Two men on Manus Island share disturbing posts on social media
Boat people on Manus Island are posting disturbing content on personal social media pages including anti-Semitic images, aggressive condemnation of the Australian government and have even liked a picture of a Westerner being beheaded.
NSW
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Boat people on Manus Island are sharing anti-Semitic images on social media and have even liked a picture of a Westerner being beheaded.
The disturbing content shared on the personal Facebook pages of two men also includes aggressive posts condemning the Australian government.
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Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government was doing everything possible to ensure “these sorts of people … won’t be walking our streets”.
“Our government will do everything in our power to keep Australia’s borders strong in the face of (Labor leader) Bill Shorten’s moves to make them weaker,” he said.
“Bill Shorten can’t even make up his mind about reopening Christmas Island to keep Australians safe, but these social media posts and the attitudes they represent are deadly serious.
“The loopholes in Labor’s law means people we used to be able to keep away from our shores can now come to Australia.”
Mr Morrison, who visited Christmas Island detention centre yesterday, said he hoped reopening the facility would deter the 940 boat people still on Manus Island and Nauru from seeking medical transfer as a pathway to Australia.
“I think those who thought that this would be some easy passage to the mainland and would seek to try and take advantage and game the system … are getting a very clear message that it won’t be as simple as that,” he said.
“They will come here to Christmas Island and this is where they will receive that assessment. In the normal cases where people are requiring significant health treatment … those cases were already dealt with under the previous arrangements where people needed that care.”
Under the medical transfer changes, the Immigration Minister only has 72 hours to block a transfer on either health grounds or because the individual posed a threat to national security or had served at least 12 months behind bars.
Immigration Minister David Coleman said there were dozens of people the government had been advised were not captured by either of those elements but “nonetheless have serious character concerns”.
PM REFUSES TO RECOGNISE ADVOCATES
By Paige Taylor
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of a coalition of refugee advocates who have taken charge of the process of referring refugees from Manus Island and Nauru to Australia for medical treatment.
Mr Morrison yesterday launched an extraordinary attack on advocates who seek to help refugees come to Australia for medical treatment or assessment under Kerryn Phelps’s Medevac bill passed last month with support from Labor and the Greens.
Mr Morrison took media to Christmas Island on Wednesday to tour the detention centre he reopened in response to the new law, which will make refugees on Manus and Nauru eligible for medical transfer to Australia if deemed necessary by a Health Advice Panel.
Mr Morrison said the Christmas Island detention centre would hold adult single males from Manus or Nauru who are deemed to be in need of transfer to Australia under the new law.
Adult single females for whom a medical transfer is deemed necessary will be held at a separate camp on the other side of the island, next to the local swimming pool.
Standing inside the maximum security centre in the jungle, he said he believed that insisting refugees come to Christmas Island not the mainland for medical assessment removed an incentive for those whose motives were questionable.
It would remove an incentive for “people who thought they were going to go to Bondi for a medical consultation — that is not on the agenda”.
“The only bit of Australia they will see is some of these accommodation blocks in this hardened facility.”
After touring the centre, Mr Morrison said he did not know how soon the Independent Health Advice Panel would be established and reiterated his concerns that the new law outsourced the authority of a government to people who were not elected.
He claimed some refugee advocates were already using the prospect of medical transfers to end offshore processing because they do not support it.
“(For them) this bill was not about, frankly, health it was about ending regional processing. That was the goal, this was always the goal,” Mr Morrison said.
“It wasn’t about kids on Nauru; the kids are off Nauru.
“It wasn’t about getting people access to medical treatment. People are already accessing medical treatment.
“This was always about shutting down regional processing. It’s the same group now coalescing, going and forming, basically, teams to go and work the system to undermine offshore processing.”
Mr Morrison said he understood refugee advocates were motivated by kind hearts but said “those kind-hearted motives has resulted in some of the worst tragedies that I’ve seen”.
“And so it’s not enough to be well motivated. You have got to have the right policies and the policies they support are very dangerous and the ones they oppose have been very effective.”
Mr Morrison said refugee advocates would use the same tactics they used to hasten refugees’ transfer to mainland Australia during an unprecedented run of boats between 2008 and 2013, when more than 50,000 people arrived on 820 boats and an estimated 1200 people drowned.
“You will see the usual stuff. You will see the coaching, you will see the scripts, you will see all of these things we have seen all of these things before when we were going through the assessments,” Mr Morrison said.