Asylum proposals 'breach human rights'

Leading refugee lawyer David Manne has accused the federal government of seeking to 'strip bare' key protections for asylum seekers.

The refugee advocate, who led the successful High Court challenge against the government's Malaysia Solution, told a group of western Sydney law students the government's move to get around the decision by amending the Migration Act would breach Australia's human rights obligations.

'These proposed changes seek to strip the Act bare of those basic protections for asylum seekers if they are to be expelled elsewhere,' Mr Manne told AAP on Monday.

The proposals could face a High Court challenge. 'Were they to be enacted in law, one certainly could not rule out further challenge.'

During his lecture, Mr Manne said the government's amendments sought to give the immigration minister of the day the 'unfettered' power to send asylum seekers to any part of the world without considering whether they would be given legal fairness in that country.

As an advocate of onshore processing, Mr Manne admitted there was no silver bullet to a very complex issue, but he called for a regional answer whereby asylum seekers would be treated in accordance with human rights obligations wherever they landed.

Earlier in the day, Opposition Leader Tony Abbott echoed the view, saying: 'What the government's new proposal does is pay lip service to protections without actually guaranteeing them.'

Mr Abbott said the coalition's alternative proposal would put beyond legal doubt the ability of the government to send people offshore for processing, provided they were sent to countries that have acceded to the UN convention.

Prime Minister Julia Gillard on Monday presented Mr Abbott with a new set of proposed Migration Act amendments aimed at reinstating offshore processing, placed in doubt by the High Court last month.

In a last-ditch bid to win Mr Abbott's support, the government's new proposals sought to address his concerns about a lack of human rights protections.

The new amendments would require the government to consider whether a country selected for offshore processing would honour the 'principal obligations' of the UN Refugee Convention - namely non-refoulement and the processing of asylum claims.

But Mr Abbott quickly rejected the new version, saying it paid only lip service to human rights while exposing the government to greater risk of a legal challenge.

Mr Abbott said the coalition would put forward its own amendments, which would only allow offshore processing in countries signed up to the UN convention - which would allow Nauru but rule out Malaysia.

'It will restore offshore processing, while retaining offshore protections,' Mr Abbott told reporters.

'It's in my judgment a much superior proposal to that which the government has put forward.

'Our proposal is a win-win: certainty plus protections.'

Immigration Minister Chris Bowen later confirmed the government would oppose the coalition's proposal and vowed to press ahead with plans to introduce the government's amendments into parliament on Wednesday.

But Mr Bowen said Mr Abbott, in rejecting the government's amendments, was acting in his own political interests.

'The reason I think he's opposing these amendments is very clearly to try to stop the Malaysia arrangement,' Mr Bowen told ABC Television.

'Now he has the advice, the advice from the experts, that the Malaysia arrangement is the best one as a deterrent.

'I think it's open now for the Australian people to conclude that the only reason he's proposing these amendments is to stop the Malaysia agreement because he's been told it can work and it will work.'

Mr Bowen accused Mr Abbott of hypocrisy for proposing his own amendments that would apply only to countries which have signed the refugee convention.

'Now this is at the same time his policy is to turn around the boats on the high seas and point them towards Indonesia, not a signatory to the refugee convention ... and yet he says somehow for the government to negotiate this arrangement with Malaysia and to get those guarantees, even though they're not a signatory country, is somehow wrong.'

The joint coalition party room has endorsed the decision by shadow cabinet for the opposition to propose its own amendments to the Migration Act.

'In our party room tonight we agreed that if the government cannot support, will not, refuses to support our amendment, then we won't support the bill,' opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison told ABC television.

'Now if the government doesn't want to do that, that is their choice.'

The major parties' apparently immovable positions mean both sets of amendments are likely to be defeated in the Senate, where the Australian Greens hold the balance of power.

'We Greens will not accept these or any other amendments,' Greens leader Bob Brown told reporters on Monday.

Mr Bowen said the government remained firmly opposed to reopening the Howard government-era detention centre on Nauru and conceded it would be out of options if its legislation failed.

Under the government's failed Malaysian deal, Labor wanted to send 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia in exchange for 4000 processed refugees.

Meanwhile, the Senate on Monday passed a bill aimed at streamlining the protection visa process for asylum seekers fleeing persecution that falls outside categories defined by the Refugee Convention.


(2011-9-20/skynews.com.au)