Criticism
The policy received criticism from a number of areas, with Amnesty International, refugee rights groups and other non-governmental organisations claiming that Australia was failing to meet its international obligations. The ad-hoc nature in which the policy evolved was also criticised, as it resulted in people being moved to Manus Island and Nauru before facilities were ready. Poor facilities and services including intermittent electricity and fresh water, poor medical facilities and the serious mental impact of detention on people in these conditions without the certainty of being granted refugee status were also strongly criticised.
The cost of the Pacific Solution was over A$15.5 million in 2003/2004, taken from the AusAID budget of $69.9 million. The total cost of the Pacific Solution was put at more than $1 billion, with the cost per asylum seeker processed more than $500 000. This was far more expensive than housing and processing asylum seekers in Australia.
Read more about this topic: Pacific Solution
Famous quotes containing the word criticism:
“I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.”
—Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)
“...I wasn’t at all prepared for the avalanche of criticism that overwhelmed me. You would have thought I had murdered someone, and perhaps I had, but only to give her successor a chance to live. It was a very sad business indeed to be made to feel that my success depended solely, or at least in large part, on a head of hair.”
—Mary Pickford (1893–1979)
“Like speaks to like only; labor to labor, philosophy to philosophy, criticism to criticism, poetry to poetry. Literature speaks how much still to the past, how little to the future, how much to the East, how little to the West.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)