Bill Shorten plays down NZ pull factor

Bill Shorten has played down reports that NZ’s offer to resettle 150 asylum-seekers prompted an escalation in people-­smuggling.

Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten. Picture: Stuart McEvoy.

Bill Shorten has played down reports that New Zealand’s offer to resettle 150 asylum-seekers from Manus ­Island late last year has prompted an escalation in people-­smuggling operations, saying that if the government really believed New Zealand’s offer represented a pull factor, it would not have done a deal with the US to resettle 1250 asylum seekers.

The Labor leader’s comment come amid news today that a second group of refugees has left Manus Island for New York, after 54 were resettled last year.

The Australian has confirmed that asylum-seekers aboard a boat intercepted by a naval patrol just before Christmas told immigration officials smugglers told them their destination was New Zealand.

But Mr Shorten dismissed the notion that NZ Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern’s offer had encouraged people smugglers.

“If the government really believe this, why are they concluding the American deal?” Mr Shorten said.

“If the argument is that people may want to go to New Zealand, I’m sure that people want to go to America.

“I do support the resettlement deal in the United States. We‘ve got to get those people off Manus and Nauru.

“What the government tries to do, because we have and support constructive efforts to resettle people, that somehow that means you’re against stopping the people smugglers. That’s not right.

“If you follow (Home Affairs Minister Peter) Dutton’s logic, to the only way to deter people from people smuggling is keeping them indefinitely in the rest of their lives in settlements on Manus and Nauru.

“Labor is very clear, we do support stopping the people smugglers. We don’t support bringing people who come by boat to Australia, but that doesn’t mean we have to keep them indefinitely in these facilities in Manus and Nauru.”

Malcolm Turnbull said it was clear New Zealand’s offer had made the country a more attractive destination for people smugglers.

“A number of boats, people-smuggling boats, that have been intercepted by our Operation Sovereign Borders, stated that they were planning to go to New Zealand, so that’s been the case,” the Prime Minister said.

“New Zealand benefits from our Operation Sovereign Borders.

“The people smugglers are absolutely ruthless. They use all of the social media we use and they use it very skilfully and market any scrap of information that they can and so they were very busy in marketing and promoting New Zealand as a destination recently.”

Mr Turnbull said Labor had put the more than 1500 people who remain on Manus Island and Nauru there.

“We’re starting to move them off and resettle them in other countries but it is absolutely fundamental that the message we send to people who are being marketed to by people smugglers, we have this very clear message – if you seek to come to Australia by boat with a people smuggler you will not succeed,” he said.

“You will not get here. You will not settle in Australia. We will turn you back. That then enables us to have a very generous humanitarian program where we decide which refugees come and settle in Australia, not the people smugglers.”

Mr Turnbull also defended Australia’s immigration program against criticism from Tony Abbott, arguing our immigration intake is predominantly based on areas of skill shortage.

Mr Abbott yesterday called for Australia’s immigration intake to be lowered to reduce house prices and make it easier for locals to get work.

“If in the coming year we can take real action to take the pressure off powers prices by perhaps further scaling back our climate change preoccupations, if in the coming year we can take the pressure off housing prices and make it easier for locals to get jobs by scaling back immigration, these are the sorts of things that when it comes to an election the government would get credit for,” Mr Abbott told Sydney radio station 2GB.

Mr Turnbull said Australia’s immigration program was overwhelmingly skills-based.

“We have a humanitarian component and, of course, nowadays, under the Coalition, we decide, the Australian government decides, which refugees come into Australia,” he said.

“Under Labor, it was outsourced to the people smugglers. Under us the borders are secure. The people smugglers have been put out of business. It’s a continuing threat, though.

“You know, in the United States, where immigration is obviously a very, very contentious issue, you hear so many American leaders, including the President, talking about the merit of our skills-based immigration program, and that is that those people that are coming in are coming in because the economy needs their skills and they haven’t been able to be filled locally.”