Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was forced onto the defensive on the key election issue of asylum seekers yesterday, three weeks ahead of national polls, with cracks appearing in his hardline refugee policy.
Rudd’s so-called Papua New Guinea (PNG) Solution allows people smuggled by boat to be sent to the Pacific nation even if found to be genuine refugees.
However, Papua New Guinean Prime Minister Peter O’Neill yesterday indicated that the agreement was not open ended — as had previously been suggested — and there was a limit to the number of boat people it could settle.
“There is no agreement that all genuine refugees will be settled in PNG,” O’Neill told Fairfax newspapers.
“We will take what we think we are able to assist, but we are also aware that we have our own issues with refugees from West Papua,” he added.
Refugees are a sensitive political issue in Australia and Rudd has gambled his electoral fortunes on the PNG circuit-breaker, which has so far slowed the flow of smuggling boats.
It is shaping up as a major election battleground, with the conservative Tony Abbott-led opposition pledging their own crackdown that would see all refugees put on three-year temporary visas and forced into a work-for-welfare program without family reunion, appeal or permanent residency rights.
Abbott is favorite to win the Sept. 7 poll according to opinion polls, and his party seized on O’Neill’s remarks as evidence that the deal was “unravelling,” along with ruling Labor’s election campaign.
“The Papua New Guinea prime minister has made it very clear in this latest interview that the arrangement that Kevin Rudd claims to exist does not exist in those terms,” immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said.
Further compounding Rudd’s woes, O’Neill said Australia would ultimately have to take back some of the boat people it sent to PNG for processing, under its international refugee convention obligations.
“They will get some and New Zealand has indicated they would take some,” O’Neill said of the refugees unable to be accommodated by PNG.
He described asylum seekers as an “Australian issue” and said “we can easily walk away from it and allow Australia to deal with it.”
The remarks cast a cloud over Rudd’s plan, which has succeeded in slowing the flow of people-smuggling boats in recent weeks by removing the incentive of Australia as an end destination.
Rudd said he had spoken to O’Neill yesterday and the PNG leader had affirmed his “full 100 percent support for the agreement.”
However, Rudd stuck closely to the letter of the deal, the language of which is broad and makes no mention of PNG exclusively settling all of Australia’s boat people and only applies for an initial 12-month period.
“I draw your attention to the provision of the regional resettlement arrangement which says persons found to be refugees will be resettled in PNG and other participating regional states, including Pacific Island states,” Rudd said. “That’s what we agreed to, that’s what we support now, that support continues to the present and that has been confirmed as late as today.”
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese