Tag: boatpeople

Not white enough for Oz

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on Sunday said he made “absolutely no apology” for his hardline new policy on asylum-seekers under which they are sent to Papua New Guinea.

Rudd quickly moved to announce a radically reshaped immigration plan under which boatpeople could be resettled in PNG, sent home, or to a third country but not Australia. His new stance reinforces the notion that Australia wants to remain a white country.

Not white enough for Oz
Not white enough for Oz

Under the directive, those who pay people-smugglers to arrive on unauthorised boats will be sent to the poor Pacific nation for processing and resettled there even if found to be genuine refugees.

“On the question of asylum-seekers… we’ve had to adjust our policy over time and I make absolutely no apology whatsoever for our current policy settings because the world around us has changed,” Rudd told Channel Ten.

Rudd, who was last month reinstalled as prime minister by his Labour colleagues to help turn around dire polls in an election year, had previously softened some of the former conservative government’s policies.

The plan has worried the United Nations refugee agency which said on Friday that conditions at Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island facility currently failed to adequately protect refugees.

“UNHCR is troubled by the current absence of adequate protection standards and safeguards for asylum-seekers and refugees in Papua New Guinea,” it said in its first assessment of the policy.

Australia resumed sending asylum-seekers to Manus Island and the Pacific state of Nauru in 2012 in a bid to deter record numbers of migrants arriving by boat, hundreds of whom drowned en route.

Rudd has said the new PNG policy will take some time to deter asylum-seekers, but since he announced the change just over a week ago more than 1 300 have arrived on boats.

‘You will not be settled in Australia’

“It is the implementation of that policy direction over time, resolutely, which will yield results,” he told Network Ten’s Bolt Report.

“In the interim, people smugglers will test your resolve.”

Asylum-seekers are a sensitive issue in Australia, and one set to feature prominently in the election due this year.

Rudd said while people-smugglers, who make thousands of dollars bringing asylum-seekers to Australia, would test the government’s resolve “we are not for turning”.

“Our policy is very clear… you will not be settled in Australia,” Rudd said. AFP

Australia to deal with its boatpeople this week

Australian Immigration Minister Chris Bowen on Monday said he hoped to begin sending asylum-seekers who arrive by boat to the tiny Pacific nation of Nauru later this week.

With Australia facing a record influx of asylum-seekers arriving by sea, Canberra last month announced plans to send them to Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island in a policy aimed at stemming the flow.

Bowen tabled a document in parliament Monday designating Nauru as a regional processing country under the Migration Act so boatpeople can be sent to the small state to await their visa decision.

“Subject to both houses (of parliament) passing a resolution approving the designation, the designation will allow for the transfer of irregular maritime arrivals who arrived after 13 August to Nauru,” Bowen said.

Canberra announced its intention to transfer asylum-seekers to Nauru and Papua New Guinea in mid-August as part of a tough new policy to deter them from paying people-smugglers to attempt the dangerous sea voyage.

Since then 2,087 asylum-seekers have arrived by boat — close to capacity for the camps on Manus and Nauru, which will accommodate a total of 2,100 once completed.

Bowen would not comment on who would be part of the first transfer to Nauru or whether children would be sent but said that he hoped the first group would be transferred within days.

“Construction work on the temporary facility is nearing completion and the government expects to be able to begin transferring people to Nauru later this week,” Bowen said in a statement.

More than 9,796 asylum-seekers have arrived in Australia on boats in 2012, many of them Afghans, Iraqis and Iranians who have paid people-smugglers to ferry them from Indonesia to Australia.

Offshore processing is a sensitive issue in Australia, with Prime Minister Julia Gillard adopting the policy after months of bitter political debate and after several boats capsized en route, drowning scores of people.

The policy signals a return to the practice of the previous conservative government, which sent asylum-seekers to Nauru and Manus, that centre-left Labor rolled back soon after taking office in late 2007.

The opposition supports offshore processing but said the government’s promise that asylum-seekers won’t be resettled quicker just because they are processed on Nauru or PNG will see them stranded in the Pacific for years.

“The policy that (they) have adopted means people could expect to wait on Nauru for five years,” opposition spokesman Scott Morrison said. – AFP