Woomera, South Australia and Woomera was chosen as a site for such a facility. The establishment of the Woomera Immigration Detention Centre in 1999, through the refurbishment of the original Woomera Village construction camp at 'Woomera West', eventually brought in new permanent staff (as the Nurrungar people were leaving) to settle and maintain the village population at around 1,200. The immigration detention centre, however, proved to be a highly controversial facility and it closed in early 2003 after only about 36 months of operation, at which point the land and buildings were handed back to the Defence Department. Following the closure of the
Asylum in Australia detention facility. The Rudd government abolished temporary protection visas in 2008. Only 45 of the 1,637 asylum seekers detained in Nauru were found not to be refugees. Over the next few years the number of asylum seekers arriving in the country increased substantially. In 2008, there were 161 immigrants under asylum laws; in 2009, claims jumped to 2,800. The issue quickly became a political problem for Rudd. He claimed it was a change in the international political environment that caused the increase, not the abandonment of the Pacific Solution. When that idea failed to be accepted, he proposed what became