The garrison support operations in Australia made an appearance this time – "transition costs" may be incurred to close it.
The initial contract with Transfield for garrison support at Nauru, which ran from September 2012 to March 2014, was worth $351m.
The current contract, for garrison support and welfare services at both Manus and Nauru until February 2017, is worth almost $2.2bn.
The audit, entitled The Department of Home Affairs' procurement of garrison support and welfare services, is forecast to deliver its report in January 2020.
On Monday, the auditor general agreed to expand its investigation and assess "whether the Department of Home Affairs has appropriately managed the procurement of garrison support and welfare services" for all of its immigration processing centres.
Transfield reported to the ASX on Monday morning: "Transfield Services Limited has been notified that it has been selected as the preferred tenderer to provide welfare and garrison support services for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection at the regional processing centres in Nauru and Manus provinces.
The report into the procurement of garrison support and welfare services for the offshore processing centres on Manus Island and Nauru, released on Tuesday, found the department had "fallen well short of effective procurement practice" in negotiating more than $3bn worth of contracts for both centres since they were reopened in 2012.
"The reason for the privatization of gate guards is to free up the war-fighter from doing garrison support and do what they are trained to do, which is go and fight," said Jerome Kelly, a spokesman for the Installation Management Agency, a division of the Army that manages military bases.
The report said the contracts for garrison support – security, cleaning, and catering – and welfare services, which included education and recreation, were awarded under a limited tender process in August 2012 and again in 2013, when the department consolidated the contracts by making Transfield the principal contractor across both centres.
Transfield Services, the company embroiled in a series of scandals over human rights abuses in its offshore asylum detention centres, appears set to continue running the Manus Island and Nauru facilities for another five years, after being announced as the government's preferred tenderer to run "welfare and garrison support services" offshore.
