MELBOURNE: While opposition leader Tony Abbott flatly rejects the asylum seeker swap deal with Malaysia, a senior Malaysian official has said Kuala Lumpur was ready to move quickly to implement its arrangement with Australia.
“We are happy to bring back the agreement with the Australian government,” the official told ‘The Age’ newspaper.
He said Malaysia respected the non-refoulement principle — which demands that refugees not be returned to places where their lives or freedom could be threatened.
“We completely respect the policy of non-refoulement. It is a requirement of the (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees) that Malaysia has agreed to.
“The UNHCR will be processing all asylum seekers who arrive in Malaysia under the arrangement,” the official said. — Bernama
Abbott said on Friday he would immediately sign off on a deal to reopen an asylum-seeker processing centre on Nauru, but remains opposed to Malaysia.
Abbott welcomed the meeting between government and opposition members to discuss the government’s offshore processing proposal.
The government says it will reopen Nauru in return for the opposition’s support on Malaysia, but will not reintroduce temporary protection visas.
Abbott said his party would sign off on Nauru “here, now”, but would not lend any support on Malaysia.
“I think the time for Malaysia has well and truly passed,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Nauru government has denied it could accept large numbers of asylum seekers quickly.
A government spokesman Rod Henshaw told The Age newspaper the country was willing to assist Australia, but the previous two asylum seeker centres were being used by a primary school and an economic advisory body, the Nauru Rehabilitation Corporation.
“There is the issue now of the school, and you would have to kick out the Nauru Rehabilitation Corporation – that would take negotiation,” said Henshaw.
“There are all these sorts of questions. Or do they look at a fresh area and start again, and that’s more than a few weeks.”
Establishing a new site would involve flying in all building materials and labour to the tiny Pacific Island.
Federal government sources said the reality was Nauru couldn’t be opened within weeks and wasn’t an interim measure. — Bernama