Australia Abandons Plan to Swap Asylum Seekers Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard has announced that she was abandoning her government’s controversial plans to ship asylum seekers to Malaysia as part of a refugee swap deal. The applications for asylum seekers will be processed on Australian territory now. According to the deal, the migrants asylum seekers arriving in Australia are sent to Malaysia where their asylum claims are processed by the United Nations. the Australian government had already begun implementing its part of that deal, under which 4,000 United Nations certified refugees would be resettled in Australia. Highest court in Australia had already nullified the deal under which the claims of 800 migrants who reached Australia by boat were to be processed in Malaysia by United Nations. The deal was ruled invalid by the Highest court as Malaysia is not a signatory of the United Nations refugee convention. Ms. Gillard had been trying to obtain required votes in the Parliament for amending the law to validate the deal. However, after clearly realizing that the require vote is not possible, she had decided to abandon the controversial deal. “We are not in a position to implement the arrangement with Malaysia,” Ms. Gillard said in Canberra. “It is apparent the legislation will not pass the Parliament.” Ms. Gillard’s Labor Party leads a minority government relying on support from three independent legislators and one legislator from the Greens party. The Green party had been opposing the deal from the beginning. Furthermore, the prime minister could not swing any of the opposition legislature on the refugee swap plan.
Posted on: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 19:19:22 +0000
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