Big business profits from asylum seeker detention centres

Vanguard September 2013 p. 9
Ned K.

Imperialism’s media outlets and their political representatives in parliament in Australia, led currently by Rudd and Abbott, have a lot to say about the money that so-called ‘people smugglers’ make out of asylum seekers who fill the boats bound for Australia from the shores of Indonesia and beyond.

What they don’t talk about is the millions of dollars made by multinationals from the incarceration of asylum seekers.

Detention centres in Australia, Manus Island and Nauru are privatised and run for profit by multinational companies such as Serco and G4S.

These multinationals are likely to make more profit from the detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru because the wages and conditions of detention centre workers there is likely to be far less than wages and conditions of detention centre workers in Australia.

Other multinationals such as Transfield and Toll make huge profits from contracts with the federal government to supply equipment, materials, food supplies and construction of the centres.

Some of these multinationals make so much money out of the plight of millions of asylum seekers around the world that they have a vested interest in the number of asylum seekers ever increasing.

Placing detention centres in developing countries like Papua New Guinea rather than Australia suits them down to the ground, as they can take short cuts to increase profits more easily, far away from the eyes of the Australian people.

Detention centres have become a growth industry for imperialism, a contributor to their political representatives’ Gross Domestic Product. How decadent is the system of imperialism that includes and welcomes detention centres as contributors to the system’s “economic growth”!