Ferrovial, a Spanish infrastructure company, has made a take-over offer for Broadspectrum (formerly Transfield), the company that manages Australia’s detention centres as well as a large amount of infrastructure like toll roads. According to press reporting (The Guardian 30 April 16) Ferrovial does not see a strategic position for detention centre management in its business portfolio, has not included it in its valuation of the Broadspectrum business and implied it will be divested once the take-over is completed.
Coming in the week that the PNG Supreme Court found detention of Australian asylum seekers illegal and the PNG Prime Minister’s announcement that the Manus Island detention camp must close, Ferrovial’s intention to divest looks like good news and a perhaps surprisingly honourable decision by the company. It will not do any harm to the growing protest in Australia against detention and criticism of Australian migration policy that is supported by both major political parties, especially with an election only weeks away.
But I say perhaps honourable; we don’t know what was at the heart of Ferrovial’s motivation. Is this a principled decision from Ferrovial’s business ethics standards? Their 2015 Management Report states: ‘The Code of Business Ethics provides that “all actions undertaken by the company and its employees shall scrupulously respect the Human Rights and Civil Liberties enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.”’
Looks good, however, the executive director of the ‘No Business in Abuse’ organisation suggests this move is in response to the ‘legal and financial liability’ of detention centre management, that is, it is a business risk issue. If so, the decision is not in fact principle–based but is instrumental, on an assessment that weighs risk to the business on financial and, probably, reputational factors.
That means if the business climate changed or if the business could be managed in such a way to minimise reputational damage, then the business of detention would be on again. More importantly, the business decision is made on the basis of the welfare of the company, principally its shareholders, not on the basis of the welfare of asylum seekers. What looks like a welcome ethical decision would be instead an entirely instrumental business decision financial on financial grounds.
Indeed it may put asylum seekers – the ones in Nauru at any rate – at greater risk. Ferrovial will sell-off the detention centre business at a discount because of the high business risk profile and so possibly to a lower cost provider. This would ultimately mean a decline in the volume and quality of services to asylum seekers, if that is possible.