Australia To Reopen Offshore Detention Camp After Losing Vote

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has said the Australian government would reopen its controversial offshore detention centre on Christmas Island, stepping up the conservative administration’s hardline policies towards asylum seekers and refugees in an immediate response to a historic defeat over the issue in parliament.

Morrison on Wednesday approved the reopening of the remote facility – closed only months ago – claiming the law passed would increase the number of people seeking asylum and protection in Australia by sea.

The legislation allows refugees and asylum seekers held in existing offshore camps on Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island to travel to Australia for medical treatment on the diagnosis of two doctors.

It was the first time in 80 years that an Australian government had lost a vote on its own legislation in the lower house. The bill passed the upper house on Wednesday morning.

Morrison accused the opposition Australian Labor Party of a bid to “weaken and compromise our borders” and said he was adopting “100 percent” a series of security service recommendations on measures to prevent the arrival of migrants and asylum seekers by sea.

MSF doctors kicked off Nauru detail refugees’ ‘despair’(2:17)

“It’s my job now to ensure the boats don’t come back,” Morrison wrote on Twitter. “I will do everything with the government’s power to ensure that what the Labor Party has done to weaken our borders does not result in boats coming to Australia.”

David Manne, executive director at Refugee Legal, an independent community legal center specialising in refugee and immigration law, said the detention centre is inhumane and should not be reopened.

“The Christmas Island detention facility – which has been in operation on and off for almost two decades – has been widely condemned for its prison-like conditions,” Manne said.

“It is a very serious concern to hear the government suggesting that it will reopen this detention centre which has caused such severe harm… to people who have fled from harm.

“It is also not the kind of place which would be in any way suitable to hold people who are going to be brought back from the Nauru and Manus islands who are seriously ill and require urgent medical intervention.”