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Postelection Australia: No mercy for refugees
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Protesters chant at a Liberal Party fundraiser in Sydney on November 10, 2017, as they call on the ruling Liberal coalition government to bring back 600 refugees from an Australian detention centre in Papua New Guinea. (AFP/William West)
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fter an unexpected election win for Scott Morrison and his Coalition in Australia on May 17, refugees in the region continue to face grueling prospects of finding a durable solution to their searches for effective international protection.
Since 2012, Australia has sent hundreds of asylum seekers trying to come to Australia by boat without a visa to Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, and to Nauru, an impoverished island country with only 21 square kilometers of land for its 10,000 or so inhabitants.
Even when those asylum seekers are found to be genuine refugees, the Australian government refuses to resettle them in Australia, opting instead to strike resettlement deals with third countries like the United States, which so far has resettled only 430 refugees. But even then not all refugees end up being resettled, as up to 500 refugees continue to live there.
The Coalition will maintain the intake of other refugees at 18,750 refugees per year, which is more than 30 percent less than the Labor Party offered as a campaign promise. This does not bode well even for genuine refugees from Indonesia.
Back in November 2014, Morrison, who was then then the immigration minister, announced that Australia would only resettle 450 refugees annually from Indonesia and even then no one who had registered with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) on or after July 1, 2014.
What’s more, the Coalition will also cap community-sponsored intake to 1,000 places (Labor had promised to increase it fivefold to 5,000 if the won). Community sponsorship means that civil society organizations can bring in refugees for a fee, which for a family over five is a cool A$93,000 (US$64,783). Cheaper and larger scale community sponsorship for refugees stuck in Indonesia would surely decrease the risk for refugees to use their own money to pay people smugglers to take them to Australia.
Further complicating the lives of refugees transiting in Indonesia, Morrison’s government has pledged to continue turning back asylum seeker boats to Indonesia if any should attempt to make the perilous sea journey to Australia. Since September 2013, Australia has turned back at least 33 boats and 820 asylum seekers, with some boats hailing from further away origins, including Vietnam or Sri Lanka.
