Peter Dutton says he will not sign UN agreement on migration ‘in its current form’

Peter Dutton vows he will not sign a major UN agreement on migration “in its current form” despite the fact Australia helped negotiate the deal.

Minister for Home Affairs, Immigration and Border Protection Peter Dutton.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has declared the Australian government will not be signing up to a major United Nations agreement on migration “in its current form” despite the fact Australia helped negotiate the deal.

The comments come after The Australian reported earlier this week that the Turnbull government had left open the door to withdrawing from the Global Compact for Migration that so far only the US and Hungary have failed to sign.

While the US dropped out in December, the government of Hungary’s anti-immigration nat­ionalist Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced last week the country would also quit the pact.

Asked on 2GB by Alan Jones if Australia was going to sign up to the agreement, Mr Dutton said: “not in its current form. We’ve been very clear about that”.

“And we’re not going to surrender our sovereignty. I’m not going to allow unelected bodies to dictate to us, to the Australian people ...They do not want us to go soft on borders.”

UN member states, led by Mexico and Switzerland and including Australia, helped negotiate the Global Compact for Migration and the final text suggests it could pressure Canberra to revise its immigration-detention policies and immigration laws.

The agreement’s final draft, released this month, says countries should agree to “review and revise” laws that sanction irregular entry and should not use immigration detention “as a deterrent”.

Mr Dutton acknowledged Australia had been involved in negotiating the compact but said Australia would not sign if “it’s not in our national interests”.

“We’re happy to negotiate in good faith but we’ve been very clear we’re not going to sign any document that’s not in our national interest and it’s not in our national interest to sign our border protection policy over to the UN,” the Home Affairs Minister said.

Despite taking a strong position on other international agreements, Labor has so far refused to take a position on whether Australia should sign the agreement in the lead-up to this weekend’s by-elections.

But the Greens are furious over any suggestion that Australia would not sign up to the deal.

“Now (Peter Dutton is) threatening to deconstruct international co-operation on migration.”

“There are no depths Dutton will not trawl to try to make race and refugees into election issues and pander to Hanson’s supporters,” Senator Nick McKim, the Greens Immigration Spokesman said on Twitter.

Former Australian Border Force commissioner Roman Quaedvlieg said Australia has been advocating for a new global migration compact since 2014 but was taking a cautious approach before signing.

“It is not unusual for individual nation states to analyse the substance of a global compact before confirming their formal agreement as a signatory, to ensure nothing in the substance of the compact is...inconsistent with either their national statutes of law,” he told The Australian earlier in the week.