Nauru closure call risks Labor rift on refugees

Peter Malinauskas wants a Shorten-led government to close Nauru and scrap Australia’s offshore immigration detention ­centre policy.

South Australian Labor’s Right-aligned leader Peter Malinauskas wants a Shorten-led federal government to immediately close Nauru and scrap Australia’s offshore immigration detention ­centre policy.

In a move that risks reopening a damaging internal rift over refugees, Mr Malinauskas yesterday vowed to use the ALP national conference in Adelaide on ­December 16-18 to “get this policy right” and push for federal Labor to soften its stance.

“I think what is happening in Nauru is a complete disgrace and a stain on our nation, to be honest,” he said. “I absolutely think it (Nauru) should be closed down. I absolutely think that those people should have more certainty and shouldn’t be incarcerated. They haven’t committed a crime.”

Mr Malinauskas declared his position, which is more radical than what the ALP’s Left faction has been suggesting, in response to an SMS from an ABC radio listener who was thinking about voting for the Greens rather than Labor at the next state election.

This came after Mr Malinauskas at the weekend told his first ALP state conference as leader since taking over from Jay Weatherill in March that his focus was on building an “economic party” rather than a “socially liberal party”.

Yesterday, he insisted he still felt “very strongly” about individual issues such as Nauru, where Australia has sent asylum-seekers who arrived by boat.

Refugee policy caused great division at the ALP’s national conference in 2015, when the Right’s Tony Burke argued for offshore detention to continue and for a Shorten-led government to adopt a more hardline stance because of lives lost at sea.

Mr Malinauskas, who previously sat on the party’s national executive, said the policy was “not a sustainable position”.

He said he would be advocating for a new policy that included “a pretty certain timeline about when we expect people to be off Nauru”.

Greens leader Richard Di Natale said Mr Malinauskas’s comments showed that Bill Shorten “needs to stand up and show some leadership here … There are members of the Labor Party who want this to happen … but it’s the Labor leadership and factions that are stopping it from happening.”

Australian Conservatives senator Cory Bernardi said Labor was preparing to “sell out” on national security. “This is why you can’t trust Labor with our borders and voters need to be careful with their Senate vote to ensure our borders remain secure,” he said.

“Labor are captive to an ­irrational Corbyn-style Left that will always sell out our national security for virtue signalling.”

Immigration Minister David Coleman accused Labor of being hopelessly divided over refugees, which played into the hands of people-smugglers.

“The last time Labor was in government, 50,000 people ­arrived illegally on 800 boats and 1200 people died, including children,” he said.

“Labor has very clearly learnt nothing from this appalling human catastrophe.”

Federal Labor immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann said the ALP “will never let the people-smugglers back in business … federal Labor believes in strong borders, offshore processing, regional resettlement and turnbacks when safe to do so because we know it saves lives at sea”.

“Nauru and Manus Island were set up as temporary regional processing centres but have become places of indefinite detention because of the failure of successive Liberal governments to negotiate other third-country resettlement options,” Mr Neumann said.

Additional reporting: Rachel Baxendale