Australia said yesterday its plans to send asylum seekers for processing in the Pacific appeared untenable because of a court ruling against a similar deal with Malaysia, deepening woes for the prime minister.
Australian Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said the government’s lawyers had reviewed last week’s High Court judgment against the so-called Malaysia solution and advised that it threw the entire offshore processing system into question.
In particular, Bowen said Australian Solicitor-General Stephen Gageler had expressed “no confidence” in plans to send asylum-seekers arriving by boat to either Papua New Guinea or Nauru, as being contemplated by the government.
“The solicitor-general’s advice confirms the significant doubts over whether or not the -government and immigration minister could make a valid declaration for either Papua New Guinea or Nauru,” Bowen said.
Canberra’s plan to send 800 boat people to Malaysia in exchange for 4,000 of the Asian nation’s registered refugees was defeated by a majority ruling of Australia’s highest court on Wednesday in an embarrassing blow for the government.
The judges said Australia could not ship asylum seekers offshore unless the country in question — in this case Malaysia — was compelled to adequately protect them. Kuala Lumpur is not a signatory to the UN convention on refugees.
Canberra’s entire regional processing plan now looks fatally flawed, with Gageler warning that offshore detention on Papua New Guinea or Nauru was also now not possible under current laws because of similar human rights concerns.
The comments will deepen the embarrassment for Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, who stumbled at the outset of the regional plan by prematurely announcing that neighboring East Timor could host Australia’s asylum-seekers.
She was forced to retreat after strong objections from Dili.
Gillard popularity has declined steadily since she became prime minister last year, with the scuttling of her Malaysia deal stoking unrest inside the ruling Labor party about her fragile rule and fueling speculation of yet another coup to replace her.
Labor figures are anxious about Gillard’s credibility, which many have seen as shaky from the start, with voters wary of the way she came into the top job and her reneging on an election promise not to introduce a pollution tax.
Bowen said the High Court ruling threw significant hurdles before offshore processing and said there was “no clear or easy response” to the sensitive issue of boat people, hundreds of whom now hang in legal limbo.
“The government [will] now carefully consider all its options,” he said.
Offshore processing was introduced as a deterrent to people--smuggling by the former conservative government of John Howard in a punitive scheme known as the “Pacific Solution,” condemned by human rights groups.
Papau New Guinea’s Manus Island and Nauru, both being considered as destinations by the current government, were central to the plan, which saw asylum-seekers, including children, held behind razor wire, sometimes for several years.
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