Kevin Rudd's plan to share burden on boats

KEVIN Rudd will ask other nations to take a greater share of the world's refugees to help lift the burden from Australia.

Asylum-seekers arrive at Christmas Island

KEVIN Rudd will ask other nations to take a greater share of the world's refugees to help lift the burden from Australia, as the government prepares new measures that would lead to asylum-seekers being resettled in Papua New Guinea rather than simply having their claims processed there.

The Australian understands the government will lobby other nations to pull their weight by increasing the numbers of asylum-seekers they accept. Australia, Canada and the US resettle far more refugees than any other country.

While there has been considerable speculation about the Rudd government rewriting the UN Refugees Convention, that would take years of negotiations with member nations.

It is understood the government is happy to work within the convention's framework while persuading other nations to do more to help the world's 43 million displaced people.

Treasurer and former immigration minister Chris Bowen said yesterday Australia took more refugees per capita than any other nation in the world.

"We take either the second or third in absolute terms depending on how you calibrate the calculation," Mr Bowen said.

"We are very close to Canada, and in terms of resettlement it goes US, Canada, Australia and then there's daylight."

As the government puts the finishing touches on its asylum reforms, with a policy to be announced within days, it is understood Mr Rudd is considering hosting an international conference for source and transit countries to discuss the implementation of the 1951 Convention. Sources close to the discussions say Mr Rudd is in the process of advising UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon of the Australian plan.

It would be the second such conference on refugee-related issues announced in recent weeks.

During Mr Rudd's visit to Jakarta two weeks ago, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono revealed his country would host a conference on people-smuggling within the next few months.

A government source said that August 20 was firming as a likely date for the summit, potentially placing it squarely in the middle of the federal election campaign.

A key measure in the government's policy response is a revamped role for PNG, which hosts the Manus Island detention centre, one of two offshore facilities used to accommodate asylum-seekers.

The Australian has been told the two governments have been discussing expanding PNG's role from a processing hub to a resettlement destination for boatpeople who arrive in Australia.

Currently, all asylum-seekers processed at the Manus Island facility are ultimately Australia's responsibility, meaning the onus is on Canberra to resettle them once their refugee claims are finalised.

In practice, that means most are likely to end up in Australia, blunting the centre's deterrent effect. Under the changes proposed it is believed PNG is being asked to resettle at least some asylum-seekers transferred by Australia.

If adopted, such a model could prove a powerful disincentive for asylum-seekers who could pay thousands of dollars to a people-smuggler for a passage to Australia, only to end up in PNG.

The scale of the agreement was not known nor was it clear who it would target, leaving open the possibility women and children may be exempted -- potentially creating an incentive for smugglers to target them as their clients.

There were also suggestions the deal with PNG may be announced as a trial, or pilot program, rather than a permanent arrangement.

A spokesman for Mr Rudd last night refused to comment.

Labor has said it will implement a three-tiered approach to the problem at the global, regional and national level. Mr Rudd is looking to neutralise the politically fraught border-protection issue, which has hit Labor hard in its heartland of western Sydney.

Mr Rudd said this week: "We are looking at this globally in terms of the effectiveness of the refugees convention, we are looking at it regionally in terms of our co-operation with regional states in Southeast Asia and the southwest Pacific -- hence my visit to Indonesia, discussions I've had recently with PNG and elsewhere -- in order to strengthen our regional co-operation as folk move their way through the region."

Labor's new tack prompted Tony Abbott to accuse Mr Rudd of trying to "internationalise" the crisis on Australia's borders, claiming the government was using a review of the Refugee Convention as a distraction from Labor's self-inflicted asylum policy failures.

"Mr Rudd's latest suggestion that he travel the world seeking to change the Refugee Convention is just another distraction from the fact that he can't stop the boats,"the Opposition Leader said.

"Stop making excuses, stop trying to say this is the world's problems. It's not; it's our problem."

Mr Abbott said the problem with the Refuge Convention was "the way it's been imported into Australian law".

"It's the things that we do here in Australia as Australians that matter," he said.

In his press club address yesterday, Mr Bowen said the UNHCR was mindful of Australia's role in international resettlement, "going into camps, getting people out of desperate horrible situations and giving them a chance of a life in Australia".

That did not mean Australia could let the refugee program be dominated by people arriving by boat. "It's very unsafe and we've seen far too many drownings at sea, more just in recent days, and there is nothing compassionate about that, nothing humanitarian about that," the Treasurer said.

"You do need to make again tough decisions about how to deal with that and you also need a fair system, an orderly system."

Since resuming the prime ministership, Mr Rudd has set out to address three key areas: ALP internal reform, carbon pricing and border protection.

It is understood the government hopes to announce within days a package of border protection measures involving regional nations. They could include Indonesia, PNG and New Zealand, which has agreed to take a small number of confirmed refugees.

A nation considered as a possible part of a regional solution two years ago was Solomon Islands, which was quickly dismissed as too unstable. However, Trade Minister Richard Marles, who knows the region better than most in the Rudd government as a former parliamentary secretary for Pacific Island affairs, went to the Solomons this week for talks with Prime Minister Gordon Darcy Lilo on enhanced ties for seasonal workers and regional issues.

The security situation in the Solomons has improved significantly in recent months.

Additional reporting: Lauren Wilson