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No room for refugees in Greg Rudd’s Port Hedland facility
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With the capacity of the Christmas Island detention centre being ramped up to 1600 courtesy of bunk beds, demountables and cannibalising of part of the “activities area”, the Government is evidently hoping it can prevent more than another 600-odd asylum seekers arriving by boat. Earlier in the week the Prime Minister appeared to categorically rule out reopening Baxter Detention Centre near Port Augusta in South Australia, although you might have to fact-check Mr Rudd’s statements on this issue – no one appears to have noticed that on Wednesday he boasted to the ABC that “we’ve abolished the Pacific solution. We’ve abolished Temporary Protection visas and we have taken children from behind the razor wire.” In fact it was the Howard Government that sharply reduced the practice of detaining children. A number of the facilities used to house detainees earlier in the decade other than Baxter have also been closed. The most remote centre, Curtin, closed in 2002. Woomera was closed in 2003. Port Hedland was closed in 2004. The facility in Port Hedland is different to most of the other facilities in being close to a major centre – and in fact one of the major beneficiaries of the resources boom in the Pilbara. Port Hedland struggled through the mining boom with the task of housing the influx of workers for mining companies and support services. The detention centre, located on the beachfront in Port Hedland, is thus prime real estate. In 2006-07, the Howard Government, in response to lobbying from the local council and business in Port Hedland, put the facility out to tender. In July 2007, it finalised a contract with services company Auzcorp. Details of the contract, including the value of the lease, have not been revealed, but Auzcorp, which formally took over the facility in December 2007 and began paying rent in March 2008, has turned it into a 400-bed accommodation facility for in-bound mining workers called, aptly, Beachfront. Auzcorp is a private company part-owned by the Prime Minister’s brother, Greg Rudd. Having closed his Australian lobbying outfit in 2007 due to conflict of interest concerns, Greg Rudd’s primary business interest now is his Chinese consultancy GPR. Rudd, who is based in Perth, states on the GPR website that he is “heavily involved in the growth onshore and offshore of a Perth based remote accommodation and site services company called Auzcorp, well known in the Pilbara region of West Australia.” The decision to lease the Port Hedland facility to a company part-owned by Kevin Rudd’s older brother was made by the previous Government. Auzcorp beat a number of competitors for the lease, which attracted strong interest from a several companies, including BHP and Fortescue. The Howard Government included a clause in the contract that the Commonwealth could, at two months’ notice, take back the facility if it needed it for accommodation for asylum seekers. With the permanent closure of Woomera and Curtin, Port Hedland and Baxter remain the only options for significant expansion beyond Christmas Island. The Department of Immigration told Crikey there were no plans whatsoever to retract and re-open Port Hedland. The lease, however, is only for two years. It commenced in March 2008 and expires March next year. In recent months, despite the rising number of boat arrivals of asylum seekers from Sir Lanka and Afghanistan, the Department of Immigration rolled over the Port Hedland lease. It has been quietly extended with Auzcorp, for a further two years, to March 2012. As the resources sector returns to growth, the accommodation pressures in Port Hedland will resume again. There were also complaints about the detention facility from the local community while it was in operation, including about tear gas wafting into the town during riots. In inserting a clause enabling it to take back the facility at short notice, and only offering a two-year lease, the Commonwealth probably reduced the value of the lease substantially. In practice, though, it’s hard to see Port Hedland being used to house detainees again in the medium-term. But Greg Rudd’s involvement in what two years ago was a straightforward transaction by the Howard Government now has a somewhat problematic appearance given the changed circumstances of boat arrivals and the rollover of the lease. His company appears very well-placed for “onshore growth”. |
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18 Comments
Having recently visited Port Hedland and seen the chronic accommodation shortage as BHP and the other mining companies struggle to house their employees, removing 400 beds and thus 800 or more staff from the one export industry that is booming would be madness.
Think rent is expensive here - a 4 bedroom house is $1500 a week in South Hedland and $2k plus in Port.
There were generally 10 bulk ore carriers or more waiting on the horizon each day with 4 carriers being filled around the clock. The fly-in fly out workforce is huge as there just isn’t enough accommodation.
Returning the former detention centre back to its prior usage would be economically irresponsible - and BHP and China’s insatable appetite for iron ore would not allow it.
It would be far better to re-open another decommissioned detention facility. Port Hedland is worth too much in export dollars to be seriously reconsidered.
We must help these people, refugees, lead a better life. Our intake is miniscule compared with the rest of the developed world. We accept 1/10 of 1% of those who are refugees at the moment.
Stop worrying about votes Kevin.
Kevin I thought you did not have the Howard black heart attitude which played up to the enormous number of racists in Australia - I thought you were better that that.
I’m ashamed of some of my friends who say things like ‘I don’t like Muslims’ and others who Howard catered to with his policies and dramatisation of FEAR and collected all the Hansonites to help him to be re-elected - but not last time - we thought we knew better than that and elected Rudd.
Virtually no action on climate change and now this - Pity! JC
Perhaps Kevin Rudd’s determination to achieve John Howard’s total discriminatory
attitudes might lead him to consider copying North Korea’s Kim Jong-Il.
Stuck for the answer to so many detainees Mr Rudd? Use the lobbying influence of your brother to ask BHP’s permission to turn worked-out mines into concentration camps. Oops, detention centres.
Once underground it will be years before anyone realizes what is going om.
Is this for real?
If we live in a democratic country can anyone access a public property to make money? What’s the deal?
RENA ZURAWEL: I’m sure you know as well as I do there is not an inch of land in Oz that isn’t owned by the big oil and mining companies. These leases cover the whole of Oz and extend way beyond our borders.
If you went to your garden and found gold or struck oil the mining company concerned would have the complete right to turf you out of your house. Which, in a nasty sort of way, would serve you right for being so bloody rude to me.
This article is a total beat up - if Greg Rudd’s business dealings weren’t newsworthy two years ago why are they now?
Last time I looked the whole of Oz is covered by mining leases. If anyone put there strikes gold, oil, gas-the works-bad luck. There will be a lease on your land making it illegal for the private citizen to actually mine it. Perhaps you can sell the rights to the company, but I don’t think you can mine it.
Has anyone actually read this article? All the comments so far have failed to point out a major news story- this will be huge by tomorrow. This is the end of the rudd government!
Venise, when you state…”last time I looked…”, what were you actually looking at? Was it a map of Australia showing the mining leases or were you peering from the window of a plane imagining the virtual overlay of mining lease boundaries on the landscape below?
Anyway, none of this has any relevance because the lease being described here is not a mining lease (they are issued by state governments) and doesn’t appear to be dodgy - unless you expect that every single deal entered into by every government at any time is likely to be corrupt - which is OK (if you must) but if that is how you see things then you don’t have time to be dreaming about mining the minerals you think might be under your house. Oh, and mining companies don’t usually ‘own’ the land they just lease the right to the minerals under the surface which is probably owned by someone else. And anyone can have their own mining lease if they want to simply pay for it.
BK, another informative article. Thanks.
Pity about the immediate rush to off-topic comment posting… I thought that the article was about two matters: The difficulties facing the Government re temporary hosting of refugees pending examination of their individual claims for re-settlement (not necessarily in Australia - that’s where UNHCR comes in).
The second part is the Port headland situation, where, for purely comemrcial reasons, the former detention facility has been let through public tender by the previous government to a company which coincidentally happens to have a shareholder/manager who is related to someone who we now know as the leader of our particular part of the universe.
The story, to me, is not about earth-shattering policy flubs by anybody - only a simple backgrounder to illustrate the interconnectedness of our society. As one who has experienced fly-in/fly-out mining in outback WA, let me suggest that it is the pits. Port Headland really needs to get its act together and build a community around these employees, thus making their lives more stable and their towns more complete. There is nothing pretty about a town hosting hundreds of blokes (mainly) in the prime of life, who haven’t touched their wife/girlfriend for a couple of weeks. After 12 hours’ work, there is always a chance for a booze, a spot of bragging with the mates, or searching for (or paying for) a stray f__k. Or all three.
And, as always, this has presented a chance to have a bit of fun with the news, for which Crikey is renowned.
(Edit)
For thirty years, and starting with a huge map of Oz, I laid down on a series of plastic sheets-now it’s your turn Hugh to say that all those years ago it would have been impossible to write on plastic-wrong! I used French Chalk powder and carefully spread it over each plastic sheet. The whole thing resembled one of the Encyclopaedia Britannica maps-yes, the printed editions are no longer available- of the human figure. Peel one layer back and you see the next layer. The very top layer showed the type of topography, the second was coloured according to the company leasing it, and so forth.
Now extinct companies and very much still- going mining companies appeared and disappeared, but I had every oil mining company in Oz. Quite a few times I was able to predict which company might be the next one to strike oil. One spectacular occasion was a company called Moonie. I bought a swag of their shares. The next morning I had to catch a taxi, and the taxi-driver had a copy of the HS, or the Sun, as it was known then. Spread right across the page in big big caps was the heading “Moonie Strikes Oil”. If I can remember properly the shares cost me about seventy cents, or pence as the currency was then called. Straight away the shares shot up to £5 each, and I think I sold them for about £50.00 a share.
I stated that the land so covered was in the form of leases. All dealings with governments are sure to favour the government-it’s called payola- and the system is set like concrete at the State Government level. Have a look at the shonky deals done between state governments and the big land developers.
Certainly the average citizen is entitled to bid on a mining lease which may be temporarily available ie has been relinquished by another company. But if the lease next door to the one you wish to bid on shows signs of pay-dirt, I wouldn’t fancy the citizen to have much of a chance against BHP, Oil Search, Woodside and AOG. Would you stand a chance, Hugh? I know you are not an owner of a big company. These people tend to be polite and inquisitive. But, of course, these are the necessary qualities of CEOs in this field. I remember the late Geoff Donaldson-the man who started Woodside petroleum, was constantly seeking fresh input and encouragement of lesser beings.
I think I may know a little more about mining than you give me credit for, Hugh, my husband owned a couple of mining companies. And both of us, together with the company geologists would climb and scramble around leases in an effort to locate possible strikes. Then started the analysis of what was there, and so forth and so on.
(Edit)
please read article before you post- you have all missed the point
Dear WildBandicoote,
We have read the story - at least most of us - yet you have twice posted a cry that suggests that
a) We have not; and
b) That the end of the Rudd government begins today, 17th October 2009.
Thank you for your opinion.
I, for one, don’t buy it. This story about leasing of an unused Commonwealth facility and its renewal due to that facility still not being used simply ain’t that significant.
Take a Bex, have a good lie down and be prepared to face a world in which Rudd remains PM for at least a further 4 years.
Interesting story about oblique family interests. What we do have here is a potential conflict of interest, without an actual conflict to date.
The first aspect of a pci is that in the future the govt will have to consider resuming the lease at the financial cost of the PM’s brother. That’s not to say there is anything improper in awarding a lease in a competitive tender. Otherwise all relatives would be disbarred from a life of business with the government at any time and that is excessive.
The second aspect of a pci is simply that this is a future potential given it’s the boat season and there are two major wars pushing refugees this way. Perhaps business and Howard Govt never thought it was a serious chance given their draconian settings, with or without major push factors. And maybe they had a fools faith they would win the last election?
However now Kevin ‘science’ Rudd is PM it does get a little sticky in terms of arms length dealings with his brother in contest with the public interest in resuming the lease. What public servant is going to address the resumption question on the genuine public policy merits? In Local Govt they have to call in another council to make some decisions given inhouse conflicts. Here we might have to call in a neighbouring public service - Fiji perhaps? PNG? Singapore? Ha ha.
Tom McGlouchlin,
You really are trying to find a problem where there is none. Rudd#1 happened to win a tender process. Rudd #2 happens to be the PM. So what?
If, at some future time, Rudd the younger and his various departments discover that they need the subject land more than they considered was the case when the lease was extended, the simple and predictable action will be to make this known to the leaseholder and, in due course, to take over the land which was the subject of the lease.
Straight forward.
Not political.
Get over it. It is not in any way an indication that the Rudd family are other than absolutely normal, and that their dealings with landowners (eg The Commonwealth of Australia) are other than absolutely normal.
Business as usual. Nothing here to worry about. Move on, folks.
“If, at some future time, Rudd the younger and his various departments discover that they need the subject land more than they considered was the case when the lease was extended, the simple and predictable action will be to make this known to the leaseholder and, in due course, to take over the land which was the subject of the lease.”
Thanks for that John. And
‘when and how will Rudd’s govt and its depts discover they need the lease more than they considered’
That’s what we call in the trade a POTENTIAL CONFLICT OF INTEREST.
Well done BK, this is a slow burn but stick with it, inversely propoortional to the other Big Media interest. Think baby steps of Dustin and Robert.
Greg Rudd’s comment reply 19 October 2009, is not quite the escape hatch he makes out. Rather it raises more questions than it answers. If he no longer has an interest in the subject company above, what are his new business interests … “in China” for instance … with his brother PM of the country (i.e. Oz) providing crucial raw materials to China Inc with a (in)famous interest in acquiring as much vertical integration here as possible.
Greg, ol boy, you are a walking talking potential conflict of interest wherever Australia and it’s customers are commercially at play. Just like Therese had to sell down, and still gets into controversy when her UK firm bids for Australian employment contracts. Them’s the breaks. You can’t choose your relatives.
It could be worse, you could be a refugee on a boat.
Read Possum Commitatus’s contribution today.
There is no longer any valid argument posited on an assumption of a “pull” in relation to the number of refugees, whether arriving by boat, by air, or by walking across the floor of the ocean. The simple facts are that Australia receives less refugees than most receiving countries and that the mode of arrival is not significant.
A refugee is a refugee is a refugee… etc.
I am in favour of assisting substantially with the “push” factors, especially when these originate within a relatively advanced country such as Sri Lanka, which has the resources, communication and education levels to be able to prevent the current exodus if the political will exists.
Further, these same folk have socially allied friends in southern India, much closer to their homes than Australia. Surely they would be happier staying in either Sri Lanka or India if circumstances permit?
I hope that any refugees admitted to Australia would consider returning to one of these societies, and that 90% would be temporary only. If not, then a refugee remains exactly that, and nobody should deny a refugee a home.