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Kevin Rudd makes a big claim about his deal with PNG:
From now on, any asylum seeker who arrives in Australia by boat will have no chance of being settled in Australia as refugees. Asylum seekers taken to Christmas Island will be sent to Manus and elsewhere in Papua New Guinea for assessment of their refugee status.
But the published agreement does not guarantee at all what Rudd claims.
The deal is for just 12 months:
The deal does not oblige PNG to take all boat people sent from Australia. It makes such people only “liable” to being sent:
The intention here though, is that we will now bring the quality of those places back up to standard for the processing centre. So that, where at the moment, we will not be transferring women and children immediately across to Manus Island...
PNG’s Prime Minister does not commit himself to taking unlimited numbers any time soon:
We will take as much as we can on the capacities that we have on the ground… You can’t just simply estimate a number.
PNG even suggests there will be a “cap” on the number of people it will take:
PNG Foreign Minister Rimbink Pato told The Australian the arrangement was open-ended but he also signalled the potential to put “brakes” on its scope over time. “We are not putting any cap on any numbers at this stage because it is too early and we want to work through jointly to establish at what point in time what brakes Australia will put on and what brakes PNG will put on,” Mr Pato said.
The deal does not oblige PNG to resettle any boat people found not to be refugees:
LABOR is racing to close a gap in its new border protection regime as Papua New Guinea ... says that it will not resettle asylum-seekers who are refused refugee status…
PNG made it clear over the weekend that it was willing to resettle asylum-seekers who were given refugee status but would not do so for those who fail that test, keeping them in detention if no other countries agreed to accept them… Immigration Minister Tony Burke last night told The Australian that the provision did not mean people who failed to gain asylum on Manus Island would be sent back to detention centres in Australia.
Michael Smith notes that the deal is actually an “arrangement”, and not an agreement or a treaty:
To quote our DFAT publication, an Arrangement is used where ”the parties do not intend to create, of their own force, legal rights or obligations, or a legal rel.... Such instruments, whether in the name of the government or agencies, are termed “arrangements of less than treaty status’’.
The High Court might be interested in this aspect when judging whether Australia has indeed fulfilled its responsibility towards asylum seekers who have applied for our protection.
UPDATE
Further, the deal seems to offer life-time support from Australia for any refugees resettled in PNG under this arrangement, which could prove attractive:
Here is how Kevin Rudd described that last obligation:
...the Australian Government, in support of the PNG Government, will provide comprehensive settlement services to ensure that these refugees can live safely and with security and in time, prosperity, within PNG.
Papua New Guinea villagers the new refugee victims
GIDEON Mahiro is one of about 3000 whose home is in line to be bulldozed to make way for a new refugee processing centre.
His shanty town, opposite the airport in Port Moresby, has been identified as a potential new site where genuine asylum seekers would be resettled in Papua New Guinea under the deal.
The 47-year-old electrician, a father-of-seven, sees brutal irony in his family being dispossessed of their tiny shack to make way for boatpeople out of Manus Island detention centre.
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It is a big headache," said Mr Mahiro, who trained for his trade at TAFE in Queensland.
"If the government wants to bulldoze us out of our homes, they can do it without a humanitarian thought," said Mr Mahiro, of the ATS settlement.
"They will send armed police in to forcibly evict us, they will raze this entire township to the ground, and me and my children, and thousands of others will be left without anywhere to live."
Most of the 7 million-strong population are illiterate but are overwhelmingly a Christian, smiling, warm-hearted, softly-spoken people.
But lawlessness in the city centres is a brutal reality. Car jackings, rape, theft and murder add to a soaring crime rate.
FULL STORY and PICTURES here http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/national/papua-new-guinea-villagers-the-new-refugee-victims/st...
