Australia Offers Afghan Asylum Seekers £3,800 to Go Home

The Australian government yesterday announced that it would pay Afghan families up to $10,000 (£3,800) to return home in an effort to keep asylum seekers out of the country.

The hard-line immigration minister, Philip Ruddock, made the offer to more than 700 Afghans in a refugee camp on the tiny Pacific island of Nauru, and several hundred who remain in the controversial mainland detention centres where Australia sends all its unauthorised arrivals.

He called the package "a generous cash assistance designed to give Afghans real choices about their options upon arrival in Afghanistan."

According to Mr Ruddock, the $10,000 is equivalent to about five years' average annual income in Afghanistan.

But the refugees only have 28 days in which to decide whether to accept the money. If they refuse, they are likely to remain in harsh tropical and desert detention centres and eventually deported.

The Afghans who have been offered the money include those who were refused entry into Australia after they were saved from drowning by a Norwegian freighter, the Tampa, last August.

Despite the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees saying in November that the vast majority were genuine refugees, the Australian government kept them confined in the Nauru camp until Afghanistan became more stable and it could secure a repatriation package with the Kabul government.

Mr Ruddock suggested that the $5m deal could be extended to other Afghans living in Australia on the three-year "temporary protection visas" that the country gives genuine asylum seekers.

In a dramatic and disputed budget this month, the government revealed a package of "border protection" measures costing a staggering $2.87bn (£1.1bn).

These include funding the navy to forcibly turn away boatloads of asylum seekers, building a new offshore detention centre on Christmas Island, and continuing the "Pacific Solution" - in which Australia-bound refugees are "exported" to camps on impoverished Pacific islands.

Refugee groups criticised the measures. "It's bribery on the one hand and blackmail on the other," Simon O'Neill, a spokesman for Refugee Action Collective told the ABC.

"They're faced with terrible conditions in the detention centres in Australia and in Nauru and they have now been chucked a bit of cash to just get themselves away from here.

"It's absolutely outrageous. What should be happening is Afghanis should be offered places to stay here in Australia."