FREMANTLE council is poised to dump Wilson Security as a contractor because of its involvement in Australia’s offshore detention regime.

On Wednesday the council unanimously voted to ban the city from doing business with companies that profit from the offshore detention of refugees on Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island and in Nauru.

Wilson is a sub-contractor for the centres’ lead administrator Broadspectrum (formerly Transfield). It holds security contracts with the council.

The late item, put forward by socialist councillor Sam Wainwright, claims Wilson and Broadspectrum have been complicit “in gross human rights abuses”.

The claims were originally made in a report released in November by No Business in Abuse, which is supported by left-wing lobby group GetUp and the Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce.

“We will be getting a report on our exposure to Wilson so we can decide on the best way to terminate the relationship, unless of course they decide to do the right thing in the meantime and terminate their own sub-contracting role with Transfield/Broadspectrum,” Cr Wainwright told the Herald.

• Fremantle mayor Brad Pettitt and councillors Andrew Sullivan, Josh Wilson, Sam Wainwright, Ingrid Waltham and Jon Strachan with members of the Fremantle Refugee Rights Action Network who are handing a petition to the council asking that it stop doing business with companies involved in offshore detention. On Wednesday the council voted to do just that. Photo supplied

At the same meeting the council also resolved to:

• examine the legality of excluding Broadspectrum and Wilson Security from all future contracts or tenders;

• ask premier Colin Barnett to join his interstate counterparts in calling for 267 asylum seekers to be allowed to remain in Australia. Most had been brought to the mainland suffering serious medical conditions but are set to be returned; and,

• write to prime minister Malcolm Turnbull asking him to let the refugees stay, close offshore processing and cease boat “turnbacks”.

Wilson Security was asked to comment but flak-catcher Kristy Cook warned a complex approval systems meant a reply would take some time.

Broadspectrum dismissed NBIA’s November report as “a political attack directed at an Australian company undertaking work to fulfil a government policy that has bipartisan political support”.

Retiring Fremantle Labor MP Melissa Parke supports NBIA: “I congratulate the council for considering the motion before it, and for being prepared to take the next step towards a clearer expression of Fremantle’s rejection of the politics of fear and the policies that punish these seeking refuge,” she wrote to the council Wednesday.

by STEVE GRANT