“Cruel, costly and ineffective: The failure of offshore processing in Australia.”  is a new report from The University of New South Wales Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law which outlines the failure of offshore processing in Australia.

This is pertinent to us in the UK because elements of the Nationality and Borders Bill is partly modelled on the Australian experience.

The report finds that the offshore processing model:

• Does not deter irregular maritime migration, ‘stop the boats’ or ‘break the business model’ of people smuggling networks;
• Does not ‘save lives at sea’ or achieve any other humanitarian objective; and
• Suffers from other policy failures, including enormous financial costs for Australian taxpayers, violations of fundamental rules of international law, numerous legal challenges and systemic cruelty.

The findings of the report are summarized in this Free Movement blog, while the authors of the report discuss the failures of the model in this podcast.