Baxter Immigration Reception and Processing Centre or commonly just Baxter Detention Centre, was an Australian immigration detention facility near the town of

Port Augusta Port Augusta is a small city in South Australia. Formerly a seaport, it is now a road traffic and railway junction city mainly located on the east coast of the Spencer Gulf immediately south of the gulf's head and about north of the state c ...

South Australia South Australia (commonly abbreviated as SA) is a state in the southern central part of Australia. It covers some of the most arid parts of the country. With a total land area of , it is the fourth-largest of Australia's states and territories ...

. It was the focus of much of the controversy concerning the mandatory detention of

asylum seekers An asylum seeker is a person who leaves their country of residence, enters another country and applies for asylum (i.e., international protection) in that other country. An asylum seeker is an immigrant who has been forcibly displaced and m ...

in Australia.

History

Baxter Detention Centre was named after the nearby Baxter Range, a geographical feature which in turn is named after the explorer John Baxter who, ironically, arrived in Australia as a

convict A convict is "a person found guilty of a crime and sentenced by a court" or "a person serving a sentence in prison". Convicts are often also known as "prisoners" or "inmates" or by the slang term "con", while a common label for former convict ...

. It was located on a portion of the

Australian Defence Force The Australian Defence Force (ADF) is the military organisation responsible for the defence of the Commonwealth of Australia and its national interests. It consists of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN), Australian Army, Royal Australian Air Fo ...

's El Alamein Army Reserve that was nearest to Port Augusta. Following establishment expenditure of $44 million, Baxter Detention Centre became operational in September 2002. After it closed in August 2007, some of the buildings were removed and the land returned to the Department of Defence. In May 2008, a

public auction In public relations and communication science, publics are groups of individual people, and the public (a.k.a. the general public) is the totality of such groupings. This is a different concept to the sociological concept of the ''Öffentlichk ...

was held for the surplus material remaining in the complex.

Facility

The centre was built by Fleetwood Portables in partnership with the Department of Immigration. Australasian Correctional Management was responsible for the administration of the centre.

Controversy

The centre suffered several arson incidents by protesting detainees, including on 12 November 2005, which caused extensive damage and forcing the evacuation of 58 detainees, of whom 4 were treated for smoke inhalation. Minister for Immigration,

Amanda Vanstone Amanda Eloise Vanstone (née O'Brien; born 7 December 1952) is an Australian former politician and a former Ambassador to Italy. She was a Liberal Senator for South Australia from 1984 to 2007, and held several ministerial portfolios in the ...

, said of the incident: "We don't expect however for people to resort to property damage as a way of handling that frustration and particularly property damage that can put the lives of others at risk."

References

External links

Refugee Freedom Bus Tour 2002 of detention centres; streaming video
{{Coord, -32.542807, 137.678475, format=dms, type:landmark_region:AU-SA, display=title Immigration detention centres and prisons of Australia Defunct prisons in South Australia Eyre Peninsula 2007 disestablishments in Australia 2002 establishments in Australia

History

Facility

Controversy

See also

References

External links