The federal government can't do that for the same reason it cannot reopen Nauru but must replicate its facilities at huge cost in East Timor, or at least talk about doing that. The reason is that Labor doesn't 'do' offshore detention (although it does do offshore regional solutions).Wouldn't it be cheaper to expand existing detention centers
Similarly, it can't re-open Baxter because it doesn't 'do' detention in places that look like prison camps. It doesn't do locking up of children either, although at the moment it has almost 800 kids locked up.
Woodside is perfect because it doesn't look like a detention facility and it's in a Liberal electorate.
AtD's right about the likely high costs, but costs don't matter here. Appearance is what matters. although images of the nice modern housing in a pleasant rural location are likely to be a bigger pull factor than pictures of the desolate facilities at Baxter and Nauru. Plus from Baxter and certainly from Nauru there was no chance of absconding.
I wouldn't call Woodside monocultural. Western European, maybe, but there are plenty of Fechners, Graebers, Schuberts and Hartmanns up there among the Anglo-Saxons. I know, I was born and raised at Charleston, just up the road. Half the population spoke Deutsch.
I wonder too what is motivating the Member for Mayo in his fight against the proposal. Could part of it be that right next door to Inverbrackie is 'Erinka', a superb and very valuable grazing property owned by Alexander Downer's uncle Tom and now his cousin, Tom's son?
Generally, I'm with rhino. It's not so much what the federal government has done as how they've done it. It makes you wonder how democratic Australia really is when it comes to the crunch. A community and a council is dead against a development - the state planning minister imposes it without reference to parliament. Here, the Woodside community had this dropped on them with no prior information or consultation. That's not right.
