Spending on offshore detention centres has not been reduced in the federal budget to reflect the refugee resettlement agreement with the United States because of the deep uncertainty surrounding the arrangement.
For 2017-18 the government has budgeted $713,641 for offshore detention, lower than the $1,082,894 it spent in 2016-17 but well above the $434,000 it had allocated for the period in the mid-year economic forecast.
In the following three years, spending still follows the slow decline set out by the midyear forecasts in December.
The US has said it will take up to 1,250 refugees from the offshore centres on Nauru and Manus Island subject to “extreme vetting”, under the deal struck between the Turnbull government and the former Obama administration.
But the agreement raised the ire of the US president, Donald Trump, and was the cause of the testy first phone call between Malcolm Turnbull and the new US leader. In their first face-to-face meeting last week the leaders insisted that the deal remained on track but officials are still so uncertain about how many refugees will be resettled in the US they have not changed the budget forecasts to reflect it.
The Turnbull government’s budget does factor in savings of $46.8m over five years from the “fast-track” processing of asylum seekers already in Australia.
