Confidence in border control opens door to more refugees: Turnbull

Malcolm Turnbull says Australia is able to take more asylum-seekers because of public confidence in border control.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull with wife Lucy applaud a busker playing in New York’s Central Park yesterday. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Malcolm Turnbull has urged nations to accept a greater burden of refugees, and argued that Australia has been able to take more ­asylum-seekers because the public had confidence in its border control system.

“At a time when global concern around immigration and border control is rising, the need to build community support for migration has never been clearer,” the Prime Minister told a UN summit on refugees and migrants in New York ahead of Barack Obama’s own conference on refugees and security.

Strongly defending the border protection policies of the Abbott and Howard governments — including offshore processing and turning back boats in the face of UN criticism — Mr Turnbull said diversity was a counter to extremism and instability.

He hinted at a more co-operative attitude towards the UN from Australia, saying greater international co-operation was needed. “All countries have a role to play.”

Mr Turnbull said increasing immigration, allowing more refugees and providing support for newcomers required public confidence to succeed, and Australia’s experience “bears this out”.

“Australia is one of the most successful multicultural societies in the world. Ours is an immigration nation. More than a quarter of our people were born overseas. Almost every UN member state is represented in our population,” he said.

“Australians are not defined by religion or race; we are defined by a common commitment to shared political values, democracy, freedom and the rule of law, underpinned by mutual respect.”

Those values drove Australia’s approach to immigration, in which “we invite 190,000 migrants each year to join our nation of 24 million”, he said. “And our commitment to refugees is longstanding — our humanitarian resettlement program dates back to 1947.

“Diversity is an investment against marginalisation and extremism. It helps our community unite against extremism, rather than be divided by it. Australia’s experience bears this out.”

But, he said, “addressing irregular migration, through secure borders” was essential to create confidence that governments could manage migration to reduce risks and focus on humanitarian assistance.

Mr Turnbull criticised “Islamist terror” and defended Australia’s security checks of refugees from Syria, amid arrests in Europe where Islamic State terrorists have entered as refugees. He said Australia’s border protection and immigration system was the “best in the world” and supported its “ability to provide generous and effective support to refugees”.

“Without this (public) confidence, we would not have been able to increase our intake of refugees — the world’s third-largest permanent resettlement program — by more than 35 per cent.”

With the unregulated movement of people growing fast, “we need measures to create order out of the resulting chaos if we are to provide safe pathways for refugees and target those who are most in need”.

This required international co-operation, Mr Turnbull said, supporting rather than duplicating the work of the International Organisation for Migration and UN High Commissioner for ­Refugees.