Christmas Island prepares to manage 1000 arrivals

Authorities are preparing to receive up to 1000 asylum-seekers on Christmas Island.

The Christmas Island detention centre.

Authorities are preparing to receive up to 1000 asylum-seekers on Christmas Island, bringing the island’s detention centre out of mothballs and conducting risk assessments to manage the new arrivals.

The Australian has been told security, law-enforcement and health agencies have begun detailed contingency planning on the island, with authorities bracing for between 100 and 1000 new arrivals.

Aside from the logistical planning over how and where to accommodate asylum-seekers transferred from Nauru or Manus Island, authorities are conducting risk assessments on potential transferees. That involved examining their backgrounds and ethnicities to manage the risk of conflict.

They are also examining accommodation options, with single men likely to be separated from family groups, who will be housed in community detention.

Scott Morrison announced the reopening of the centre on Tuesday, immediately after the passage of the bill allowing for the transfer of asylum-seekers off Nauru and Manus Island on the advice of two doctors.

The Prime Minister said the centre would be reopened to deal “with the prospect of arrivals as well as dealing with the prospect of transfers’’.

It was built by the Howard government, which excised the area from the Australian Migration Zone to prevent new arrivals making refugee claims.

It was formally shut, placed into contingency mode, last year. At its peak, it held up to 2400 asylum-seekers, becoming notoriously overcrowded and at times violent.