Hume council, residents and refugee advocates have slammed a federal government plan to reclassify a Broadmeadows immigration detention centre into a high-risk security facility.
Immigration and Border Protection has proposed a $29 million upgrade of the Melbourne Immigration Transit Accommodation (MITA) centre on former Defence land on Camp Road.
If approved, the upgrade will turn the centre into one of only three high-risk detention centres in Australia, proposing 140 beds in two high security compounds.
The department says the existing centre needs to be upgraded because of a “recent trend towards a higher risk detention population”.
The department’s application to the Parliamentary Standing Committee for Public Works suggested Hume council was in support of its plan for the detention centre.
However, a council submission to the same committee was scathing of what it claimed was a “complete lack of consultation” by the department. Hume’s submission, authorised by mayor Drew Jessop, said the council has long held the view that a detention centre should not have been built there in the first place, in an industrial precinct only 450 metres from houses.
The council asked how the site would be managed to ensure people are protected.
Broadmeadows resident Phillip Di Biase said the suburb was “not a good place” for a detention centre for high risk detainees.
“The overall community feeling is that we do not want a detention centre filled with very bad individuals literally in our backyard,”he said.“It is an affront to the honest, hardworking people of Broadmeadows to have a dumping yard put in their city.”
There have been 23 submissions lodged about the upgrade.
Federal Calwell MP Maria Vamvakinou and state Broadmeadows MP Frank McGuire made submissions on behalf of the community, saying people are angry, as the proposed upgrade is the federal government’s only local investment.
Ms Vamvakinou said people would prefer investment in much-needed jobs.
