Eleven years ago, on 19 July 2013, the then Labor Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, announced that the government had struck a deal to transfer all asylum-seekers who arrived by boat to Manus Island in PNG. A similar deal was signed with Nauru on 3 August 2013.
Those agreements determined that any refugees sent offshore would never be resettled in Australia and marked the beginning of what is now internationally known as the Australia Solution. Anthony Albanese was Deputy Prime Minister.
Eleven years later, about 50 refugees and asylum-seekers (about 90 people altogether, including the partners and children of 18 families) are still being held in PNG.
For the past ten months the Labor government has turned a blind eye to their suffering as they have been left without income, food, electricity or medical support.
Ten of the refugees are too mentally unwell to engage with UNHCR officials to be considered for resettlement in New Zealand.
The Albanese government has refused every request for them to be medically transferred to Australia, insisting that an agreement between Morrison and PNG signed in December 2021 meant that Australia no longer had any responsibility for the refugees.
Over the past ten months, refugee supporters have raised tens of thousands of dollars to ensure refugees did not go hungry.
Despite numerous appeals, Labor did nothing.
Now the Albanese government has announced that a renewed funding deal will be struck to support the refugees.
But there are no details and the deal reiterates that the refugees will never be resettled in Australia. Yet about 18 of them have no third country resettlement pathway.
Meanwhile, the number of refugees on Nauru has grown to 100, as Labor maintains offshore detention of asylum-seekers who arrive by boat.
They, too, have no resettlement pathway and are facing a decade or more of offshore detention. They are not eligible under the resettlement deal with New Zealand.
And an ABC report has revealed that in the last weeks of June Labor turned asylum-seeker boats back to Indonesia.
Albanese once said Labor would be “tough on borders without being weak on humanity” but that’s a lie.
Labor is working overtime to re-establish a regime of indefinite detention.
Labor’s border protection policies need to be fought just as hard as those of Dutton and the Liberals.
By Ian Rintoul
