Australia waited nine years to accept the New Zealand refugee deal out of fear asylum seekers would snub the option of the US, independent senator Jacqui Lambie and the Morrison government have claimed.
On Thursday Australia accepted an offer first made in February 2013 to take up to 450 refugees and asylum seekers, which Lambie then revealed had been a key commitment to win her casting vote to repeal legislation improving access to medical evacuation from offshore detention.
Refugee advocates welcomed the move but were critical of the delay, including Amnesty International Australia which argued that “people have had years of their lives taken from them pointlessly”.
When the medevac legislation was repealed in December 2019, the then-government Senate leader, Mathias Cormann, denied the existence of a secret deal.
On Friday Lambie explained she had stayed silent on the deal because “I was told if I disclosed the terms of the deal, there would be no more deal”.
“I don’t believe that was said out of malice,” she said in a statement.
“The United States resettlement agreement was still going when I negotiated with the Morrison government.
“And because not everybody who was eligible for resettlement with the United States program would definitely qualify for the New Zealand program, I couldn’t speak out, in case asylum seekers who had a spot in the US deal would turn it down in the hope of taking the New Zealand option.
“It took longer than I wanted it to.”
Lambie said she stuck by her decision to repeal the medevac legislation, arguing this gave her “leverage to get people out of offshore detention … to let them move on with their lives, after years of limbo”.
In 2016 the then Turnbull government struck a deal with the US to take up to 1,200 refugees and asylum seekers from Australia’s offshore detention.
On Friday the finance minister and Liberal Senate leader, Simon Birmingham, also defended the nine-year delay in accepting New Zealand’s offer.
“We put a priority on making sure we delivered on the deal with the US for resettlement,” he told Sky News.
Birmingham said the New Zealand deal was necessary to deal with a “small legacy caseload of individuals” and would not result in a pull factor for refugee boats, which he said had been “prevented” by the Coalition’s other policies such as turnbacks.
Paul Power, chief executive of the Refugee Council of Australia, dismissed references to the US deal as a “distraction”.
Power said even with the US and New Zealand deals and resettlement in Canada, there are “still more than 500 people” in Australia or offshore detention “without a resettlement solution”.
“Had the Australian government accepted the deal in 2013 – or at any point since – the situation would’ve been entirely different,” he told Guardian Australia.
“More people could have been resettled in New Zealand, especially due to shortfalls in their quota because of Covid travel restrictions.”
The Labor leader, Anthony Albanese, told reporters in Shellharbour the Coalition had “rejected” arrangements struck by former prime minister Julia Gillard and former New Zealand prime minister John Key.
Albanese said the Morrison government had now accepted the deal “in the dying days of their third term in office” after years of rhetoric that to do so would restart boats.
“There was no reason why they could [not have accepted] the repeated offers of the New Zealand government … to settle people who were on Nauru and Manus Island,” he said, delay which resulted in both a “human cost but also an incredibly significant economic cost to Australia”.
The former home affairs minister, Peter Dutton, has repeatedly described the New Zealand deal as a potential “pull factor” that could restart dangerous boat journeys.
Morrison ruled out accepting the deal within days of becoming prime minister in 2018, warning it was not consistent with Australia’s border protection regime.
“The thing you know about me on border protection is I’m consistent,” Morrison said in September 2019. “I’ve been consistent on this issue for my entire time in public life.”
The shadow minister assisting for immigration, Andrew Giles, told Guardian Australia the government’s claim of prioritising the US deal “doesn’t hold water”.
About 200 people are still on the pathway to resettle in the US, he said, indicating the pathways were “distinct”.
“This is a desperate deflection from the government to explain a failure to strike a deal that could and should have been accepted years ago,” Giles said.
“The only thing the prime minister is consistent on is his inconsistency – that he is prepared to do anything to solve his political problems.”
