Woomera refugees ripped-off

Imagine paying 68 cents a minute for local calls or buying a $22 phone 
card to find you only get $10 or $11 worth of credits or even no credit at 
all on the card.

This is the high price of communication with the outside world at the 
Woomera detention centre — communication that can keep detainees' hopes 
alive, while locked up in the most appalling conditions, hundreds of 
kilometres from the nearest city.

Pay-Tel has a complete monopoly over the service used by refugees at the 
centre, and charges monopoly prices.

The staff at Woomera use normal (and very cheap) Telstra phones for their 
calls.

The Refugee Embassy at Woomera has been in touch with the Australian 
Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) about the exclusive contract 
between the Department of Immigration, Pay-Tel and Australian Correctional 
Management (ACM) which runs the prison.

Of particular concern is the charge for local calls at 68 cents a minute. 
Matt Healy of the ACCC told the Refugee Embassy that there were provisions 
in the relevant Act for companies to charge higher rates in one area if 
they were offset by competitive rates in another.

It is called competition. The consumer is free to shop for the plan that 
most suits their needs. That sounds fine but there is a catch. The 
detainees at Woomera are not free to do that sort of shopping. They only 
have access to phones especially designed to take one type of phone card.

These phones are set up so that they cannot dial 1-800 numbers. This 
prevents them from using phone cards issued by "competitors" which operate 
on the 1-800 system.

"We believe that it is grossly unfair to block detainees from using 1-800 
numbers to get cheaper rates for phone calls", said a spokesperson for the 
Refugee Embassy.

The Department of Immigration claims that it has got the best possible deal 
for the detainees, pointing to their so-called calling patterns. Calls to 
Iran are $1.17 a minute, which might be quite reasonable. However the 
detainees, apart from making a quick call home to say that they are safe, 
are more concerned with their legal battle to stay in Australia.

This is something that the Department and Government are strongly committed 
to obstructing.

As everyone knows phone calls to lawyers are not quick calls. The lawyers 
assisting the refugees are not in a position to make repeated trips to 
Woomera to discuss in person all the ins and outs of a case. They depend 
very much on phone calls.

Until recently it was impossible to make calls into the detention centre, 
it was left entirely to those locked up to ring out at their own expense. 
At 68 cents a minute the cost is prohibitive.

Apart from providing a private company with an opportunity to fleece 
detainees, the special phone set-up at Woomera seems to have political 
motives as well, being another means of denying refugees their rights.

But that's not all. Some of the Pay-Tel telephone cards have proved 
defective according to those using them. One detainee bought a $22 card 
from the canteen. When he tried to use it, the recording told him that 
there was no credit left. He is still waiting five months later for a 
replacement card.

Some cards have run out in too short a time, suggesting that they have 
already been milked or were faulty to start with.

It seems that phone has become yet another means by which those who came to 
our shores seeking help are being mistreated and denied justice.

* * *

Acknowledgments to Dave McKay and Ross Parry, Refugee Embassy, 
Woomera.