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DANIEL:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Daniel James. This is 7am.

For more than a decade, the British multinational Serco has managed Australia’s onshore immigration detention system.

During that time they’ve raked in billions of taxpayers dollars, and helped build what some described as one of the world’s most secretive and extreme detention regimes.

Their time has also been plagued by scandals, and allegations of mistreatment and disproportionate use of force.

Now the government has decided not to renew Serco’s contract, choosing instead to go with a US private prison operator.

Today, journalist and contributor to The Saturday Paper Denham Sadler on the ugly legacy of Serco and the future of immigration detention in Australia.

It’s Thursday, January 30.

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DANIEL:

Denham, you've been reporting on Australia's immigration detention system for ten years now. So can you tell me about Serco?

DENHAM:

Serco is this massive conglomerate based in the UK. They have a market cap of about $3 billion and they're listed on the London Stock Exchange. And they basically try and win any work that the government wants to outsource.

Audio Excerpt - Serco advertisement:

“What does a career with Serco look like? It’s secure employment where training is provided…”

DENHAM:

So they operate across defence, they operate in the space sector. They run cleaning services and they have a massive presence in the justice space. So they run prisons and they run immigration detention centres.

Audio Excerpt - Serco advertisement:

“Registered nurses, corrective case officers, security and intelligence officers, vocational trainers, trade instructors and so much more. It’s real jobs for real people.”

DENHAM:

And they've been running the immigration detention centres, all the onshore centres in Australia, for about 15 years.

Serco’s has this reputation across the years for being basically akin to prison. Very highly securitised, a focus on kind of safety and security over anything else, over the well-being of people, and that's what a lot of advocates and people have been through the system has said as well that it’s led to a lot of issues with how people are treated.

Audio Excerpt - Waleed Aly (ABC):

“Today the Crikey website released a manual which has been given out by Serco to the people it employs to work at its immigration detention centre.”

Audio Excerpt - Andrew Crook (Crikey journalist):

“It is a last resort, as it says, you know, getting into a, quote, “fight” with asylum seekers. But, you know, if you read through the document, there's quite a few use of force issues. There's instructions on how to kick, punch, jab fingers into detainee limbs, you know, pressure point tactics, which are obviously very controversial…”

DENHAM:

There's been a lot of scandals and kind of there's been incidents of self-harm, there's been a lot of allegations of human rights abuses…

Audio Excerpt - Mark Colvin (ABC):

“Professor Louise Newman from Monash University told the Joint Select Committee into the Immigration Detention Centre Network, there's no medical review process for the use of solitary confinement in detention centres. She said some staff at the centres run by the company Serco even carry knives to cut down asylum seekers who try to hang themselves.”

DENHAM:

…and a lot of concerns about how people are treated in these centres.

DANIEL:

And how much money they raked in from the Commonwealth over the years?

DENHAM:

They've received more than $7.5 billion across about 15 years of contracts. So that's across two contracts, and one of those contracts was extended many, many times, but um yeah, it's a very lucrative business. They've won a lot of money.

DANIEL:

Okay, so that’s a lot of money over that time. Before we get into the detail about some of those incidents and scandals you mentioned, what was it like before Serco came into the picture? How much has the immigration detention system changed?

DENHAM:

This was something that surprised me a bit. Some advocates I talked to remember kind of 20 years ago, you could go in on a weekend and take someone out of the network and take them to the beach or take them to a church service. And so there was a different level of security to the system.

But across that time we've obviously seen seeking asylum and immigration become such a large political issue and it's become a national security issue. And we've seen the rise in offshore detention and everything like that as well that's transformed it into one that is much closer to a prison network with a focus on securitisation.

DANIEL:

So what's the hardline approach meant for people in detention? What is it like to be in detention?

DENHAM:

So one of the men I spoke to for the story, his name's Mostafa Azimitabar and he's known as Moz, and he's a Kurdish asylum seeker who was eventually medevaced to Australia as part of that cohort of asylum seekers that were taken to Australia for medical means. And throughout this time he also has been recognised as a refugee, as a legitimate refugee. And then after being medevaced, he spent about 14 months in hotel detention. Serco also operate these hotels that serve as detention centres.

Audio Excerpt - Moz Azimitabar:

“The government used the hotel as a prison to lock me up and the situation made me more sick. My body is trembling when I think about the time I was in those hotels.”

DENHAM:

He spoke to me of this regime where Serco basically just controlled his entire life, which was restricted to this tiny hotel room where you could barely open the windows.

Audio Excerpt - Moz Azimitabar:

“Definitely it was worse than Manus Island. I was locked up on the third floor of the Mantra and the Park Prison. I spent 23 hours a day in a room. Officers ten times a day came to the room.”

DENHAM:

And one of the biggest things he talks about a lot about the trauma is that he was just pat searched constantly by the Serco guards. He says across his time in the hotel, he was pat searched about 400 times. And he said this has a really huge impact on him and his mental health and was very triggering.

And there was another case that the Justice and Equity Centre settled with Serco and the Government in 2023, and that related to an asylum seeker called Yasir. And he was forced to wear handcuffs every time he left the detention centre he was being held at to access medical treatment. And he, similar to Moz, just says this had a very triggering effect on him and was very traumatising and did impact his ability to access that medical treatment as well. And these incidents definitely aren't isolated cases as well as we do, thanks to the parliamentary system, we have a bit of information on how rife these things are. And some stats released by Home Affairs shows there are actually more than 15 incidents of use of force on an average day in detention, and these use of force includes the use of handcuffs. And there was also at least one incident of self-harm on an average day as well across the last five years.

DANIEL:

Right, and so looking back on Serco’s reign, are advocates and former detainees, the people you’ve spoken to, are they optimistic that it's over?

DENHAM:

Nearly every advocate I talk to that has fought circuit Serco over these years and represented people in the detention centres, they’re definitely not upset to see the back of Serco but there is no positivity at all that anything is going to change when the Government has brought in just another prison provider, another company that has a reputation for, for certain conditions in their centres.

Greens Senator David Shoebridge told me that he thinks it's the most extreme and secretive detention regime in the world and I think everyone’s still pretty concerned that not much is going to change in the system.

DENHAM:

After the break, why the government broke with Serco.

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DANIEL:

Denham, the federal government has opted not to renew Serco's contract for running Australia's immigration detention system. Do we know why they made that decision?

DENHAM:

Yeah it was really interesting. I think a lot of people I talk to that are very involved in the space and how it operates were quite surprised that Serco lost the contract. Potentially there were just too many incidents over time and they had a chance because the contract did end, they haven't scrapped the contract. It did come to an end. And they've found a new provider that they took that chance to bring someone else in. They did reply to some questions to me. They didn't really address any of the questions I put to them about Serco's track record and the fact that it is a private operator running it just makes it a bit harder to access information. There's an added layer of secrecy when they can claim commercial in confidence on some of these elements of the contract and hide that from the public.

DANIEL:

So what do we know about the new company that will take over?

DENHAM:

So the new provider’s a subsidiary of a company called Management and Training Corporation. So they’re a US based company and they run a number of for profit prisons in the United States as well as immigration detention centres.

Audio Excerpt - Journalist (NPR):

“Riots took hold of a prison in Arizona. 16 people were injured. 1200 inmates were evacuated. Much of the facility itself was left uninhabitable.”

DENHAM:

And there's been a lot of incidents reported on already…

Audio Excerpt - Journalist 2 (NPR):

“Their targeted destruction of MTC property strongly suggested the riots were brought on by inmate dissatisfaction with the way the prison was operated. There was a culture of disorganisation, disengagement and disregard for Department of Corrections policies.”

DENHAM:

And a lot of legal suits that have kind of shed a bit of light on what the conditions are like in their centres, and it doesn't paint a very nice picture.

Audio Excerpt - Journalist 3 (NPR):

“The ACLU published its report last year. In addition to accounts of overcrowding and squalid conditions inside the tent city, inmates complained of excessive use of solitary confinement, a lack of activities to occupy their time and inadequate medical treatment.”

DENHAM:

There's a lot of allegations of mistreatment, there's a lot of concerns about access to health care and the provision of health care to people under their care.

Audio Excerpt - ACLU Spokesperson:

“The toilets would back up and raw sewage would overflow into the Kevlar tents…”

DENHAM:

A lot of this has come out across the years. It's nothing new. And the federal government is definitely aware of it.

Audio Excerpt - Journalist 3 (NPR):

“An MTC spokesman emailed: We completely disagree with the anecdotal allegations in the ACLU report.”

DENHAM:

So while the Government is getting rid of Serco from the immigration detention network, there aren't any real hopes that there's going to be a big change to the approach because they're bringing in another company that's known for running prisons in this way.

DANIEL:

So they've signed a contract. Do we know how much that was for and over what period?

DENHAM:

So the contract they've won runs for five years and it's worth more than $2 billion. So it's another massive contract running for a long time and they're operating all the same facilities that Serco were. So they're taking over from mid-way through this year.

I think it’s important to note that Serco still has a massive presence in Australia. They, they win a lot of government contracts and even in the justice space they still run two really big prisons in Australia on massive contracts. So they run the Acacia Prison in Western Australia and the Clarence Prison in New South Wales, which is fairly new and it's the biggest prison in Australia now. So they still have a massive presence, even in justice and across everything else as well.

DANIEL:

And just finally, you've been covering these issues for a long time now. Just broadly, what do we need to do with our detention and immigration system to change the way we approach asylum seekers and those on visas?

DENHAM:

There's a lot we need to do, but I think when it comes to these centres, I think it's the approach to these people as, as criminals and that these places are serving as another prison. If they're going to exist at all, they're not meant to be places where people spend a lot of time but there are people spending years there. So that needs to be looked at.

And I think there are people that either have served a prison sentence or haven't received any sentence, so they shouldn't be treated like criminals. So I think that whole approach of security above all else needs to be addressed.

There's obviously huge problems with offshore processing and how people are treated on Nauru. There's still people on Nauru, so that needs to be addressed and those people need to be taken off there. And I think it's a wider issue of how we approach immigration and taking a more human rights focused approach versus this treating as a national security issue or political tool that can be used to kind of win votes.

DANIEL:

Denham, thanks for coming in and thanks so much for your time.

DENHAM:

Thanks for having me.

DANIEL:

In a statement to The Saturday Paper, Serco said:

“We strongly reject the assertions about Serco’s operations.”

“Serco’s commitment to the rights and welfare of detainees in our care has remained consistent since 2009.”

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DANIEL:

Also in the news today,

Underlying inflation for the December quarter eased to 3.2%, down from 3.6% in the previous quarter. It’s the lowest rate since 2021.

Meanwhile, the consumer price index rose by just 0.2% in the same quarter, with the largest price rises coming from alcohol and tobacco.

Some economists say the figures are promising for a potential interest rate cut.

And New South Wales Police, the Australian Federal Police and ASIO are investigating whether explosives discovered in Sydney’s north-west were intended for an anti-semitic attack.

Police say they were alerted to the explosives, which were being stored in a caravan in Dural ten days ago. An anti-semitic message was also found in the caravan.

The power gel police seized had a blast zone radius of 40 metres in diameter.

I’m Daniel James, this is 7am, thanks for listening.

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