Asylum seekers arrival by boat reignites refugee debate

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Debate has reignited over refugees after 39 people arrived by boat in Western Australia's north. The men have since been flown to Nauru, where they will be held in detention.

Transcript

00:00 I think there's two fundamental things that Australians should understand about this.

00:06 Firstly, the policies of the two major parties on this are for all practical purposes identical.

00:13 They have operation sovereign borders for boat turnarounds, albeit two boats did get

00:18 through and we have questions about that.

00:20 That's fair enough.

00:22 The second part of it is all people who arrive by boat are taken to an offshore processing

00:27 centre, at the moment Nauru, for processing.

00:30 And finally, both political parties have a position that those people will never be resettled

00:36 in Australia.

00:37 In other words, the fundamental elements of our border protection arrangements for people

00:43 who arrive by boat are identical between the two political parties.

00:47 The second thing I would say about this is that we are talking about a few dozen people,

00:52 a tiny, tiny, tiny number compared to almost 110,000 asylum seekers in Australia, the vast

01:01 bulk of whom arrived by aeroplane when Mr Dutton was Home Affairs Minister.

01:09 What I don't understand is Mr Dutton seems to be saying that if an asylum seeker arrives

01:14 by boat, that is a huge risk to Australia's border protection, but if they arrive by an

01:20 aeroplane, nothing to worry about.

01:23 Now you said more questions about those boat arrivals.

01:26 Is that a failure of Operation Sovereign Borders?

01:30 Well that's a question for the head of Operation Sovereign Borders.

01:34 Is it a question of resourcing, as Mr Dutton says?

01:36 I don't know the answer to that question and I suspect Mr Dutton does not know either.

01:41 The second part of this is we must remember that these boats are usually coming through

01:47 large numbers of fishing boats who are in the same area and often it's difficult to

01:52 spot which is the asylum seeker boat and which is the fishing boat.

01:56 Now it may have been a case of that, that it was missed because of that reason.

02:00 That's an analysis that Operation Sovereign Borders has to do, but I do agree with the

02:05 head of Operation Sovereign Borders.

02:07 That is, for anyone to suggest there's actually a difference in policy here is both misleading

02:13 Australians but also providing an opportunity for people smugglers to exploit the misinformation.

02:21 Have the so-called push factors changed or intensified and are asylum seeker numbers

02:27 in transit countries on the rise?

02:31 Certainly asylum seeker numbers all around the world are in very high numbers right now

02:36 with all sorts of conflict in many parts of the world.

02:39 That is certainly an issue.

02:41 In terms of push factors out of Indonesia, we don't know whether the recent election

02:46 in Indonesia has been used by the people smugglers to advantage.

02:50 That could have been a factor.

02:51 We don't know that.

02:53 But fundamentally, I think the message will very quickly get back to the communities from

02:58 which these asylum seekers came.

03:00 That is, if you take a boat to Australia, you'll end up being processed on Nauru and

03:05 you'll never actually get to Australia.

03:08 Speaking of Nauru, we've got the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre saying that there's been a

03:12 lack of transparency there.

03:13 They're trying to contact the men.

03:16 Are you concerned about that?

03:19 I think there should be some reasonable level of transparency around that.

03:23 I think to be fair to the government on this, they've only just transferred the asylum seekers

03:27 to Nauru.

03:29 Some reasonable time should be allowed before they can be accessed by the Asylum Seeker

03:33 Resource Centre.

03:35 The people will have to be settled in Nauru.

03:38 Their health checks, identity checks, all of those checks will have to take place.

03:41 That will take a little bit of time.

03:43 Now, as you say, there is quite a focus on boat arrivals as opposed to plane arrivals.

03:48 But are more boat arrivals likely?

03:51 I would be very surprised if we had the, quote, "armada of boats" Mr Dutton has been talking

03:56 about.

03:57 To be frank, Mr Dutton has talked about an armada of boats repeatedly over the last decade

04:03 and no such armada has arrived.

04:06 What he hasn't explained is why he's going to be right this time, given that he's been

04:09 wrong so many times in the past.

04:11 [BLANK_AUDIO]

Category

Transcript

Recommended