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.
RARE EVENT: While some cultures have a negative view of eclipses, others see them as a chance to show how people can work together, a scientist said Stargazers across a swathe of the world marveled at a dramatic red “Blood Moon” during a rare total lunar eclipse in the early hours of yesterday morning. The celestial spectacle was visible in the Americas and Pacific and Atlantic oceans, as well as in the westernmost parts of Europe and Africa. The phenomenon happens when the sun, Earth and moon line up, causing our planet to cast a giant shadow across its satellite. But as the Earth’s shadow crept across the moon, it did not entirely blot out its white glow — instead the moon glowed a reddish color. This is because the
Romania’s electoral commission on Saturday excluded a second far-right hopeful, Diana Sosoaca, from May’s presidential election, amid rising tension in the run-up to the May rerun of the poll. Earlier this month, Romania’s Central Electoral Bureau barred Calin Georgescu, an independent who was polling at about 40 percent ahead of the rerun election. Georgescu, a fierce EU and NATO critic, shot to prominence in November last year when he unexpectedly topped a first round of presidential voting. However, Romania’s constitutional court annulled the election after claims of Russian interference and a “massive” social media promotion in his favor. On Saturday, an electoral commission statement
Chinese authorities increased pressure on CK Hutchison Holdings Ltd over its plan to sell its Panama ports stake by sharing a second newspaper commentary attacking the deal. The Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office on Saturday reposted a commentary originally published in Ta Kung Pao, saying the planned sale of the ports by the Hong Kong company had triggered deep concerns among Chinese people and questioned whether the deal was harming China and aiding evil. “Why were so many important ports transferred to ill-intentioned US forces so easily? What kind of political calculations are hidden in the so-called commercial behavior on the
MINERAL DEPOSITS: The Pacific nation is looking for new foreign partners after its agreement with Canada’s Metals Co was terminated ‘mutually’ at the end of last year Pacific nation Kiribati says it is exploring a deep-sea mining partnership with China, dangling access to a vast patch of Pacific Ocean harboring coveted metals and minerals. Beijing has been ramping up efforts to court Pacific nations sitting on lucrative seafloor deposits of cobalt, nickel and copper — recently inking a cooperation deal with Cook Islands. Kiribati opened discussions with Chinese Ambassador Zhou Limin (周立民) after a longstanding agreement with leading deep-sea mining outfit The Metals Co fell through. “The talk provides an exciting opportunity to explore potential collaboration for the sustainable exploration of the deep-ocean resources in Kiribati,” the government said
RSS