Spend one billion dollars in Tasmania and save four billion in taxpayer dollars.
That's the economic case being made by business people in Launceston who want asylum seekers processed in Tasmania instead of in offshore detention centres.
Called the Tasmania Opportunity, the proposal would include allowing people to live and work in the community.
It's being described as one of the biggest and most far-reaching projects in Tasmanian history and it's attracted the support of prominent human rights lawyer Julian Burnside.
Mr Burnside has been arguing for years that housing asylum seekers in regional and rural Australia makes sense for a range of reasons, including the cost.
He says it would be just one tenth of what the federal government spends now.
Launceston paediatrican Doctor David Strong is a spokesman for the Tasmania Opportunity.
"We understand that there has been lots of language and some of that language is recent language, that has been used to convince Australians that what is happening an acceptable strategy. Many, many intelligent Australians that we have spoken to have expressed discomfort with that language and have seen beyond that language, into the realities and feel that morally, financially, socially, legally in terms of international relationships there are lots of reasons why they feel great discomfort around current policy."
Tony Foster is the mayor of city of Brighton just outside of Hobart.
He says the proposal is well worth considering.
"A saving of maybe in the order of four billion dollars a year with a proposal they have that to me is very hard to argue with. The humanitarian side, very hard to argue with so really what it would do for Tasmania would be, I guess create probably the biggest industry we've ever had."
For more than 30 years the Migrant Resource Centre Northern Tasmania based in Launceston has been supporting newly arrived refugees.
Its chair Jane Douglas says the proposal sounds attractive, but there are a couple of challenges which would need to be addressed.
"In relation to whether the asylum seekers that they would propose bringing in to Tasmania are part of communities that have already been established or settled in Northern Tasmania or whether the proposal would be to bring them in relatively large numbers in order to establish new communities and, of course, there are challenges inherent both in that in terms of numbers that can be managed successfully in a community and how long that would take but also if the proposal is to bring new migrant communities into the state there's always an inherent risk that people will not stay if they're not part of an established community."
Jane Douglas says her organisation wasn't consulted about the proposal.
"The devil will be in the detail around this proposal and my understanding is that generally speaking the proposal is around community based settlement and it has to be, that has to be a better option particularly for women and children."
Brighton's mayor Tony Foster says the plan is in its infancy and the detail will need to be fleshed out.
But he says the overall idea is a good one which would improve Australia's image overseas.
"Rather than a pariah which we're seen as at the moment because of the way we address humanitarian issues that could be alleviated and I would think that for the government, federal government that is, it's win win in looking at that. Closing Manus Island, closing Nauru, forget about the Cambodian idea which is an absolute disgrace, concentrate on Tasmania."
