The Benefits of Lowered Expectations

Given years of border protection stories making the front page, the Guardian's extensive investigation into leaked documents from International Health and Medical Services (IHMS) must come as a relief for the government.

The leaks are just the latest scandal with regards to Australia's approach to the issue of asylum seekers. Some of the highlights from 2015 include the Australian Border Force Act and its two year punishments for whistle-blowers; the accurate assertion by the Human Rights Law Centre's Daniel Webb that we spend more on offshore processing than the UN spends on refugee programs in South East Asia; a High Court challenge to the legality of offshore detention; a terrifying report from the AHRC on children in detention; the allegation that the government tried to get the Human Rights Chief to quit; and several exposés about the premiums being paid for refugees to resettle in one of the world's poorest countries.

Call it the benefits of lowered expectations, but in the shadow of all that the IHMS leak must not seem so bad. Sure, the public learned that the company responsible for delivering healthcare to asylum seekers puts the wellbeing of children at risk by failing to meet its medical targets, presents incorrect data in its reports, accepts that fraud is inevitable, and finds itself incapable of locating some of the asylum seekers in their care. But technically this is the best asylum seeker leak (from a government perspective) in some time.

Because even though they've awarded IHMS over $1.6 billion [$1.1 billion USD] in different contracts since 2009, it's relatively easy to spin the blame away. A government, so long as it is seen to punish slip-ups, cannot be blamed for the lackluster performance of an independent company.

And that's the kind of damage control we've seen. On Wednesday, without directly naming IHMS, immigration minister Peter Dutton came out and said, "Like any department we have contracted arrangements with third parties. If people don't perform under those contracts there will be consequences. If people don't do the right thing by the Australian taxpayer, if they don't perform in relation to the contract there are consequences as a result of that."

That statement is pretty much the last we heard from the government on the matter. This response might've been more effective had IHMS and the government's opinion of them not been in the news before.

Last December a Senate Inquiry issued its report into the February 2014 riots on Manus Island that resulted in the death of 23-year-old Iranian Reza Barati. Concurrently a different report leaked that officials in the Immigration department were upset because IHMS was seen to be "risk averse and advocating for transferees." IHMS recommended moving some asylum seekers to the mainland for medical reasons, which placed immigration "in a difficult position as it is very difficult to reverse a medical recommendation once made."

Also in that report? Clues that IHMS was failing to provide accurate and complete information about the people under its care. Sound familiar? Apparently IHMS gave the department information that was "incorrect, incomplete, or not understood." It is believed that information included a report on Reza Barati.

Months before that leak, a former IHMS executive made headlines by speaking out against the Government, claiming they were deliberately harming asylum seekers to encourage them to return from where they came from. That this is precisely the government's mindset is now widely accepted, openly talked about by a spokesperson from Human Rights Watch and backed up by the government's attempt at a comic strip.

It's obvious government's relationship with IHMS is complicated. They've repeatedly awarded the company lucrative offshore detention contracts whilst being frustrated by persistent problems in regards to performance and reporting, and angered by professionals in IHMS who err on the side of advocating for asylum seekers over towing the government line.

It would seem a primary reason the relationship continues is deniability. It would be quite possible for the government, instead of pertaining the services of a third party, to take full responsibility for the healthcare of asylum seekers. But if they were to do that certain failings wouldn't be so easy to spin.

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