Refugees expected to find Nauru integration difficult

Transcript

A human rights lawyer says the Australian government is leaving new refugees in Manus and Nauru unsupported as they enter the community.

Thirteen asylum seekers have been granted refugee visas in Nauru, and 11 in Manus.

The Australian government says they will be able to leave the country, but will not be able to enter Australia.

But the lawyer, Julian Burnside QC, told Christopher Gilbert they will find it difficult to integrate with the Nauruan community.

JULIAN BURNSIDE: Nauru is tiny and it has a population of about 10,000 people. It's a very harsh climate, it has no real Gross Domestic Product, and people live in fairly miserable circumstances. Now, just how refugees are supposed to blend into that community and how they're supposed to support themselves is a fairly serious question. What Australia is doing in substance is dumping a bunch of refugees into a community that has no real capacity to manage them.

CHRISTOPHER GILBERT: The Australian Immigration Minister, Scott Morrison, has said they'll be given a living allowance, at least enough to meet the local living conditions, some of which you've just outlined, and that within 12 months they'll be standing on their own feet. What do you make of that?

JB: Well, I would say that it is characteristic of the dishonest statements our immigration minister makes. It is ludicrous to suppose that within 12 months of being released into the Nauruan community any refugee will be able to support themselves in that community. The local Nauruans have difficulty supporting themselves in their community and they are distinctly tribal so that they will not welcome people who come from a different culture. It's going to be extremely difficult for them and what the Australian immigration minister has not said is who's going to support them for the first 12 months and whether they will be helped if they can't get work or income after the first 12 months.

CG: Those 11 that have been granted refugee status on Manus, will they find it any easier than those in Nauru?

JB: I think they'll find it harder because the antipathy to refugees on Manus Island specifically is much greater than the antipathy to refugees on Nauru.

CG: So do you think many of them will look to leave?

JB: I expect that they will and there's a real practical question: how will they manage that? How will they research other countries that might take them? How will they persuade another country to give them a visa? How will they pull together the cost of getting to some other country? These are not trivial problems. It's also interesting to consider the selfishness of Australia's stance on this. Australia is a large and rich country by any standards, Nauru is tiny and bankrupt. Now we have sent about 1,100 asylum seekers to Nauru. If even half of them were given Nauruan visas that would increase Nauru's population by about 5%. That same number would increase Australia's population by about one-thousandth of 1%. And yet somehow Australia thinks that Nauru can cope with it and we can't. It's the most devastating hypocrisy and meanness, of which I'm afraid to say is the new Australia.