Australian gov’t faces mounting pressure over Migration Act amendments

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CANBERRA: Australian federal government faces the prospect of only being able to legally process asylum seekers onshore, as the coalition on Tuesday joined the Greens opposing amendments to the Migration Act.

In a last-ditch bid to win opposition leader Tony Abbott’s support, Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday presented Abbott with a new set of proposed Migration Act amendments aimed at reinstating offshore processing.

The new amendments would require the government to consider whether a country selected for offshore processing would honor the “principal obligations” of the United Nations Refugee Convention.

But Abbott quickly rejected the new version, saying it paid only lip service to human rights while exposing the government to greater risk of a legal challenge.

He said Malaysia provides no legal protection which would prevent asylum seekers being sent back to the country from which they fled, and the opposition has proposed only sending asylum seekers to countries which have signed the United Nations refugee convention.

“My responsibility is to good policy and consistent policy,” he told the Seven Network on Tuesday. “If the government wants offshore processing, it can have offshore processing, it should have offshore processing, and it should be at Nauru.”

Greens leader Bob Brown earlier said “we Greens will not accept these or any other amendments.” And without opposition’s support, the federal government will have no option but to process asylum seekers on Australian soil.

Labor left faction members will also add pressure to the government on Tuesday, bringing to caucus a motion to reject offshore solutions and process all asylum seekers in Australia.

Despite major parties’ apparently immovable positions over the plan, Gillard said she is determined to bring the changes to parliament.

“Abbott has slammed the door on national interest and we will be challenging him, for once, to put this nation’s interest first in front of his political opportunism and reckless negativity,” she said, adding that the government had been advised that reopening Nauru would not stop people-smuggling and would cost around one billion US dollars over four years.

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen said not being able to put in place a regional framework for dealing with people-smugglers would put asylum seeker lives at risk.

“It will mean that people will continue to take that boat journey to Australia, and we’ll continue to see them risking their lives inevitably before losing their lives,” he said.

In further blow to the government’s broader protection policy, leader refugee lawyer Favid Manne, who led the successful High Court challenge against the government’s Malaysia Solution, on Tuesday said the government’s move to get around the decision by changes to the Migration Act would breach Australia’s human rights obligations.

“These proposed changes seek to strip the Act bare of those basic protections for asylum seekers if they are to be expelled elsewhere,” Manne said. “The proposals could face a High Court challenge. Were they to be enacted in law, one certainly could not rule out further challenge.”

The Migration Act change to give the immigration minister more discretionary powers and give legal certainty to offshore processing came after the High Court’s decision to quash the government’s agreement with Malaysia to swap 800 people who came by boat for 4000 properly processed refugees.