The Wire

The Federal Government has spent more than a billion dollars processing asylum seekers offshore under the Pacific Solution policy since 2001. A report released today by Oxfam Australia and lobby group ‘A Just Australia’ criticised the Pacific Solution for being a high cost policy that delivers relatively few results. They calculated a cost of more than half a million dollars per person for offshore processing and detention in Nauru, Manus Island, and Christmas Island. The research has prompted further criticism of the Pacific Solution policy, which Labor now says it will scrap if elected.