Activists’ asylum call looms as conference pain for Shorten

Labor activists want the party to commit to bringing asylum-seekers straight from Manus ­Island and Nauru to Australia.

The converted tanker intercepted by Malaysian authorities.

Labor refugee activists will try to get the party to commit to bringing asylum-seekers from Manus ­Island and Nauru to Australia at the upcoming ALP conference, in a further border protection headache for Bill Shorten.

Labor for Refugees co-convener Shane Prince said there was “a lot of support” within the party for the proposed changes to the draft ALP platform, as the government confirmed some asylum-seekers on a converted tanker intercepted by Malaysian authorities last week were told they were bound for Australia.

Mr Prince said the group would challenge Labor’s support for turning back asylum-seeker boats, argue for an end to mandatory ­detention, and urge a 30-day ­detention limit as a “last resort” for those who posed “unacceptable risks” to the community.

Earlier on Monday Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton declared a Labor election win would jump-start the people-smuggling trade, saying the interception of 131 Sri Lankans last Tuesday showed people-smuggling remained a major issue for the region.

“Just because Australians don’t see the ... vision of these boats coming as they did under the Labor Party doesn’t mean that the problem has gone away,” Mr Dutton said. “If you aren’t going to have regional processing, if you are going to allow people a permanent outcome if they make it to Christmas Island, I promise you, under Labor, the boats will restart.”

But Labor immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann accused Mr Dutton of encouraging people-smugglers by misrepresenting Labor’s border protection policies.

“Labor believes in strong borders, offshore processing, regional resettlement and turn-backs when safe to do so, because we know it saves lives at seas,” he said.

Mr Neumann called on the government to accept an offer from New Zealand to resettle up to 150 approved refugees a year from Manus and Nauru, on top of the 1200 the US has agreed to take.

But Mr Dutton said allowing asylum-seekers to go to New Zealand was the same as giving them a ticket to Australia. “People realise that New Zealand is a back-doorway into Australia,” he said. “New Zealand is the only country in the world … where you can have a visa into Australia on arrival.”

Labor’s draft national platform proposes to overhaul the government’s home affairs portfolio and shift asylum-seekers out of mandatory detention after 90 days. Mr Prince said Labor for ­Refugees was committed to its proposed platform changes, and would argue for them in a ­“respectful and cordial” manner.

The group is also calling for Labor to lift the refugee intake to 50,000 from the platform’s 27,000, and appoint a royal commission to investigate “the mistreatment of all detainees in the immigration detention network”.

Mr Prince said the group wanted to see a regional solution to ­people-smuggling, by forming an “orderly processing queue” for asylum-seekers in Indonesia.