Asylum seekers on Christmas Island have in the past year racked up a telephone bill costing taxpayers more than $15,000 a week.
Revelations about the phone bill came as a new group of unaccompanied minors moved into the Leonora detention centre after being transferred from Christmas Island at the weekend.
The figures, released by the Immigration Department, reveal the cost of calls made by "clients" on Christmas Island for the 2010-11 financial year was $812,124.66.
Though it excludes the goods and services tax, which makes the real cost nearly $900,000, the Commonwealth gets the 10 per cent GST back automatically.
Detainees on the island have access to a number of pay phones or if they are in a particular compound at the family camp, they are permitted access to mobile phones.
They are allowed to buy phone cards from the canteen at the detention centre.
Serco, the detention services provider, said most phone cards were sold in $10 denominations but special permission was needed for someone to buy a higher value card, for as much as $50.
Individual breakdowns for calls made from each mainland detention centre were not available, but the total expenditure on phone cards for the past financial year was about $5 million, the Immigration Department said.
Internet use on the island cost just over $38,000 from May 24 last year to June 30, more than three times the amount spent in 2008-09.
The figure was also up substantially from the 2009-10 cost of $28,655.
Although detainee numbers at the Christmas Island centres had been reducing gradually since riots on the island in March, an influx of boats in recent weeks has pushed the number past 1000 again.
On Sunday, there were 1010 people in detention on the island, including 14 crew.
There were 996 detainees at the Curtin centre.
And in Leonora, a group of 33 unaccompanied minors was settling in to the centre in the desert town yesterday. Their arrival came just days after a group of more than 60 unaccompanied minors were moved into community detention from the centre last week.
An Immigration Department spokeswoman said the latest group consisted mainly of Afghans but there were some Iranian children among them.(thewest.com.au)
