Christmas Island Detention Centre
Is the unused ‘purpose built’ detention centre on Christmas Island a white elephant, or does it serve another purpose?
The Christmas Island story is fascinating, the Poms ‘gave’ it to us just before Singapore gots its independence. This was supposedly to secure superphosphate supplies for the cockies.
The super has virtually dried up years ago and it is a politcal boil on the bum of Australia with its resident Malay, Chinese and Anglo population (non of whom are indigenous to CI which was uninhabitated once). The Japaenese liked it during the war and apparently shot one or two POW’s there.
Until now the most infamous recent fiasco there was Tommy Suharto’s Casino - which apparently had bucketloads of money going through it. That temple to greed, with its concrete dinosaurs, is gradually being re-claimed by mould and the jungle after it was abandoned over a decade ago.
now we have spent hundreds of millions to build an unused detention facility and pour in millions more every year to staff and maintain it. The question is why Australia keeps funding Christmas Island at all? What does it really cost the Australian economy to maintain this island mountain adjacent to Indonesia?
Well the answer is, not as much as it would cost to keep an aircraft carrier stationed in the Indian Ocean. You can bet your bottom dollar that this $380 million facility was built to military specifications for the same reason. Why would a detention facility need such dam thick concrete walls? Maybe one day the mould and the jungle will consume this facility as well.
To red crabs and ants!
