, who is facing people-smuggling charges in Indonesia over a boat which sank last year on the way to Christmas Island, killing 90.

Amiri, who has admitted to sending several asylum seeker boats to Australia, was responsible for facilitating the collection of payments in Indonesia for a major smuggling syndicate.

He claims the unnamed man fulfils a similar role in Australia and is still operating.

"(The man) is the agent in Australia collecting payment for people smuggling," he said this week from his cell at the East Jakarta District Court ahead of his hearing on Wednesday.

The indictment against Amiri court suggests the man is connected to another people smuggler, Pakistani Mohammad Ali Chotay, alias Reza Wakili.

Indonesian prosecutors allege the pair had links to people-smuggling kingpin Sayed Abbas, who is in detention in Jakarta.

Australia has been seeking the extradition of Abbas since 2009.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/asylum-seeker-infection-fears-immigration-worker-catches-tuberculosis/story-e6freuy9-1226579182828

Editorial: Border control a failure for Gillard

Of all the issues troubling the federal Labor government of Julia Gillard, the two most vexing are border control and budget constraint.

The first is made clear by the sheer weight of numbers. Last year saw the arrival in Australian territory of more than 13,000 asylum seekers, an amount similar to the number that arrived during the entire 12 years of John Howard's time in office.

The second is probably best shown by the government's anticipated failure to provide a budget surplus, after literally hundreds of assurances from Prime Minister Gillard, Treasurer Wayne Swan and other senior Labor figures that a surplus was on the way.

Budget problems and the border shambles are connected, as today's exclusive Daily Telegraph report makes clear.

The government's original 2009 contract with private security firm Serco to run Australia's immigration detention centres was valued at $279 million. That figure has since blown out to five times the initial amount, as wave after wave of arrivals stretch immigration resources and the capacity of detention housing.

We spent around $1 billion during 2012 on immigrant housing and will most likely spend even more in 2013 - all to address a problem caused by Labor's changes to our previously successful asylum seeker policies.

The human cost in lives lost is another factor that cannot be put aside while discussing this issue.

Seeking a more humanitarian outcome for asylum seekers has actually condemned many to deaths at sea. This was an inevitable result of policies that fail to offer as much deterrence as possible to asylum seekers and people smugglers.

Should the Labor government lose office later this year, the legacy of its asylum seeker decisions will sadly grind on. Fixing this particular problem will doubtlessly require even greater spending.

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/opinion/border-control-a-failure-for-gillard/story-e6frezz0-1226579037845

Any way you look at it, Labor has managed to turn a successful policy under the Howard government into an unmitigated disaster of epic proportions and despite their constant pathetic efforts to divert the blame to Tony Abbott, the Labor Party has no one else but Rudd and Gillard to blame. This issue, along with the economy, will be the two main policy issues of this election. You can count on it and Abbott will wipe the floor with Gillard on both issues.

These damned reffos...whats next..hundreds of thousands a day lining up for protection like they do in Africa, Asia and Europe!

adelcrow wrote on Feb 16^th, 2013 at 7:20am:

These damned reffos...whats next..hundreds of thousands a day lining up for protection like they do in Africa, Asia and Europe!

Indeed, but why hadn't these reffos fought for their country?

Do you think that Aussies would cowardly scramble into fishing boats and go where they are become bludgers? At the same time breeding more of the same for Aust. to feed.

If the government greeted them with picks and shovels, I'm sure they would find alternatives.

olde.sault wrote on Feb 16^th, 2013 at 7:27am:

adelcrow wrote on Feb 16th, 2013 at 7:20am: These damned reffos...whats next..hundreds of thousands a day lining up for protection like they do in Africa, Asia and Europe! Indeed, but why hadn't these reffos fought for their country? Do you think that Aussies would cowardly scramble into fishing boats and go where they are become bludgers? At the same time breeding more of the same for Aust. to feed. If the government greeted them with picks and shovels, I'm sure they would find alternatives.

I also wonder why these wretchedly poor civilians dont take on these well armed and trained terrorists and insurgents with gardening implements.
We know it makes sense

adelcrow wrote on Feb 16^th, 2013 at 7:31am:

olde.sault wrote on Feb 16th, 2013 at 7:27am: adelcrow wrote on Feb 16th, 2013 at 7:20am: These damned reffos...whats next..hundreds of thousands a day lining up for protection like they do in Africa, Asia and Europe! Indeed, but why hadn't these reffos fought for their country? Do you think that Aussies would cowardly scramble into fishing boats and go where they are become bludgers? At the same time breeding more of the same for Aust. to feed. If the government greeted them with picks and shovels, I'm sure they would find alternatives. I also wonder why these wretchedly poor civilians dont take on these well armed and trained terrorists and insurgents with gardening implements. We know it makes sense

Just sorta wondering how many of these people you house at your place   ;)

Labor took a problem that no longer existed and turned it into a catastrophe. Only the Labor Party could do that!!!

you wont hear anymore on this thread from crow eater, you checkmated him/her/it

I wouldn't trust labor to provide security for a Blue Light Disco, let alone this country.

olde.sault wrote on Feb 16^th, 2013 at 7:27am:

adelcrow wrote on Feb 16th, 2013 at 7:20am: These damned reffos...whats next..hundreds of thousands a day lining up for protection like they do in Africa, Asia and Europe! Indeed, but why hadn't these reffos fought for their country? Do you think that Aussies would cowardly scramble into fishing boats and go where they are become bludgers? At the same time breeding more of the same for Aust. to feed. If the government greeted them with picks and shovels, I'm sure they would find alternatives.

I commend olde sault for actively defending your nation in Afghanistan.

Four boats in three days over the last week or so. Yeah, Labor has a real handle on this problem that they created all by themselves!

Labor will pay for their border protection policy come September.
Their level of gross policy stupidity, waste and incompetence can only be rewarded one way.
Throw the bums out, and for a very very long time.

chicken_lipsforme wrote on Feb 20^th, 2013 at 10:50am:

Labor will pay for their border protection policy come September. Their level of gross policy stupidity, waste and incompetence can only be rewarded one way. Throw the bums out, and for a very very long time.

They're paying for it in advance. Just look at the polls.

They should be thankful they're not Chinese politicians, they would have been arrested and shot by now, we do things differently here though, we reward political incompetence by showering them with money for the rest of their lives.