Donald Trump ‘will scrap Manus deal’ with Australia

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton hit out at Bill Shorten over lifetime visa ban legislation and refugee resettlement deal.

CDF Air Chief Marshal Mark Binskin, Malcolm Turnbull and Peter Dutton at the Australian Maritime Border Command Operations Centre in Canberra.

Immigration Minister Peter Dutton has accused Bill Shorten of being weaker on people smugglers than Kevin Rudd or Julia Gillard in refusing to back the government’s legislation for a lifetime ban on asylum seekers resettled in a third country ever returning to Australia.

Labor claims it has received advice from the Immigration Department that the lifetime ban is not integral to Australia’s resettlement options and Paris Artistotle, an adviser to both sides of politics on refugee resettlement last night told Lateline he did not believe a lifetime ban even from visiting served any policy purpose..

Speaking at a press conference to highlight Border Force measures to mitigate against people smuggling at AFP headquarters in Melbourne today alongside Justice Minister Michael Keenan, Mr Dutton said Opposition Leader Bill Shorten need to accept that the lifetime ban legislation was “absolutely crucial” to Australia’s continuing message to people smugglers, who would continue to present a problem for a long time to come.

“Mr Shorten is out there trying to throw around red herrings that this will be a problem in 30, 40 years when people want to come to Australia and apply for a tourist visa,” Mr Dutton said.

“This government is dealing with the threat to our country over the next three or four days, three or four weeks, three or four months.

“This problem of people smugglers is with us. It is tangible. We have 14,000 people in Indonesia waiting to get on to boats now.

“We need to have this legislation in place so we can stare down threat from the people smugglers.”

Mr Dutton also attacked Mr Shorten for Labor’s attack on the number of foreign workers coming into Australia on 457 visas.

“This is another distraction,” he said.

“It’s another distraction away from the fact the Labor Party remains bitterly divided over border protection policy.

“Labor put these people on Manus and Nauru. We are getting them off.”

Mr Dutton said Mr Shorten was saying one thing and doing another.

“He talks a big game, he says he is on a unity ticket with the government and then votes against us,” he said.

“He says that he’s for shaving off the numbers of 457 visa applicants.

“When he was a minister in a Labor Government, the number of 457 visas increased so don’t believe what Mr Shorten says, look at what he does.

“He has turned out to be a weaker leader than even Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd when it comes to our response of staring down people smugglers.”

Asked whether responsibility for the passage of the lifetime ban legislation also fell to Senate crossbenchers, Mr Dutton said it was an issue for Mr Shorten.

“Mr Shorten has the balance of power in the Senate,” he said.

“If he decides to support the Government, that is important not only in the sense of getting the legislation through but, more importantly, for the people smugglers to hear a united message from the Australian political leaders.

Both the Prime Minister and the alternative Prime Minister of this country must send a strong and coherent message to people smugglers and, at the moment, it is only Malcolm Turnbull that’s meeting that test and, unfortunately, Mr Shorten has failed that test, not for any other principle than the fact he has got 26 people in his own party who spoke out against this legislation even before Mr Shorten was able to open his own mouth.

“It shows that the Labor Party is desperately divided still on border protection policy.”

Mr Dutton reinforced the message the the US resettlement deal would not apply under any circumstances to new arrivals and was only applicable to some of those currently on Manus Island and Nauru.

Trump ‘will scrap’ Manus deal

Donald Trump will most likely scrap Australia’s deal with the United States to resettle some of the 1600 asylum seekers currently on Manus Island and Nauru, according to an American immigration and refugee law expert.

Niels Frenzen, who heads up the University of Southern California School of Law immigration clinic, says he assumes President-elect Trump will overturn the deal when he takes office.

“I would assume that he would, so in all likelihood the only way that it’s going to happen is if the refugees are actually transferred to the US before Inauguration Day,” Professor Frenzen told ABC radio.

“If the US has not already begun its own vetting or so called background checks until now, if you look at the time the US has taken to vet Syrian refugees that have been coming to the United States, it’s unlikely that it could be accomplished in a few months.

“If the US has been talking about this with Australia since January of this year, and if the vetting has been ongoing, then it’s possible,” he said.

Professor Frenzen said President-elect Trump would not need the support of Congress to overturn the deal.

“He could do it with the presidential power,” he said.

“Overseas refugee admissions are pretty much subject to the unfettered discretion of the president.

“A deal is a deal until the deal was changed and this election debate as I’m sure you know has been a particularly volatile debate and particularly around immigration issues and particularly around overseas refugee admissions and so I just don’t see that there’s much political chance of Trump allowing this deal to go through unless there’s something else going on that we’re not aware of right now.”

Malcolm Turnbull last night said he was confident the arrangement would remain in place.

The Prime Minister said Australia and the US had a long history of cooperation in pursuing our mutual and respective humanitarian and national security objectives.

Asked on 7.30 last night whether he accepted that if the refugees were not processed and relocated to the US before Donald Trump became president the deal would not proceed, Mr Turnbull said he did not.

“You’re entitled to speculate about that but I’m confident that the arrangements we’ve set in place will continue,” he told host Leigh Sales.

However Professor Frenzen said that in addition to the Costa Rican refugees Australia had agreed to take, it had also taken “at least a handful” of other refugees who had been in detention at the US military base at Guantánamo Bay.

“There are also approximately 20 individuals who were detained in the 9/11 portion of the prison at Guantanamo who the US is seeking overseas resettlement possibilities for and so maybe there’s some discussion about those individuals, but that’s complete speculation on my part,” he said.

Professor Frenzen said the Trump administration would likely be deterred from going through with the deal by the fact that many of the 1600 asylum seekers Australia wants to resettle are Muslim.

“I think that’s one of the biggest areas, absolutely,” he said.

“Certainly they’re not going to be viewed by the Trump administration as part of US responsibilities but certainly the fact that a significant number of them if not the majority of them are Muslim and that has been again the focus of this very ugly political contest that we just concluded in the US, this focus on Islam.”

However, Professor Frenzen said he believed President-elect Trump was already walking back from his election promise to jail three million illegal immigrants.

“He could change his views again, but I think reality is beginning to sink in,” he said.

“There’s an estimated 11 million undocumented illegal immigrants in the US, and what that would cost in terms of dollars and in terms of manpower, person power, to actually identify those people and to expel them would be astronomical.”

Professor Frenzen said the Obama administration had already deported 2.4 million people.

“Obama is accurately described as the Deporter in Chief,” he said.

“He has deported people at record setting numbers from the United States.

“I don’t think there are two to three million criminal immigrants present in the United States so I’m not sure who Donald Trump is talking about when he says we still have two to three million left to go. The Obama administration has taken care of that aspect.”

Professor Frenzen said President-elect Trump also appeared to be walking back from his pledge to build a wall along America’s border with Mexico.

“He was clear on the 60 Minutes interview last night talking about perhaps a wall in some areas, a fence, extending the fence in other areas,” he said.

“It’s irrelevant. People will get over walls, people will get over fences or under walls. Wall or fence it’s just a campaign slogan, nothing more.”