Your tax dollars at work, what a "joke"

AN asylum-seeker has been sent on a taxpayer-funded trip halfway round the world in a futile search for a home.
Edriess Abdulrahman and his entourage, including five guards, took 17 flights between them over 13 days in an extraordinary 24,000km journey.
The cost to Australian taxpayers was almost $24,000.
But Mr Abdulrahman’s travels ended where they began – in detention in Australia after Sudan refused to accept him as a citizen.
The trip began in remote Western Australia when authorities tried to deport Mr Abdulrahman last December.
It finished in Perth at Christmas after stopping in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.
Freedom of Information documents show escorts assigned to accompany Mr Abdulrahman cost taxpayers $4178 to guard him for more than 300 hours.
About $3000 went on phone calls, accommodation and meals.
The Immigration Department hired two troubleshooting companies – one Australian, the other South African – to help it offload Mr Abdulrahman, who spent three years in Port Hedland fighting for a visa.
The documents show taxpayers spent more than $15,000 for international and domestic flights as Mr Abdulrahman and his escorts criss-crossed two continents in search of a new home.
The flights included return airfares for two South African guards who flew to Perth to escort Mr Abdulrahman to Johannesburg.
Qantas even charged $1350 for Mr Abdulrahman’s 45kg of excess baggage.
But the journey turned to farce when his Australian Government-issued identity papers were rejected by Sudanese officials in Tanzania.
In a case of bureaucratic bungling on a global scale, authorities tried to dump Mr Abdulrahman in Sudan even though Australia’s refugee tribunal refused to accept he was Sudanese.
He was born in Kuwait to Sudanese immigrant parents, but the family was banished from that country after the 1990 Gulf War.
Mr Abdulrahman, believed to be 29, went to Sudan for about one year, but left after refusing to join the national army.
His whereabouts before he arrived in Australia are uncertain.
Lawyer Deslie Billich said the two-week trip had been a harrowing ordeal for Mr Abdulrahman.
He spent more than a week in detention at two African airports, and was also detained in a Tanzanian police cell as authorities argued his fate.
Mr Abdulrahman is now in Baxter detention centre – at a cost of $310 a day – while Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone decides his future.
He has reapplied for a protection visa after the Federal Court – which rejected his bid for freedom this year – accepted he was Sudanese.
Ms Vanstone, who will rule on his application, was unavailable for comment last night.
“He’s a bit uncertain about what’s happening,” Ms Billich said.
Opposition immigration spokesman Stephen Smith described the mission as an expensive debacle.
“The Howard Government embarked on the voluntary return to Africa of Edriess Abdulrahman without any guarantee the country he was travelling to would accept him,” Mr Smith said.
“The fact that this saw his return fail is compounded by the fact it cost Australian taxpayers nearly $24,000.