The company contracted to provide support for refugees and asylum seekers on Nauru will leave the island before Christmas, after deciding it would not retender for the contract.

According to sources on Nauru, representatives of Connect Settlement Services informed all employees – including Nauruans and expatriate staff – and refugees at a meeting on Monday.

A CSS spokesman confirmed the company would leave Nauru and would not tender for any further contracts but declined to comment further.

It is understood the employees were told the services required on Nauru were beyond the capabilities of a settlement agency. The agency is believed to have consistently raised concerns about insufficient mental healthcare and child protection services on the island.

Some senior CSS executives are believed to have flown in for the meeting.

It is not known who will take over on 7 December when the CSS contract ends. The organisation took over after Save the Children left in early 2015.

CSS is the latest in a string of offshore processing contractors to withdraw from the controversial Australian regime.

Ferrovial, the Spanish giant that owns the detention centres’ major contractor Broadspectrum, announced in April it would abandon offshore detention when its contract ends in October 2017. It had originally intended to leave Nauru and Manus in February but the Australian government unilaterally exercised an option to extend its term by eight months.

Broadspectrum was forced to change its name from Transfield Services last September, after the owners of its parent company withdrew permission for it use the Transfield name, saying they wanted to distance themselves from offshore detention. Broadspectrum was then sold to Ferrovial at a significant discount.

Earlier this month Wilson Security announced it would also leave offshore detention “in line with Broadspectrum’s future intentions ... and will not tender for any further offshore detention services”.



Last week an excoriating report from the Australian National Audit Office said the Department of Immigration and Border Protection had wasted millions of taxpayer dollars on offshore detention because it failed to comply with commonwealth procurement standards.

The report identified “serious and persistent deficiencies” in the department’s management of the contracts, including “significant skill and capability gaps” among staff and “persistent shortcomings” in areas ranging from record keeping to the ability to assess value for money.

“Procurement is core business for commonwealth entities and the deficiencies have resulted in higher than necessary expense for taxpayers and significant reputational risks for the Australian government and [the department].”

Shen Narayanasamy, the human rights director at GetUp and director of No Business in Abuse, said the Australian government now had no major entity publicly willing to operate its offshore detention camps, or the resettlement programs in Papua New Guinea and Nauru.

“The global business world has spoken: the reputational, financial and legal risks facing any entity involved in the abusive offshore regime are simply too great. Despite the estimate of $5.6bn in Australian taxpayers’ funds to be spent propping up this regime, no company wants a bar of it.”

Narayanasamy said the Australian government’s offshore detention policy had failed and all of the people held on the islands must now be brought to Australia to be properly processed.

“The camps are officially in chaos. The government is throwing billions of dollars at this problem but it doesn’t make it go away.”



Nauru and the offshore detention centre on PNG’s Manus Island have been plagued by controversy, as well as allegations and instances of assault, abuse, trauma and mental illness.



The United Nations, other national governments, numerous international human rights bodies and dozens of doctors and staff members from inside the camps have condemned the offshore processing regime and called for the Australian government to end the practice.

On Thursday the Australian immigration minister, Peter Dutton, told a Canberra-based thinktank the offshore processing relationship with Nauru would last “for decades”.

He later acknowledged problems with the camps but defended the system and again criticised asylum seeker advocates.

“Our detractors do no service to anyone by trading in false hope and speaking in disingenuous terms,” Dutton said. “Their entreaties to a different approach offer nothing but a holiday from history and ignore the fundamental reality that secure borders require policies that are tough and fair.

“If they are not tough they will not be fair to those desperate people waiting in camps. And they will not be morally fair to those who will again be lured to the murky depths by the siren call of people smugglers.”

On Monday Guardian Australia revealed incident reports written by CSS staff on Nauru in the early months of this year containing continuing allegations of sexual abuse and assault, and incidents of self-harm.

A spokeswoman for Save the Children told Guardian Australia those reports, coupled with CSS’s decision not to retender was “further evidence of the unsustainable and inhumane nature of the effective indefinite detention of asylum seekers and refugees on remote Pacific islands”.

“The case worker reports show that conditions on the island have worsened since Save the Children left 11 months ago,” she said.

“It’s clear the current state of affairs is untenable and the Australian Government must give hope to the hundreds of people languishing on Nauru and Manus Island by announcing a humane and sustainable resettlement solution immediately.”

Last month Guardian Australia published the largest single leak of documents from inside the Nauru facility. The Nauru files contained more than 2,000 incident reports written by guards, health and other support workers who detailed widespread trauma and allegations of mistreatment, and provided primary evidence of multiple instances of abuse, including against children.

A spokeswoman for the immigration department confirmed CSS’s contract expired on 7 December. The department would “work collaboratively with Connect Settlement Services in transitioning settlement services on Nauru”, she said.