Lenore Taylor, political editor guardian.co.uk, Monday 22 July 2013
Government is relying on those found not to be genuine refugees to decide whether to stay in Papua New Guinea or go
Tony Burke and Richard Marles are greeted at PNG's Port Moresby airport on July 14, 2013. Photograph: Gary Ramage/AAP Image/News Ltd pool
Failed asylum seekers will face the choice of staying in indefinite detention in Papua New Guinea or travelling back to a country where they have right of residence, the immigration minister, Tony Burke, has said.
Australia has always struggled with the huge problem of returning failed asylum seekers involuntarily to their country of origin, but Burke made it clear that under Kevin Rudd’s plan to send all asylum seekers arriving by boat to Papua New Guinea for processing and resettlement, the government was relying on those who were found not to be genuine refugees to make that decision for themselves.
He said failed asylum seekers would have three options. “One, they remain in detention. Two, they return to their home country. Three, they get settled in another country where they have a right of residence. They don't have a right of residence in Australia, but any of those three options are open,” he said on ABC Radio.
Asked if that meant they could be in detention in PNG indefinitely, Burke said; “Potentially. But I would say it would be an odd choice if you don't have a well-founded fear of persecution … If you're not someone who is being persecuted … and you then choose to remain in detention in Papua New Guinea, rather than return to … another country, that would be a very strange choice for someone to make. It's really pushing the grounds of credibility to think people would be making that decision,” he said.
The Coalition is also pressing for the government to clarify whether, and in what circumstances, Papua New Guinea could refuse to take asylum seekers who arrive by boat in Australia – for example, if they fail security or health checks.
The government has also provided no detail of what “resettlement assistance” will be provided to those asylum seekers who are found to be genuine refugees, as they try to build a life in PNG, with its high unemployment and crime rates and poor education and health services. Nor has it released any costings for its plan.
The Coalition leader, Tony Abbott, said Australia should address the problem of asylum seekers arriving by boat with domestic policy.
“Do you have the will to protect our country or do you believe the protection of our country can be subcontracted out to others?,” he said.
Abbott said he expected Rudd to call an election before the plan began to unravel.
“I can hear the drums beating. I expect Mr Rudd to go to the polls as soon as he possibly can because the things he has been doing over the past couple of weeks have no real substance. His policy … is held together with Blu-Tack and sticky tape,” Abbott said.
Human rights and community groups continue to condemn the new asylum policy, announced on Friday, and noisy demonstrations greeted Rudd as he arrived at Monday’s special caucus meeting in the Sydney suburb of Balmain, where his colleagues are expected to endorse his proposed sweeping changes to party rules surrounding the selection, and dumping, of leaders.
“ACOSS is opposed to any form of offshore processing,” the Australian Council of Social Service CEO, Dr Cassandra Goldie, said. “It has been found by the high court of Australia to be neither a just nor a credible response to people seeking refuge and protection in Australia.”
“This inhumane, costly and damaging policy sets up precedence for the Australian government to abdicate its responsibilities as signatory to the United Nations Refugee Convention, by effectively passing them onto one of our poorest and least developed neighbours and penalising vulnerable asylum seekers,” said Goldie.
“The new agreement will not stem the number of people seeking asylum by boat, but simply puts their futures in even more treacherous hands.”
Abbott pointed out that the “arrangement” signed by Rudd and Papua New Guinea’s prime minister, Peter O’Neill, provided no guarantee that every asylum seeker arriving in Australia could be sent to PNG.
The Coalition immigration spokesman, Scott Morrison, said O’Neill had “made very clear publicly and privately that the numbers that PNG would accept were strictly limited by the capacity on PNG, and at the moment the capacity on PNG is about 300 persons only.”
But Burke said if asylum seeker arrivals exceeded PNG’s capacity to accommodate them, then more detention and processing centres would be built.
''If we end up with a large number of people coming, then a large capacity will be put in Papua New Guinea,” he said.
Meanwhile, the foreign minister, Senator Bob Carr, is travelling to the Solomon Islands and will discuss the possibility of building a processing centre there.
