PNG DEAL another RUDD FRAUD and CON

[nero_bolt]

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:

Australia under this arrangement will not send women and children to PNG for some time. Kevin Rudd e...

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.

Construction of the Manus detention centre announced last year is still six months away, with room f...

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:

If PNG won’t resettle non-refugees, Australia may have to take them back - or find them some other h...

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.

[not_an_eloi]

wot the australia defence association says on the matter,  on three key issues:

"For several years the Australia Defence Association has been pointing out that asylum-seeking is a strategic policy issue with domestic ramifications, not vice versa. Not appreciating this context continues to cause most of the misunderstandings so undermining informed and effective public debate. Even more importantly, it continues to hamper the implementation of effective solutions. We have also long condemned both sides of politics for often putting perceived short-term electoral advantage ahead of their responsibility to protect the long-term national interest regarding Australia's strategic security and the protection of our national sovereignty.

In terms of the new Coalition plan, the ADA has some concerns about three particular aspects and seeks clarifications that are not provided by the plan itself or in the subsequent and somewhat contradictory explanations by some of its authors.

1.   Risk of appearing to "militarise" a civil matter
2.   Care always needed when using the ADF to supplement civil law enforcement

1.    Risk of appearing to "militarise" a civil matter

In both perception and reality it is surely not conducive to informed public debate domestically, or Australia's reputation and diplomacy internationally, to “militarise” discussion of what remains unequivocally an Australian civil law enforcement issue.

Especially where such law enforcement measures in a border security context necessarily involve Australia’s strategic relations with our regional neighbours. And where public discussion of border security matters is often so ill-informed on all sides of the Australian community.

Or where elements of our defence force have been long used appropriately to supplement but not supplant relevant civil agencies in their law enforcement responsibilities. Such as where the ADF already assists counter-smuggling measures of all types undertaken by the Australian Customs and Border Protection Service or anti-poaching measures by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority.

Members of ADF (and Customs) boarding parties tackling people smuggling now need to be armed for self-protection and the protection of others aboard vessels making unauthorised entry into Australia.

But Operation Resolute now — and an Operation Sovereign Borders-type activity in the future — are still not the type of national security matters requiring the use of military force by the ADF in defence of Australia as governed by the self-defence or collective security provisions of the UN Charter.

Even where the ADF helps the relevant civil authorities, such border law enforcement operations remain a civil matter in both law and practice (including leadership and departmental responsibility). And in the ADF's proper legal subordination to the relevant civil authority it is assisting.

Potential domestic and international confusion about defence force subordination to civil authority should always be avoided.

2.    Care always needed when using the ADF to supplement civil law enforcement

The ADA also has some broader concerns about certain aspects of the Coalition’s proposed plan. At the very least, further clarification of what the plan is intendended to mean is needed.

It has long been our position that the use of the ADF for civil law enforcement should be minimised not maximised, no matter whether force or non-force assistance is involved.

For example, we noted our concern about continued military leadership of the intervention into Northern Territory indigenous communities when it was no longer an emergency.

Moreover, in the NT intervention the ADF was also dragged into substantial party-political and community controversy. Chiefly because some Australians misunderstood the ADF's (unarmed) role of logistic support to the civil authorities concerned, or where such critics deliberately chose to misrepresent the defence force's role and activities for politically-partisan or other polemical purposes

Aspects of the proposed Coalition plan concerning changed border security arrangements need deeper consideration to forestall such pitfalls.

•As a constitutional and legal principle the ADF should not be used for civil law enforcement unless it is a real emergency and the relevant civil agencies do not have the specialist resources to cope. Especially where such defence force assistance might involve the use of armed force. Chiefly because civil policing functions are based on the minimum-force principle whereas military force is necessarily based (legally, culturally and operationally) on using maximum force.
•As institutional, strategic and budgetary principles, our defence force should be enabled to concentrate on its key role of national defence. Not have its capabilities and activities unduly diverted to peripheral or wholly non-defence roles.
•It is a longstanding Westminster-system convention that our defence force is an apolitical institution that defends all Australians equally. National understanding of this, however, needs to be reciprocated, respected and reinforced. This has long meant not placing the ADF in situations where it risks being the focus of party-political or other serious community controversy.
•A bedrock Westminster-system convention to keep the "gun out of our politics" (as in all liberal democracies) means it is necessary to keep party-politics out of our military. This is why undertaking its duties in a non-partisan matter is so embedded in the institutional and professional cultures of our defence force. It is also why the ADF should not be used for partisan purposes or where there is a high risk that it will be perceived as partisan.
Every effort must be made to avoid involving our defence force in situations of party-political controversy.

and finally, the matter of

3.   Military leadership

read more 'ere:

http://ada.asn.au/commentary/formal-comment/2013/oppositions-plan-to-combat-people-smuggling.html

[monman12]

Quoting PNG politics/politicians is a definite case of the blind leading the blind, as in amongst your post NW is this little gem from Marat:

“O’Neill and his ministers should ask Australia to revert back to its turn-back policy for asylum-seekers’ boats where it is safe to do so. Turn back the boat to its port of origin.”

Or perhaps a dumb idea leading to a dumb idea!

nɥºɾ

[***super_nova***]

... and Tony"s plan?

[i-need-a-martini]

And if that doesn't work supernova (and of course it won't work - not even he is stupid enough to believe that...I think...), he has openly declared that he would not abolish Rudds much despised PNG solution.