The Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce has welcomed what it describes as an “acknowledgement” from the Turnbull Government that arrangements for asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru are “unsustainable” after the Federal Government announced plans to resettle some of them in the US.
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull yesterday announced what he described as a “one-off” deal under which asylum seekers currently on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and Nauru who are found to be refugees will be resettled in the US. The deal has the support of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees. Timelines for the arrangments have not be released but US officials are expected to come to Australia to begin the process in the next few days.
The taskforce said it would “closely monitor” any deals “to ensure that safe and fair resettlement is the ultimate priority”.
Misha Coleman, executive officer of the ACRT, said the “fact that government has finally acknowledged that the refugee prisons are unsustainable means we are cautiously optimistic that we may be coming to the end of cruel and archaic offshore processing”.
“The devil is in the detail,” she said. “We are particularly worried about the linking of the ‘lifetime refugee ban’ legislation with this announcement, specifically for the 20 families on Nauru who have family here in Australia”.
“Every single refugee must be given safe and fair resettlement. That is the only standard by which any international deal can be determined a success. Not a single person must be left behind. The Turnbull government cannot think that sending some people to the US will distract from the further misery of others.”
The ACRT has said that the announcement exposes the ‘lifetime ban’ legislation as “even more irrelevent”.
