Lisa Singh

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TV INTERVIEW

SKY NEWS WITH JIM MIDDLETON

SATURDAY, 12 NOVEMBER 2016

SUBJECT: US refugee resettlement plan

JIM MIDDLETON: It is two weeks since Sky News broke the news that Canberra and Washington were simply waiting until the Presidential election was out of the way to unveil the agreement. Under the terms of the deal, approved refugees would be resettled in the United States once they’ve cleared American security checks. The Government’s also been involved in intense negotiations with New Zealand, Canada, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia, to resettle some refugees too. Bill Shorten has signalled his readiness to support such a deal, as have other Labor MPs.

LABOR MP PETER KHALIL: If they have got their act together, great, fantastic, because, as Ben says, we all want to see the end to indefinite detention on Manus and Nauru. So if they’ve got their act together, and there is the prospect of a credible settlement in third countries, then we would in principle support that.  But the thing is, we haven’t been given any detail, we been given no briefings, we have no information about this prospective deal.

LABOR SENATOR LISA SINGH: If this is going to occur, if there is going to be a deal done by the Australian Government and the US administration, to settle them in the US, then on the face of it, it does seem like a positive step, a step however that has taken too long.

DEPUTY LABOR LEADER TANYA PLIBERSEK: We want to see people off Manus Island and Nauru because they have been there too long, so that’s at the top of our list. It is pretty extraordinary, we are hearing suggestions that it might be the US, it might be countries in our region. It is about time that Peter Dutton and Malcolm Turnbull explain why they voted against what looks like exactly the same arrangement that Labor proposed with Malaysia.

JM: But there could still be problems for Labor, because the deal may well be contingent on support for the government’s legislation imposing a lifetime ban on anyone on Manus or Nauru ever setting foot on Australian soil, legislation to which the ALP is adamantly opposed. Mr Shorten has left himself some wriggle-room on the subject, but the question is whether he can carry more sceptical member of the Labor backbench with him.

Operation Sovereign Borders will also be stepped up to try to ensure people smugglers do not use the deal as a marketing tool to entice more people stranded in Indonesia, for example, to hand over money, and get on boats heading for Australia. In his announcement Mr Turnbull will argue that the deal demonstrates that only the Coalition can resolve the asylum seeker issue, declaring that once again, it is his side of politics that’s been left to tidy up after the boats started flooding back to Australia under Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard.

Jim Middleton, Sky News.

[ENDS]