The Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce has expressed its dismay at Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s decision to give 7,500 asylum seekers living in Australia until October to lodge an application for protection as a refugee, describing his declaration that the “game is up” for “fake refugees” as “unbecoming” of an Australian Government minister.
“The decision by Minister Dutton yesterday to threaten asylum seekers who have not yet had the opportunity to apply for protection by using language such as ‘fake refugees’ is unjust and unbecoming of a Minister in the Australian Government,” the ACRT said in a statement released today.
Rev Mark Riessen, deputy chair of the taskforce, called for “a reinstatement of hope” for the asylum seekers and “fairness and justice” in the process of assessing them.
“We have heaped heavy burdens upon them and they have become captive to punitive measures in an unfair ultimatum,” he said. “The Christian faith calls us to work towards freedom for the captive and advocate for those treated unfairly, not to demonise them and shame them.”
The ACRT said that many of the people “derided” by Mr Dutton “did not even have an option to apply for protection for a number of years until the ‘fast track’ processing system passed in 2015”. They said that during this time many of the asylum seekers did not have a right to work and have been living in poverty, adding that the process of applying for protection is arduous for those who do not have legal advice, many of whom are waiting for pro bono advice from overstretched legal services.
The ACRT said the 7,500 who have not yet applied for asylum “deserve the same respect as others who have applied before them” and called on the Federal Government to provide additional support to 7,500 affected people in the form of legal support and “positive messaging” to resolve the residual caseload.
Mr Dutton said on Sunday that the 7,500 people who came as part of the 50,000 on 800 boats over the past eight years or so were either “refusing to provide any detail, including in some cases even about their identity, refusing to answer questions about their protection claims or indeed refusing to lodge those protection claims”.
Claiming it was a “very serious situation” costing Australian taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars a year, Mr Dutton said the government was saying to “those people who refuse to engage in the process and provide information about their protection claim that we are no longer going to provide income support”.
“We will provide Medicare support, we will give people work rights and we will give people support if they have children of school age to pay for those education costs,” he said. “But we are not going to provide taxpayer assistance beyond that and the expectation is if people can’t make their claim for protection then they need to depart our country as quickly as possible.”
Mr Dutton said those people who don’t comply will have their visas cancelled and will be deported.
