Submission into offshore processing

Download the PDF submission here.

Introduction

The St Vincent de Paul Society (the Society) welcomes the opportunity to make a submission to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs References Committee’s inquiry into offshore processing and resettlement.

The Society is a national charitable organisation with a long history of supporting people seeking asylum and refugees across Australia, through direct assistance, service delivery, and policy advocacy.

The Society’s position is grounded in the principles of Catholic Social Teaching in particular, the dignity of every human person. The Society respects Australia’s domestic and international human rights laws which protect the vulnerable. Australia’s offshore processing regime and related third-country arrangements continue to cause serious harm to people seeking our protection, while also raising significant concerns about integrity, transparency, and value for money for Australian taxpayers.

This submission addresses the Committee’s terms of reference relating to payments to contractors and third parties, the outcomes and effects of those payments, and the integrity and value-for-money of current arrangements, with particular reference to arrangements since 2022.

The Society notes that this inquiry is limited to offshore processing and resettlement arrangements since 2022. However, we believe that the current arrangements cannot be assessed in isolation from their longer and continuous operations in the same two countries, Papua New Guinea and Nauru, since 2012-13. Policy and funding decisions made by successive governments provide an important context to understanding today’s offshore processing and resettlement arrangements.

Outcomes and Effects

The principal effect of current arrangements has been the traumatisation of thousands of people over more than a decade, with the Government’s actions in the last four years reinforcing that treatment for the hundreds still suffering under the regime.

The principal outcome is that there are still:

• nearly 30 people, some with families, in Port Moresby, one of the most dangerous capital cities in the world, who’ve been in the country for nearly 13 years, most with no hope of re-settlement in a safe country
• approximately 100 residents on Nauru, one of the least accessible countries in our region, with none having the prospect of safe re-settlement elsewhere, and
• several hundred people living in our community, having been medically evacuated from Nauru and
  Papua New Guinea, with only a few eligible for re-settlement to New Zealand, before that
  arrangement ends on 30 June 2026.

Read more download the PDF submission.