Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

I thank Senator Cash for her question. It is a shame, however, that she has to buy her information from the Daily Telegraph rather than read it in MYEFO. It does highlight one of the issues that the opposition suffer from—the inability to read MYEFO. These are not new costs. The value of these variations was in, as I indicated, MYEFO, so they do not have any new impact on the budget. If the opposition were really concerned about the cost of immigration detention facilities, they would stop the negativity and work with the government to re-establish offshore processing to provide a genuine deterrent to taking a dangerous boat journey to Australia rather than getting their newsflash from the Daily Telegraph.

The cheaper option and the government's preferred option is a successful Malaysia arrangement, but the opposition's negative politics have ended offshore processing. The increase in the detention services reflects the expansion of the detention network since the contracts were originally signed and the opening of 10 new facilities, including Curtin in WA, which you asked about yesterday, Inverbrackie and Pontville as well as the Darwin Airport Lodge. We also acknowledge that immigration detention is expensive just as it was for the previous government. The costs that you found are now reflected, of course. The department currently has two contracts with Serco—one for immigration detention centres and one for immigration residential housing. So you have to take the two issues apart and, of course, there is also the immigration transit accommodation centre. (Time expired)