Morrison predicts asylum surge
Scott Morrison Photo: Edwina Pickles
Shadow Immigration minister Scott Morrison has predicted he will inherit a portfolio burdened with more than 20,000 asylum seekers on Australian soil and offshore processing centres, saying it would take ''years to fix''.
With just under 15,000 people either in the community on bridging visas or in detention centres or in alternative forms of detention, Mr Morrison said a ''conservative estimate'' of the number of people likely to be in the system after September 14 was 20,000 people.
''A Coalition government will focus single-mindedly on deterrence,'' he said in Canberra on Thursday.
But Mr Morrison would not say whether they would be sent to Nauru or other offshore centres, and said the
Coalition would release policies about how to deal with the sheer numbers of arrivals closer to the election..
''We'll be reserving our judgment as to how we deal with the legacy of Labor's failure,'' he said.
''We still don't know how many people there will be; there could be 20,000, there could be more than that
''The mess that Labor will leave behind will be one thing; that will be 20,000-plus people here, onshore, and there's the mess on the borders as the boats continue to seek to come and we'll have to deal with both of those. The legacy of Labor's failures will last for some years, for some years and at some cost.''
Reports have again begin to emerge of people stitching their lips together on Nauru in protest of their prolonged detention, mirroring protests that took place in detention centres a decade ago.
Asked whether it was possible to minimise the harm associated with long-term detention, Mr Morrison said: ''Well, of course there is. If people aren't coming on boats, there's no-one in detention centres.''
In a statement released on Thursday, Home Affairs Minister Jason Clare said Australian authorities had come to the aid of a boat north of Christmas Island on Wednesday.
The boat, with 88 passengers and three crew on board, was guided towards Christmas Island, but authorities from the HMAS Parramatta boarded and began to transfer people to the Parramatta after becoming concerned about the seaworthiness of the vessel.
''Towards the completion of the transfer effort, the vessel capsized,'' Mr Clare said.
''A number of people entered the water. HMAS Parramatta is confident all people were recovered from the water with some minor injuries reported.''
In the wake of the deaths of some 100 asylum seekers on a boat bound for Australia or Indonesia on the weekend, Immigration minister Brendan O'Connor urged the Coalition to rethink its opposition to the Malaysian solution.
''We need the breadth of initiatives that's going to stop this type of tragedy happening again,'' Mr O'Connor told Fairfax radio.
''I think it's really now time for ... the Opposition to have a rethink about their opposition to some of those recommendations because I just think we've got to take the politics out of this [and] focus on what we can do to prevent the people dying at sea in this manner.''
The Coalition and Greens joined forces to block the plan to send 800 asylum seekers to Malaysia, in exchange for 4000 refugees certified by the UNHCR.
Mr Morrison said on Thursday the government plan would never work because it would take just weeks to reach the 800-people quota.