Nick McKim (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

This report from the Australian National Audit Office is effectively a report into the establishment and operations of the detention centres on Manus and Nauru. I have to say, I am genuinely flabbergasted by the revelations in this report. Having digested but part of it in the short time available to me, I can confidently assert that the Department of Immigration and Border Protection would have terrible trouble organising the efficient purchase of a beer in a brewery. This is a damning and scathing report of an agency which in some aspects of its operations has clearly gone rogue. If people think I am overstating it, have a listen to this quote from the Australian National Audit Office:

The department used approaches which reduced competitive pressure and significantly increased the price of the services without Government authority to do so.

The Audit Office has also found:

The Department of Immigration and Border Protection's (DIBP) management of procurement activity for garrison support and welfare services at the offshore processing centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea (Manus Island) has fallen well short of effective procurement practice. This audit has identified serious and persistent deficiencies in the three phases of procurement activity undertaken since 2012 to: establish the centres; consolidate contracts; and achieve savings through an open tender process.

It then goes on to say in relation to the open tender process:

… the approach adopted by the department did not facilitate such an outcome—

the outcome being that the government had indicated desire to rein in the growing expenses associated with managing the centres. The Audit Office has made it clear that the approach of the department in fact did not facilitate such an outcome. This is the most extraordinary audit report—the most damning and scathing audit report I have seen in my time in politics. It reminds me of the ones that used to be made into Forestry Tasmania; and, believe me, that is not a kind comparison to make of the Department of Immigration and Border Protection.

But it gets worse for the department, because, of course, in the department's response it basically blames the government. Let me read you a bit of the department's response, contained in the audit report:

When legislation was passed on 17 August 2012 enabling regional processing—four days after the release of the expert panel's report—the Department needed to establish the necessary operational requirements immediately. Consistent with expectations, the first asylum seekers arrived in Nauru three weeks later … The Department met these requirements in an environment that was high-tempo, at the peak of national interest and complicated through logistics and uncertainties involved with processing in foreign countries.

In other words, the government should not have established in indecent haste regional processing centres in foreign countries. The Greens could not agree more with the Department of Immigration and Border Protection on that one. It was always going to end in tears and it has ended in people's tears. It has not only ended in a massive waste of taxpayers' money; it has ended in levels of human misery accomplished in the name of the Australian people that we have rarely seen in this country's history.

The Audit Office, make no mistake, has come down like a tonne of bricks on the Department of Immigration and Border Protection to the extent that I genuinely believe that the minister needs to seriously consider the position he finds himself in here. I make the same argument in relation to the secretary of the department. This is a scathing, damning report the likes of which I dare say this Senate has rarely seen. There are senior people not only in government but in the department that need to have a good, long look at themselves here, because we are talking about the expenditure of billions of dollars of taxpayers' money in a way that has not been in accordance with accepted principles of proper process and probity.