Manus Island Detention Centre Will Close, But Peter Dutton Says Asylum Seekers Won't Be Resettled In Australia

Immigration minister Peter Dutton has said residents of the Manus Island detention centre will not be resettled in Australia, despite its impending closure.

The shuttering of the centre was confirmed yesterday, following a meeting between Dutton and Papua New Guinea’s Prime Minister Peter O’Neill.

Earlier this year, the PNG Supreme Court ruled that asylum seekers were being illegally held in detention on Manus Island.

Though there’s no timeline for the centre’s closure, Dutton told the ABC both countries would work “as quickly as possible”. He added that third countries are being considered for the refugees’ resettlement.

The update on Manus Island follows last week’s leak of 2,100 incident reports from Nauru’s detention centre, published by The Guardian.

The Nauru files detailed instances of assault, sexual assault and self-harm among asylum seekers, much of it concerning children.

Dutton previously dismissed some of the reports as “false allegations”. The Guardian followed up with a piece indicating the immigration minister was briefed on “numerous child rights violations” in May of 2016. He was also briefed on reports and case files that go beyond “anecdotal reports” by Save the Children Australia in 2015.

“These reviews presented a full picture of the damage effective indefinite detention is having on asylum seeker and refugee children and their families,” Save the Children Australia’s director of policy and public affairs, Matt Tinkler, told the Guardian.

“The analysis was based on 1,000 incident reports and 1,800 monthly caseworker reports from the Nauru detention centre.”

The details of Save the Children Australia’s report cannot be released, on account of laws passed by the government last year that make it a criminal act to disclose information about immigration detention.

Dutton hit back at both the Guardian and the ABC, saying he won’t “be defamed” by their reporting.

“I’ve spent much of my professional career investigating sexual assaults and assaults against people and arresting people for that; I take these issues very seriously,” Dutton, a former police officer, said.

“The trouble, frankly, with the approach of the Guardian and the ABC has been to trivialise the very serious issues by trying to promote the 2,100 reports as somehow all of those being serious when they’re not.”

More news as it develops.

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