PNG patience wearing thin with Australia over Manus

Transcript

Despite having sent the roughly 900 asylum seekers to Manus for processing since 2013, Australia has ruled out ever resettling the men. PNG's foreign minister Rimbink Pato says that so far 583 asylum seekers have been positively determined to be refugees but the vast majority of them don't want to resettle in PNG.

"If there was an opportunity to be resettled elsewhere, then we asked the international community to help. And of course, no help has come to us at this point in time, and therefore, we're faced with a stalemate, and therefore we're asking the international community, of course we're asking Australia as well, because it's really Australia's problem that we have shared under the arrangement with the Commonwealth to assist a friend in need."

PNG's government says it entered into the offshore processing deal in 2013 to help Australia with its boat people problem. At the time PNG committed to resettling some of those found to be refugees. But only around 24 have sought resettlement in PNG, some of whom have found it so difficult to integrate that they have asked to return to Manus. The Australian refugee lawyer David Manne says the damage being caused to innocent, vulnerable people is profound. He says the onus is on Australia to have the men resettled urgently because their incarceration on Manus is legally, morally and financially unsustainable.

"That is a terrible bind, that was from the beginning created by Australia. Australia holds both the moral and legal  responsibility for the fate of them. It is Australia who forced these men to PNG against their will. It is Australia that has funded and run the indefinite incarceration arrangements in PNG of these men, it is Australia that has also funded the refugee assessments of these men's cases and at the end of the day it is Australia that must find a solution."

The Manus MP Ronny Knight is calling on the UNHCR to step in immediately.

"That's the only answer as far as I can see they're the right body to look after them, that's who these people were supposed to go through in the first place. They didn't. They decided to jump the queue and that's why they ended up in this situation, so get them to the nearest UNHCR camp and get them fixed up again and find appropriate countries for them and sort it out otherwise the stalemate will still be applied."

Last month, PNG's Supreme Court dismissed applications made by the asylum seekers and refugees on Manus to be returned to Australia or another country with the capacity to take them in. The court ruled that their lawyer, Ben Lomai, was unable to sign the applications on his clients' behalf even though he was not allowed to enter the detention centre to collect signatures. Mr Lomai plans to refile a similar application but is understood to be facing more obstacles to access. The long torturous wait for the men on Manus continues.