Subjects: US resettlement of refugees from Nauru and PNG.
E&EO…………………………………………………………………………………………..
TOM TILLEY:
Minister, thanks so much for joining us again on Hack.
PETER DUTTON:
Pleasure Tom, good to be with you.
TOM TILLEY:
Why do you believe this is the right solution?
PETER DUTTON:
It’s the right solution because we have been able to stop boats now, so we’re negotiating from a position of strength.
There’s no way in the world you could arrive at this deal if boats were still coming and people were still drowning at sea, kids were going into detention. That was just a shameful period in our history and we have been able to stop boats, we’ve been able to close 17 detention centres that Mr Rudd and Ms Gillard opened and we’ve been able to get 2000 kids out of detention.
I have always said that our next absolute priority is to get family units off Nauru and to get the rest of the people off Nauru and Manus if that’s possible and that’s what this deal enables. We need to be able to do it in a way that means that we don’t have new arrivals, new boats starting up again because then we will get the deaths at sea.
At the same time we have been able to bring in a record number of refugees through the Refugee and Humanitarian Programme working with the UNHCR and that includes now 12,000 people that we’re bringing in from Syria. So we’ve got a compassionate approach to bringing in refugees in the right way, we just don’t want people smugglers dictating the terms, taking money off families and seeing those families go to the bottom of the ocean because that was a human tragedy that we are just never going to allow to repeat.
TOM TILLEY:
Alright. For this solution to work Donald Trump will have to back it. He comes into power in January 20. He campaigned on a tough on refugee platform, building a wall along the border with Mexico, a pause on Muslim immigration. Are you concerned that he’s going to blow your hard work out of the water?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, Tom a couple of points to make here. One is that we can only deal with one President at a time and the Obama administration finishes on the 20th of January next year so we’ve entered into this arrangement with the Obama Administration.
And Prime Minister Turnbull’s had a lot of contact with President Obama and he’s really driven this deal because he wants to see people off Nauru. So there has been months and months of work that’s gone into the arrangement. We will continue to work with the Obama Administration and we will work with the Trump Administration.
Obviously our two countries have a lot that we’re working on together, not just in this space, but militarily we share a lot of information. Our relationship runs very deep and its long standing and I believe that we can talk in a holistic way with the Trump Administration about ways in which our two countries help each other and this is just one example. We will have that discussion and I’m confident that we can work with the Trump Administration to see a continuation of the current arrangement that was brokered with the Obama Administration.
TOM TILLEY:
Well, obviously it’s very hard to know what he’s going to do. He’s already backing away from some of the statements that he made during the campaign. In Shalailah’s story we just heard from a well-known immigration think tank in the US and he says that Trump will definitely quash this agreement. Surely it must worry you. Are you concerned that he will go back on this deal?
PETER DUTTON:
Well Tom, there are a million experts out there at the moment and the guy you had on your programme before is expressing an opinion. There would be counter opinions and a thousand others lined up behind him who would be happy to offer a public opinion.
I can only deal with the facts. The fact is that we have a good working relationship with Homeland Security which is the equal department in the United States to our Australian Border Force here. I’ve got really good relationships with the senior people within that particular government department. We’ve got good relationships through Ambassador Hockey with the incoming administration so we will just deal with the facts and work through it in a sensible way. But the main thing here is that we have got a really good deal.
We do want to get people off Manus and Nauru, but we want to do it in a way that doesn’t re-start the boats which is why we have introduced this Bill into the Parliament and now I hope Mr Shorten can support that because the people smugglers really are watching every word that Australian leaders have to say and if they can use this announcement to manipulate their message to get people to pay money to hop onto boats then they will do that.
That’s why the message needs to be rock solid not just from the Prime Minister, but from the alternative Prime Minister because if we don’t, we will see boats re-start and I think at moment sadly Mr Shorten is undermining the national message that we need to be projecting to the people smugglers and that is that we won’t tolerate them being back in charge.
TOM TILLEY:
Well you’ve made the point that you don’t want, I guess, our asylum policies to be a marketing opportunity and in April New Zealand offered to resettle some of our asylum seekers and the Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said settlement in a country like New Zealand would be used by people smugglers as a marketing opportunity. Doesn’t settlement in the US have exactly the same problem?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, the worst outcome that we could arrive at is for people to settle in Australia because that would allow the people smugglers to say, ‘you’ve had a couple of years on Nauru, you can go Australia and that’s the outcome that you want.’ Remember that’s what they’ve paid thousands of dollars to achieve. They want the outcome of coming to Australia. We have a more generous welfare system, health system than the United States or most other countries.
We have stopped ventures from trying to get to New Zealand in recent history, so people see New Zealand as a back-door way and the intelligence tells us this. They see it as a back-door way of getting to Australia and we have had, as I say, 840 days since a boat has successfully arrived.
We are still turning back boats so this problem hasn’t gone away, but we need to increase the resources we’ve got at sea and in the air in the deterrence model of Operation Sovereign Borders and we’ve done that in anticipation of this announcement because people smugglers will use the message to try and manipulate people to pay money.
People smugglers are part of evil, organised criminal syndicates. They use social media very effectively and that’s why it’s really important for Mr Shorten to say that he’s going to support our legislation because that really would kill off the message of people smugglers and that’s what we are looking for from Labor at the moment.
TOM TILLEY:
Minister do you have a plan B, if President Trump says no way this is off the table, where are you going to send these refugees or will they continue to languish on Nauru and Manus?
PETER DUTTON:
Tom I have said for a long time that we’re in discussion with other third countries…
TOM TILLEY:
…who are they?
PETER DUTTON:
Well, I have not ruled countries in or out before and I didn’t rule them in or out before we made the announcement about the United States because if we do that we just really sacrifice any opportunity we’ve got of landing those deals.
TOM TILLEY:
Are they ready to roll? Are they close to being ready?
PETER DUTTON:
Well we have just announced the US deal and the US authorities arrive into Australia next week. They start the processing and I’m confident that we can, as I say, prioritise family units because that’s been our stated priority for a long period of time.
And getting the 2000 kids out of detention in Australia we’ve achieved. We’ve closed those 17 detention centres and we will work with the US authorities and we will continue to work with this administration with President Trump-elect. That’s the way in which I think we will make this plan work.
TOM TILLEY:
Ok Minister a few people are asking what the US are getting out of this. How many refugees are we accepting and do you have any concerns that we are allowing the US Government to offload people that they may have mistreated?
PETER DUTTON:
A couple of points to make here Tom. Firstly this is not a people swap. We’ve got an arrangement with the United States in relation to a very small number of people coming out of Costa Rica. The majority of those will be people that are fleeing gang violence including many Catholics who are fleeing gang violence. So that’s the arrangement that we entered into along with a number of other countries that the US asked to form part of that pact at the President Obama Refugee Summit in New York in September…
TOM TILLEY:
…so how many Minister?
PETER DUTTON:
We haven’t defined the number Tom, but it is a very small number.
TOM TILLEY:
A one for one swap?
PETER DUTTON:
No, well again, just to reinforce the Costa Rica arrangement had nothing to do with this deal and it’s not a people swap.
There are some countries where you do need to enter into a transactional arrangement where we need to swap this for that or we want this for that. That’s not the nature of the relationship with the US. We are part of the Five Eyes compact on intelligence. So the United States and Australia are two of the closest allies. There is a lot of work that we’re doing in Iraq at the moment, in Syria, there’s work that we do sharing information on millions of people that cross borders including paedophiles and people heading off on sex tours, all of this sort of stuff that we work with the US on a daily basis.
The US is also, along with Australia and Canada, been consistently amongst the top three countries in the world for settling refugees and these people are within the number of refugees that the US would settle each year anyway. So it’s an extension of that so this is not a transitional relationship that we have with the US where there’s tit for tat. As I say you might do that with some other countries including some countries in South East Asia for example…
TOM TILLEY:
Ok so you’re not ruling that out in future…
PETER DUTTON:
…that’s not the nature of the US arrangement.
TOM TILLEY:
Sure Minister I know you have got to get to another interview. I’ve got one more question for you. You’ve been talking about the plan that you and the PM announced a few weeks ago to put a lifetime ban on asylum seekers from ever coming to Australia if they try to get here by boat and you’ve spent time in this interview saying that you want Labor to back that, but they won’t be backing it and a few crossbenches look like they won’t be as well so it might struggle to get though the Senate. Is this lifetime ban a critical part of the US refugee swap?
PETER DUTTON:
It is from the Australian perspective there’s no question because…
TOM TILLEY:
…so you won’t go ahead with it unless this legislation is part of it?
PETER DUTTON:
No, we will go ahead with the deal with the US because we want to get people off Nauru and Manus, but Labor’s opposition to this weakens our position in stopping the boats and I don’t want the boats to restart.
Unfortunately Mr Shorten is trying to talk to inner city Green voters at the same time he’s trying to talk to outer metropolitan blue collar workers and at the moment he is playing a very silly game because he is sending a message of weakness to people smugglers and last time that happened 50,000 people came on 800 boats and 1200 drowned at sea.
I want Mr Shorten to support the legislation that we’ve got because it sends a very clear message.
We want to support refugees, we do it in a record number and our numbers increase over the coming years, but we don’t want people smugglers back and unfortunately Mr Shorten weakens our positon in trying to stop those boats if they attempt to recommence and I don’t think that’s good for our country.
TOM TILLEY:
Minister Dutton, great to have you on the programme. Thanks for speaking to us.
PETER DUTTON:
Thanks Tom. Pleasure mate.
