The Malaysian Solution remains gridlocked in the High Court, but Gillard has had a win in the asylum seeker debate with Papua New Guinea agreeing to a detention centre to be re-opened on Manus Island.
A processing centre existed on Manus Island under Howard’s Pacific Solution but closed in 2003. PNG’s new Prime Minister Peter O’Neill — who was only voted PM last week — mainly agreed to the deal due to economic contributions and aid commitments from Australia to PNG in return for the centre.
The Manus Island centre would take some heat of the Malaysian plan — where 800 boat arrivals in Australia are ‘swapped’ with 4000 declared refugees from Malaysia — currently being challenged in the High Court, as it offers a safer, Australian-run alternative to send asylum seekers. As David Marr and Phillip Coorey reported in the Sydney Morning Herald earlier this week:
“Children, for example, could be sent there to what would be an Australian-monitored facility instead of back to Malaysia, which has a poor record in human rights.”
Kirsty Needham in The Age agrees that the Manus Island plan helps the human rights battle the Gillard government is currently embroiled in:
“Because the PNG centre would be Australian-run, it is unlikely to come up against the same human rights objections as the Malaysia swap, which involves sending unaccompanied children to a country with a chequered history on refugees. However, a reopened Manus Island is unlikely to gain support from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.”
The news of a PNG centre comes as another boat full of asylum seekers arrived at Christmas Island, the third since the Malaysia deal was signed. Needham describes the scene:
“A large wooden boat crowded with 100 asylum seekers, legs hanging off its bow and crammed under a stretched tarpaulin, chugged past the Bosun pub and belched diesel into Flying Fish Cove as people smugglers again ignored the federal government’s Malaysia threat.
A toddler was carried onto the jetty with a small boy and a teenager, among a family group of 10 including three women, one in a burqa.”
A Comcare report examined by Lateline last night gave a scathing rundown of detention centres in Australia:
The report identifies five major failures by the Department of Immigration across the detention centre network:
- There is no risk management process, despite the highly volatile environment
- There is no plan to alter staffing levels to deal with dramatic fluctuations in detainee numbers
- Staff are not trained to the point where they are confident and competent in their jobs
- There is no effective written plan to deal with critical incidents like riots and suicide attempts
- And no steps are taken to manage detainees’ religious and cultural needs, detainees are roomed together even when there’s a history of extreme violence between their ethnic groups in their home countries.
We need to support the Malaysian Solution as it’s the best way to discourage people smugglers, writes John Stuyfbergen in The National Times:
“To do nothing risks families and children perishing at sea in substandard and leaky boats. And if we think that present boat arrivals at Christmas Island can be managed because it’s just a case of the odd people smuggler, we should think again.
If it isn’t the case yet, it won’t be long before organised crime will consider people smuggling to Australia as an excellent return on their minimal investment. At the level of money they charge each refugee, compassion does not seem to play a role. Most likely a boat disaster would be only “collateral damage”.
There is a possible long-term approach to achieve a regional solution, but the only immediate solution is the Malaysia deal — sending asylum seekers back to the end of the queue in Malaysia under strict, humanitarian and transparent conditions.”
The first group of 4000 refugees from Malaysia flew in to Melbourne last night, 13 people from the Chin minority in Burma. They “arrived bearing Australian flags and woolly hats for the lingering winter chill,” report Rowan Callick and Pia Akerman and Paige Taylor in The Australian. “Kham Kap Thang Taithoul and his young family said they were glad to leave their ‘very scary’ Malaysian experience behind, as the legal battle continued about whether Malaysia was fit to host asylum-seekers. ‘It’s very difficult to stay in Malaysia,’ Mr Taithoul said through an interpreter. ‘It was a very scary country because always they can arrest us there.'”
The Manus Island Solution has been announced to take the heat off the Malaysian Solution.
The Malaysian Solution was announced to take heat off the East Timor Solution.
The East Timor Solution was announced to take heat off the Afghan-Sri-Lankan-Freeze Solution.
It’s one rolling crisis to the next, jumping to the next Labor brain-fart when it becomes obvious the last plan was a dud. And yet we know of a solution that does work, does stop the boats and was completely legal(left tried the High Court against it and failed every time) and that was the Nauruan Pacific Solution and TPV’s.
Nauru has put it’s hand up and said “pick me pick me!” but Gillard continues to call every other nation in the South Pacific that either doesn’t want it, or wants a one sided unfair deal.
But Why? Because Labor is too proud to admit Howard was right, and all those years of abuse and moral high grounding attacks of Howard’s boatpeople policies now shows how much egg Labor has on it’s face.
There is no reason not to open Nauru. Labors position against Nauru is simply one of posturing and arrogance that they got it wrong…. they think this is a game, but this isn’t a game, this is a nation
The Manus Island option could be a slight improvement on the Malaysian swap arrangement. But slight at best on current indications.
Aside from ensuring basic living conditions and safety, the real test will be the access to Australian legal processes and particularly the rights to appeal adverse determinations.
With appeals to the Refugee Review Tribunal running at a 25% success rate against negative decisions, this is most significant. One in four of all adverse determinations taken to the Tribunal are overturned or set aside. The speed and efficiency of the assessment process is also critical.
The fiction that “offshore processing” permits Australia to avoid its legal obligations – much like the yanks with Guantanamo Bay – will not hold in the inevitable the High Court. And arguably that runs to any “two speed” arrangement as well, where as has recently been indicated, decisions are “not made” lest they be taken to appeal. Pissant stuff.
I wonder what we’ll be doing when the global movement of refugees and asylum seekers – currently a trickle here – really starts to take off.
[The fiction that “offshore processing” permits Australia to avoid its legal obligations – much like the yanks with Guantanamo Bay – will not hold in the inevitable the High Court.]
Challenged in the High Court by the left and failed.
The left claimed that boatpeople in Nauru had a right to seek legal challenges in Australian courts.
However the High Court disagreed. People sent to Nauru were there on NARUAN Visa’s, not Australian Visa’s. Therefore they were covered by Naruan immigration laws and Naruan courts of appeal. Australia was simply administrating the centre, they had no obligation to take any of these boatpeople.
The Nauru solution was put through the wringer by the leftwing brigade in the High Court and the lefties couldn’t touch it. Unlike the Malaysian Solution which is looking more and more like an illegal deal in the making.
How much is the “PNG Solution” costing taxpayers upfront and annually.
[How much is the “PNG Solution” costing taxpayers upfront and annually.]
Suzanne, just another few hundred million for the taxpayers to foot the bill for, nothing to worry about.
The better question has Chris Bowen already mailed out the $330 Million dollar bribe to the Malaysians and what happens when the High Court rules the Malaysian Solution to be illegal? Do we get our money back, or has this government just blown another $330M in waste?
And what about the 4000 are we going to be forced to take them now even if we can’t send the 800?
God this government is useless.