Peter Dutton signals no softening of asylum policy

Peter Dutton has warned that one act of compassion could ‘undo overnight’ the five years of hard work in stopping boat arrivals.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton. Picture: AAP

Peter Dutton has warned his Coalition colleagues that Australia is in a “danger phase” with illegal boat arrivals and one act of compassion could “undo overnight” the five years of hard work in “stopping the boats”.

Facing renewed calls to bring people in detention centres on Manus Island and Nauru to Australia as Europe and the US face political and social crises over immigration and refugees, the Immigration Minister is adamant “it’s not time to take our foot off the throat of this threat”.

“We are in a danger phase because only a month ago we stopped a steel-hulled vessel with 131 people coming out of Sri Lanka, there are 14,000 people still in Indonesia and there is excited chatter among people-smuggling syndicates about the prospect of Australia being available again,” Mr Dutton told The Weekend Australian.

“It’s essential that people ­realise that the hard-won success of the last few years could be undone overnight by a single act of compassion in bringing 20 people from Manus to Australia.

“The boats are there, we are scuttling boats, we are returning people and we are turning around boats where it is safe to do so. The boats haven’t gone away and if there is a success defined by an arrival of a boat in Australia then the word will spread like wildfire.”

There are 690 men in detention in PNG and 914 men, women and children on Nauru, after 292 asylum-seekers were sent in recent weeks to the US under an agreement with Donald Trump.

In recent weeks Italy and Malta have turned back crowded boats crossing from north Africa to Europe, German Chancellor Angela’s Merkel’s leadership is under threat because of asylum policy, and Hungary, Slovenia and Denmark are considering policies to block borders or support overseas processing of asylum-seekers.

Yesterday Malcolm Turnbull backed Mr Dutton’s hard line on detention when asked about Mr Trump’s backdown over separating children from parents who illegally cross the US border. He said Australia’s “compassionate, secure and well-managed immigration system” was based on strong border protection.

“Here in Australia we have one of the most generous refugee and humanitarian programs in the world,” the Prime Minister told the Nine Network. “The reason we can do that is because we decide, the Australian government decides, representing the Australian people, who comes to Australia; not people-smugglers.”

At the end of Refugee Week, asylum-seeker advocates accused Mr Dutton of “having blood on his hands” over deaths in offshore detention centres.

Chris Breen, for the Refugee Action Collective, said Mr Trump had reversed a decision on separating families but the “Prime Minister continues Australia’s ­vicious cruelty to refugees and asylum-seekers, only confirming Trump’s words to Turnbull that ‘you are worse than I am’.”

The Refugee Action Collective also said Bill Shorten “would not have Labor’s significant electoral lead” over the Coalition if he spoke out for people who have been in detention for more than five years.

This week a Newspoll survey showed that 50 per cent of voters believed a Labor government would either “improve” or “make no difference” to Australia’s asylum-seeker policies after a general poll confirmed the ALP’s two-party-preferred lead of 52 to 48 per cent over the Coalition.

There is growing pressure within the ALP and trade union movement for Labor to drop its bipartisan policies of turning back boats and offshore detention.

Last night Anthony Albanese “called out” the Turnbull government’s “failure to settle refugees in third countries” and said the use of “prolonged” detention as a deterrent was a policy with a “deep flaw at its heart”.

Mr Dutton said Australia could not allow entry to any asylum-seekers who had sought to come to Australia illegally by boat because it would “put Australia back on the table”.

“History shows both in John Howard’s time and Kevin Rudd’s experimental phase and, again, after the Abbott-Turnbull government’s success, if you don’t take Australia off the table then the people-smuggling trade immediately restarts, and if people think they can wait us out over one, two, three, five years on Manus or Nauru but will eventually get to Australia they will be here in their thousands,” Mr Dutton said.