Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison yesterday signaled that he could accept New Zealand’s long-standing offer to resettle 150 refugees exiled to Pacific islands, as long as the Australian parliament legislates to ban them from ever setting foot in Australia.
Morrison said he was willing to brief non-government senators on the travel ban bill.
“There is no support for that bill at present,” Morrison told reporters.
The Australian Labor Party said that a lifetime ban on refugees ever visiting Australia on a tourist or business visa was unnecessary and against the nation’s interests.
The conservative government is under mounting pressure to relax its five-year-old policy of banning asylum seekers who come by boat from ever settling in Australia.
The policy has effectively ended people-smuggling traffic, but concerns are mounting over the fates of hundreds of asylum seekers languishing in an immigration camp on Nauru and male-only facilities on Papua New Guinea.
Morrison’s policy shift could also be influenced by a crucial by-election in a progressive Sydney electorate on Saturday.
At stake is the government’s single-seat majority in the House of Representatives and Morrison’s ability to govern without doing deals with independent lawmakers.
Three government lawmakers have appealed to Morrison to accept families with children from Nauru so they can receive adequate medical care.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees last week called on the government to “urgently address a collapsing health situation” on the islands and immediately bring the asylum seekers to Australia.
The US has agreed to resettle up to 1,250 refugees from the islands, but only 462 had found new homes in the US in the past 14 months, Refugee Action Coalition spokesman Ian Rintoul said.
New Zealand citizens are allowed to live and work in Australia for life, a unique status the government fears banished refugees would use as a back door into Australia.
Former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in March said that Canberra would not consider other options for resettling refugees until the US fulfills its commitment.
Rintoul said a plane carrying 17 men from Papua New Guinea for the US that left on Tuesday could be the last.
“All the Iranians, Syrians, Iraqis and Somalis are being rejected, so America’s taken pretty much all that they’re going to take,” Rintoul said.
There were still 1,337 refugees and asylum seekers on the islands, a government statement said yesterday.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not