The absurd lengths Australia goes to keep Nauru Airlines flying
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Why is Australia funding an airline for a tiny island with no tourism?
I'm Ruby Jones and you're listening to 7am. It's an uncomfortable fact our government doesn't like to face. 25 years on from the Tampa affair, we're still paying a tiny island micronation hundreds of millions of dollars to keep immigration detention alive. One of the ways we're doing that is by helping to prop up Nauru Airlines, a company riven with financial, governance and safety issues. Today, independent journalist Nick Fyke on how our relationship with a foreign commercial airline is compromising the Australian government's own regulators, departments and procurement processes in the name of immigration detention. It's Thursday, September 24th. Nick, you started your reporting on this with a question, and that was, why is it that Nauru, which is this tiny micronation with no real tourism trade to speak of, maybe a few thousand residents, why does it have an international commercial airline?
Tell me what first intrigued you about Nauru Airlines.
So Nairo, the island formerly known as Nauru, has a population of 12,000 people. It's the least visited country in the world. It's got about 200 tourists per year. It has no fresh water, no crops, no distinguishing features at all. It's not a pretty place. It's 21 square kilometres. no tourist infrastructure. So I wondered, why does this have an airline with seven Boeing 737s? And the answer comes back to Australia and our longstanding immigration detention policies. I've reported on Nauru before, but it's notoriously hard to cover offshore immigration issues. And the airlines are really interesting and illuminating way into this story, I think. So just for context, Nauru Airlines did originally exist as a tiny national flag carrier.
How did Nauru Airlines evolve from a single‑plane carrier to a seven‑plane fleet?
But before Australia's Pacific Solution dollars started pouring in, Nauru Airlines had a single aircraft and it couldn't even afford that. So it exists today in the shape that it does only because our offshore immigration system demands it because multiple departments and regulators across successive governments have gone to absolutely absurd lengths to protect and support it.
Okay, so before we go on, tell me a bit more about where Australia's relationship with Nauru is at now in 2026 and how many asylum seekers are currently there?
Well, Australia regularly spends around a billion dollars a year on the offshore management of what we call unauthorised maritime arrivals. So this is according to Australia's own budget figures. In the past year, there were around 100 asylum seekers held in Nauru. And this equated to us spending around $9 million per person. We paid an initial $400 million last year when it signed a new deal to take on the NZYQ cohort of asylum seekers. And we'll give it a further $70 million annually for the next three decades. That's a total of $2.5 billion in that deal. But meanwhile, detainees in Nowidaw report that they can't afford to buy enough food or access clean drinking water. while they're waiting for their asylum claims to be processed, which they may never be processed.
So many are skipping meals to make ends meet. And Nauru's also been experiencing frequent power outages. So with all this money going around, where is it all going? And I discovered that some of it's going to Nauru Airlines.
Right. And so tell me more about what you uncovered.
So Nauru Air Corporation, which runs Nauru Airlines, is incorporated in Nauru and owned by the state of Nauru, but it's registered in Australia as an overseas company. So its operational and corporate offices are based in Brisbane.
What contracts and subsidies does the Australian government give to Nauru Airlines?
And look, it wouldn't be remotely viable without Australian contracts and subsidies, which are worth tens of millions of dollars a year. So since the start of 2023... DFAT has contracts with over $50 million with Nauru Airlines for flights to Nauru and to other Pacific destinations. But the other key source of their revenue is our Department of Home Affairs. So they have a contract that's worth $104 million over three years. But here it gets quite interesting because Home Affairs is clearly trying to conceal its dealings with the airline.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Why is Australia funding an airline for a tiny island with no tourism?
0:01–2:11
2
How did Nauru Airlines evolve from a single‑plane carrier to a seven‑plane fleet?
2:11–4:12
3
What contracts and subsidies does the Australian government give to Nauru Airlines?
4:12–5:42
4
How much money is being spent on offshore detention and what portion goes to the airline?
5:42–7:34
5
Why are there complex subcontractors like Adegold and Ergo behind the $104 million Home Affairs deal?
7:34–9:33
6
How does the monopoly on landing rights create a de‑facto monopoly for Nauru Airlines?
9:33–11:14
7
What safety incidents and turnbacks have raised concerns about Nauru Airlines’ aircraft?
11:14–13:03
8
Why is the airline considered financially insolvent despite government support?
13:03–16:06
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from 7am
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