Missing Commonwealth Games athletes to cost Australia millions after refusing to go home

TAXPAYERS will be lumped with a multimillion-dollar bill to cover the costs of more than 250 Commonwealth Games athletes and officials who have refused to leave Australia since lapping up the Gold Coast’s hospitality.

TAXPAYERS will be lumped with a multimillion-dollar bill to cover the costs of more than 250 Commonwealth Games athletes and officials who have refused to leave Australia.

More than five weeks after the event ended, Border Force officials are now scouring the country to find 50 people who have disappeared since lapping up the Gold Coast’s hospitality.

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Another 205 have told authorities they want to stay in Australia, with the vast majority handed temporary protection visas which allow them to stay for three years and receive welfare benefits.

The majority of foreigners seeking to stay are from war-torn African nations including Sierra Leone, Ghana and Nigeria, but the Herald Sun understands members of the Indian and Pakistani teams are also in Australia.

Members of the Nigerian team are still in Australia. Picture: Adrian Dennis

A disappointed Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton said Australians had welcomed more than 8000 athletes and officials for the Games “in good faith”.

“Australians hate being taken for a ride by freeloaders,” he told the Herald Sun on Monday night. “Australia is now obliged under international law to consider these protection visa applications.”

Governments sources tipped each temporary protection case would cost taxpayers “tens of thousands of dollars”, even if the athletes and officials did not go through a string of expensive legal appeals.

The number of overstayers is almost five times larger than in the aftermath of Melbourne’s Commonwealth Games in 2006.

About 8100 athletes, officials and media arrived on visas, which expired last Tuesday.

The government had refused to say how many had remained in Australia since then, amid reports that a third of Cameroon’s team had disappeared, including five boxers and three weightlifters.

Peter Dutton has expressed his disappointment in the situation. Picture: Gary Ramage

But Home Affairs deputy secretary Malisa Golightly told parliament last night that 255 visitors were still here.

Of those, she said authorities “haven’t had contact” with 50 people but that they knew who they were.

“We know they haven’t left,” she told a Senate hearing. “Anybody that is onshore can apply for protection legally once they are here, but of course then they are considered against … the criteria for that visa.”

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Visitors who breach the conditions of their visas can also face a three-year ban on returning to Australia, and could have to pay their deportation costs.

Mr Dutton had expressed his frustration last week, saying some visa overstayers who were “on our soil” could have “more legal rights than Australian citizens”.

The Commonwealth Games ended last month. Picture: Michael Steele/Getty Images

“I shake my head sometimes when you look at the conditions and the protections,” he said.

The government will now assess the claims of the 190 people given temporary protection visas, considering the threat they would face in their home countries.

Melbourne-based Refugee Legal executive director David Manne last week said his agency was acting for “quite a number of people”.

He said several asylum seekers had already received calls from Home Affairs and it appeared many applications were “being looked at very quickly”.

“That’s actually in and of itself not a bad thing at all because what we’d all expect, and certainly our clients would hope for is a fair, but also an efficient and quick process,” Mr Manne told the ABC, adding there was a “longstanding history of athletes seeking asylum and being granted protection”.

“In fact, some of those athletes in previous Games have gone on to not only be granted protection but competing for Australia in future games,” he said.

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