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.”
Kouri Richins, a Utah mother who published a children’s book about grief after the death of her husband is to serve a life sentence for his murder without the possibility of parole, a judge ruled on Wednesday. Richins was convicted in March of aggravated murder for lacing a cocktail given to her husband, Eric Richins, with five times the lethal dose of fentanyl at their home near Park City in 2022. A jury also found her guilty of four other felonies, including insurance fraud, forgery and attempted murder for trying to poison her husband weeks earlier on Feb. 14, 2022, with a
‘PERSONAL MISTAKES’: Eileen Wang has agreed to plead guilty to the felony, which comes with a maximum sentence of 10 years in federal prison A southern California mayor has agreed to plead guilty to acting as an illegal agent for the Chinese government and has resigned from her city position, officials said on Monday. Eileen Wang (王愛琳), mayor of Arcadia, was charged last month with one count of acting in the US as an illegal agent of a foreign government. She was accused of doing the bidding of Chinese officials, such as sharing articles favorable to Beijing, without prior notification to the US government as required by law. The 58-year-old was elected in November 2022 to a five-person city council, from which the mayor is selected
DELA ROSA CASE: The whereabouts of the senator, who is wanted by the ICC, was unclear, while President Marcos faces a political test over the senate situation Philippine authorities yesterday were seeking confirmation of reports that a top politician wanted by the International Criminal Court (ICC) had fled, a day after gunfire rang out at the Philippine Senate where he had taken refuge fearing his arrest. Senator Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa, the former national police chief and top enforcer of former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte’s “war on drugs,” has been under Senate protection and is wanted for crimes against humanity, the same charges Duterte is accused of. “Several sources confirmed that the senator, Senator Bato, is no longer in the Senate premises, but we are still getting confirmation,” Presidential
HELP DENIED? The US Department of State said that the Cuban leadership refuses to allow the US to provide aid to Cubans, ‘who are in desperate need of assistance’ US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday said that Cuba’s leadership must change, as Washington renewed an offer of US$100 million in aid if the communist nation agrees to cooperate. Cuba has been suffering severe economic tumult led by an energy shortage that plunged 65 percent of the country into darkness on Tuesday. Cuba’s leaders have blamed US sanctions, but Rubio, a Cuban American and critic of the government established by Fidel Castro, said the system was to blame, including corruption by the military. “It’s a broken, nonfunctional economy, and it’s impossible to change it. I wish it were different,” he told
RSS