REFUGEES ISSUE A TALE OF WASTE AND SUFFERING

WHAT would you do with $500,000 a year?

In January 2017 the Commonwealth Auditor found the Australian Government was spending around $500,000 of taxpayers money per refugee each year, in the offshore processing centres of Manus and Nauru as against around $12,000 a year for each asylum seeker who is processed onshore.

With about 600 people on Manus Island and around 300 on Nauru for the last 4½ years, that is a lot of taxpayer dollars.

Add suicides and frequent attempted suicides, a murder and two deaths from alleged medical neglect ( on Manus), deteriorating mental health states, and a recent Human Rights Watch report of increasing rates of violent attacks on refugees and asylum seekers by groups of armed locals on Manus.

Many Manus Islanders resent Australia’s heavy-handed management of the offshore processing.

There is also a lack of any workable plans for any future resettlement in a safe and welcoming place.

Are we all paying far too high a price for this government’s offshore processing of asylum seekers, policies?