Aussie Senate rejects PM’s refugee bill
The Australian government led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison came to a crisis on Wednesday after the Senate passed an amended bill (36 votes to 34) that will allow doctors to determine whether refugees can be transferred to Australia for medical help.
A day before, the government watched its bill on refugee transfers voted down by 75 to 74 and amendments by the opposition and independents added.
Not since 1941 has a sitting government lost a vote on its own legislation.
Morrison, whose coalition government faces a general election later this year, was on the defensive on Wednesday, claiming the Senate’s decision will reopen the “refugee” flood gates to Australia.
In a move seen by many as a kneejerk reaction, Morrison announced on Wednesday the reopening of the Christmas Island immigration center. The island, an Australian territory in the Indian Ocean, lies south of Java, Indonesia.
Stewart Jackson, a lecturer in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney, said he expects the government will try to make refugees an issue in the coming election.
“The problem for Morrison is that he is in a minority government having lost Julia Banks who quit the Liberal Party to become an independent member of parliament and Kerryn Phelps (also an independent) won the seat vacated by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull,” he said.
Antony Green, election analyst with the Australian Broadcasting Commission, said a lot has been said and written about the rise of independents in parliament. The polls still have Labor in a strong position to win power, he said.
The government said the new law will restart the people-smuggling trade.
According to the nongovernmental Refugee Council of Australia, refugees on Manus Island in Papua New Guinea and a processing center in the island nation of Nauru are facing a major health crisis.
Since July 2013, about 3,127 refugees have been sent to Manus or Nauru. Successive Australian governments since 2013 have made it clear refugees trying to get to Australia illegally will not be resettled in Australia.
The latest update from the government on Feb 3 is that around 420 people on Nauru are waiting to be resettled and nearly 600 on Manus.
In 2016, the UN Refugee Agency found that 88 percent of refugees on Manus Island were suffering from depression, anxiety and/or posttraumatic stress disorder.
No sooner had the Senate voted the government’s bill down than the prime minister convened a meeting of the National Security Committee.
In a tweet he said: “I have adopted the advice of our security and border protection officials to reopen the Christmas Island detention center. We’re taking this action to clean up the mess Bill Shorten (Labor leader) and Labor made yesterday (Tuesday), once again.”
When is a refugee not a refugee? This has been a debating point for years in Australia.
Kon Karapanagiotidis from the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre said the government was trying to “whip up hysteria and fearmongering”, ignoring the fact the new laws applied only to refugees already on Manus and Nauru.
Morrison told a news conference on Wednesday that his job now is to ensure “the boats don’t come”.
“My job now is to do everything within my power and in the power of the government to ensure that what the parliament has done to weaken our borders does not result in boats coming to Australia,” he said.