The federal government's offshore detention policy not only falls far short of humanitarian and international legal standards but of the basic financial rectitude that ought to underpin the expenditure of taxpayers' money.
The Commonwealth auditor in recent days released a report showing breaches by the government and its bureaucrats of fundamental rules governing spending.
This compounds the sheer fiscal stupidity of a policy that costs taxpayers $500,000 a year to keep a refugee in these cruel offshore camps, as against $12,000 to process a person onshore in the community.
The Australian National Audit Office's damning assessment is that the Immigration Department has "fallen well short" of expected standards in its management of contracts for detention facilities on Manus Island and Nauru.
The debacle beggars belief. The report found that of $2.3 billion paid over 40 months, $1.1 billion was approved without appropriate authorisation.
A further $1.1 billion was paid with "no departmental record" of who had authorised the transfers. The watchdog concluded the contracts' lack of effective guidelines and management mechanisms stemmed in part from the "great haste" with which the detention centres were established in 2012-13.
There were 871 people detained on Manus Island and 383 on Nauru at the end of November. More live now in the struggling Nauruan community. They should all be brought to Australia, where they can be processed quickly and safely.
Well-resourced regional processing centres should be set up, removing the incentive to get on boats. The situation will be mitigated, but not solved, should US President Donald Trump uphold an agreement for his nation to accept some of the refugees. But our government must shut these disgraceful centres.
