Australia under fire over asylum seeker clampdown

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MOTTRAM: Sri Lankans and Afghans now face three and six month delays in the processing of their asylum claims in Australia. If they arrive, they can make a claim and they will have health and identity checks, probably while they're held at the overcrowded detention facility on Christmas Island. But there'll be no movement for months on their refugee claims. Immigration minister Chris Evans was emphatic it was not a concession to vigorous opposition claims that the government has lost control of the country's borders.

EVANS: Not at all, not at all. This government retains its commitment to treating people humanely and appropriately. We've made a decision on the suspension based on very sound public policy grounds.

MOTTRAM: But it would, he said, result in fewer successful asylum claims.

Speaking alongside Senator Evans and the Home Affairs minister Brendan O'Connor, the Foreign minister Stephen Smith said the suspension was to allow a review of apparently improved conditions in Sri Lanka and Afghanistan. And he pointed to a similar review by the UN refugee agency, the UNHCR, to justify the government's decision.

SMITH: The fact that part of our consideration is the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees own review of country circumstances bolsters us in our very firm view and conviction that we continue to conduct ourselves absolutely in accordance with the refugee convention.

MOTTRAM: The UNHCR regional representative Rick Towle says the refugee agency was caught unawares with the government's announcement and has cautioned there'll be operational issues at Christmas Island, and that humanitarian considerations must come first. Rick Towle has also distanced the agency's review of country circumstances in Sri Lanka from the Australian government decision.

TOWLE: We are in the process of reviewing our guidelines in relation to Sri Lanka as we are in relation to many other countries. But there's nothing remarkable about that. And whether that results in a change of our current guidelines or a resumption of the same sorts of statements I don't want to prejudge that.

MOTTRAM: But while the opposition has said its criticisms of government policy have been vindicated, humanitarian and refugee organisations have condemned the suspension decision. David Manne is co-ordinator of the Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre. He says it's been done before in the case of East Timorese and Afghans post-Taliban, and resulted in many people being denied protection unfairly.

MANNE: The real danger is that this freeze on processing will in fact be a freeze on fairness, a situation where the government will improperly buy time to potentially contrive a different outcome, that is to contrive a refusal of the case by sitting on cases which if they were decided on the current information would require a finding that the person be granted refugee status.

MOTTRAM: Now the government denies that this is any such thing. It says that its concern is to have appropriate definitions of who is a legitimate refugee given current circumstances so it says conditions are changing in Sri Lanka and in Afghanistan. Isn't it fair that the government should have an opportunity to review those circumstances from which people are coming?

MANNE: Well look under normal legal principles the government should not deliberately delay assessments of cases, that's the basic point. One of the real concerns here is that often revised assessments, including revised assessments by the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, have proven to be too hasty in recommending return for asylum seekers. I mean we saw graphic illustrations of this with Afghans both in the early 1990s and more recently with the fall of the Taliban and in fact some Afghans who were returned to Afghanistan under the Pacific solution have had to flee further brutality and have been forced to flee back to Australia by boat.

MOTTRAM: But it's not just the suspension of processing the government's announced. It's also planning new laws including ten-year jail terms and fines of tens of thousands of dollars for those who finance or support people-smuggling. The Rudd government denies it's an admission that there are so called pull factors at work since it loosened the harsher aspects of the previous government's policy. But the Immigration minister Chris Evans said there was a clear message for people smugglers and those who use them.

EVANS: They they cannot guarantee a visa outcome for their clients.