The detention centre on Manus Island has cost Australian taxpayers about $2 billion since it was reopened four years ago - more than $1 million for each of the 2000 people who have been imprisoned there.
An analysis conducted by Fairfax Media with the Parliamentary Library has revealed that the immediate monetary cost of building and maintaining the detention centre on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea has so far has been a staggering $2 billion.
That is more than $1 million per detainee since the centre opened.
The paper has argued in its recent editorial titled "The figures are in: $2b for human misery is not a great result" that Australia has earned international opprobrium for its treatment of boat arrivals since the Tampa incident of 2001 although the Government bore the colossal expenditure on the operation of the detention centre.
Now more than ever, the government must work on a genuine, multilateral, humane and long-term set of policies to empty Australia's camps and, if they remain as a deterrent, improve conditions in them so as to better observe our international responsibilities as well as our moral obligations.
