Dutton thanks Pence as US honours refugee deal

Vice-President Mike Pence’s visit to Sydney is being seen as a demonstration of Washington’s attitude to the alliance.

US Vice-President Mike Pence talks after attending a business listening session with Australian and US companies in Sydney. Picture: AP

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton says he is “very grateful” to Vice-President Mike Pence for honouring the refugee agreement with Australia despite making it clear the Trump administration did not like the arrangement.

Mr Dutton said there had been “no stalling and no game playing” as US officials vetted asylum-seekers in Australia’s offshore processing centres on Manus Island and Nauru under a deal that Donald Trump has previously described as “dumb”.

Former US ambassador to Australia Jeffrey Bleich also said the Vice-President’s early visit to Australia — the earliest from a vice-president in history — demonstrated Mr Trump’s “full-throated commitment to the alliance”.

Mr Dutton was one of a number of Australian politicians who met with Mr Pence in Sydney yesterday and said he had no concerns about the status of the refugee deal with the US, which he has previously described as a “beneficial” quid pro quo arrangement.

“I was very grateful to Vice-President Pence, I met him yesterday. He’s echoed the words of President Trump. It was a deal that they inherited from the Obama administration, and they weren’t happy about the detail of the deal, but given the nature of the relationship, they honour the deal and we’re very grateful for it,” Mr Dutton told the ABC’s Insiders program.

“It is the Australian government that makes the decision about who comes here and the United States, like any sovereign nation, is no different. So they want to be assured of the individuals that they’re going to give permanent residency and ultimately citizenship to. They’re not going to have people into their country who haven’t been properly vetted.”

In his first meeting with Malcolm Turnbull yesterday, Mr Pence assured Australia the US would take in refugees from Manus and Nauru, subject to the results of America’s vetting processes.

He also vowed to work “more closely” with Australia in every field.

“President Trump has made it clear that we will honour the agreement. It doesn’t mean that we admire the agreement,” Mr Pence said.

Mr Bleich said Mr Pence’s comments were “very, very important” and recognised America would behave differently with its allies.

“With other countries it can be a little more like the way businesses treat one other, at arm’s length,” Mr Bleich told Sky News’ Sunday Agenda program.

“When you’re talking about alliances, this is more like a marriage. No one keeps score on individual things — ‘what did I do for you this week and what do you owe me next week’ — for a marriage to work there has to be a sense of trust and confidence and continuity and predictability. That I think is something that was expressed by the Vice-President here.”

However Mr Dutton, who has previously declared Australia would not accept any refugees from Costa Rica until the US accepted those on Manus and Nauru, conceded there would be some people in the detention centres who would miss out on going to the US.

“There are many people on Manus Island, as is the case on Nauru, who have been found not to be refugees. These are people, for example from Iran. It is difficult, impossible, in fact, to send people back to Iran, because the Iranians won’t allow people to be repatriated forcibly,” he said.

“They’ll only take voluntary returns and the United States is not looking at people who have been found not to be refugees. So there will be some who are necessarily excluded from the deal.”

As business leaders urge Mr Turnbull to line up a meeting with Mr Trump, Mr Bleich suggested the pair would meet in New York within months.

The Prime Minister’s office said it would not confirm a New York trip at this stage.

“The fact that there will be another meeting of the President and the Prime Minister in New York in very short order in connection, I believe, with the 75th anniversary of the battle of the Coral Sea, all of these things I think reflect a growing appreciation of doctrines that are bipartisan, that we are safer, stronger, better together as an alliance than we would be as independent nations,” Mr Bleich said.