The Federal Government has handed a $370 million contract to a private company to run seven immigration detention centres despite promising in 2007 to end the practice.
Labor's 2007 national platform and constitution promises on asylum seeker policy that ''The length and conditions of detention must be subject to review and detention centres managed by the public sector''.
But in a move that has outraged refugee groups, the Australian division of the multinational Serco Group begins the takeover of the centres from former contract holder G4S today.
The Villawood, Maribyrnong, Darwin and Perth centres, and three centres on Christmas Island, will be run by Serco.
Immigration Minister Chris Evans defended the about-face which led to Serco being awarded the five-year contract.
He said a tender process to run the centres had been begun by the Howard government in March 2006 and pulling out would have ''exposed the Commonwealth to potential compensation claims from the tenderers. There is also an absence of alternative public service providers''.
Reaction from A Just Australia in today's Canberra Times
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