Nauru is back in the Australian news which can only mean one thing - Australia is about to exile some more refugees there. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke went to Nauru last week for a series of meetings that culminated in a deal for Nauru to provide permanent residence for up to 280 asylum seekers. In return, Australia has agreed to pay the Nauru government a one-off $400m and then $70m per year thereafter. It's not clear how long this nonsense will continue but if we assume it will last for five years, it will cost the Australian government a total of $750m, or $2.7m per asylum seeker. Nauru from the air. It just so happens that I went to Nauru for a few days some years ago. I can't tell you what I did there, but I can tell you that it was a depressing place. There were a lot of asylum seekers there at the time, living under a regime known as 'open detention'. That is to say, they were free to roam the island at will. Some were still living i...
'Contemplating the teeming life of the shore, we have an uneasy sense of the communication of some universal truth that lies just beyond our grasp.' - Rachel Carson