Christmas Island - Refugee and Immigration Detention

Refugee and Immigration Detention

From the late 1980s and early 1990s, boats carrying asylum seekers and mainly departing from Indonesia landed on the island. In 2001, Christmas Island was the site of the Tampa controversy, in which the Australian government stopped a Norwegian ship, MV Tampa, from disembarking 438 rescued asylum seekers at Christmas Island. The ensuing standoff and the associated political reactions in Australia were a major issue in the 2001 Australian federal election.

Another boatload of asylum seekers was taken from Christmas Island to Papua New Guinea for processing, after it was claimed that many of the adult asylum seekers threw their children into the water, apparently in protest at being turned away. These claims were later found to be mostly untrue by a Senate select committee. Many of the refugees were subsequently accepted by New Zealand.

The former Howard Government later secured the passage of legislation through the Australian Parliament which excised Christmas Island from Australia's migration zone, meaning that asylum seekers arriving on Christmas Island could not automatically apply to the Australian government for refugee status. This allowed the Royal Australian Navy to relocate them to other countries (Papua New Guinea's Manus Island, and Nauru) as part of the so-called Pacific Solution. In 2006 an Immigration Detention Centre, containing approximately 800 beds, was constructed on the island for the Department of Immigration. Originally estimated to cost $210 million, the final cost was over $400 million.

In 2007, the Rudd Government announced plans to decommission the Manus Island and Nauru centres; processing would then occur on Christmas Island itself.

In 2010, around 50 asylum seekers died off the coast of the island as the boat they were travelling on crashed into the rocks off Flying Fish Cove.