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The Guardian - AU
The Guardian - AU
National
Claire Phipps in Sydney

Trump rages at 'dumb deal' with Australia over refugee resettlement – as it happened

Malcolm Turnbull questioned on claim Trump hung up on him

Summary

  • An unexpected row has broken out between Australia and the US, prompted by (what else?) a tweet by Donald Trump:
  • The tweet followed a report in the Washington Post that claimed a phone call between Trump and the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had ended abruptly and acrimoniously, with the president reportedly labelling it “the worst call by far” with a foreign leader.
  • The two were said to have clashed over a deal struck between the Turnbull government and the Obama administration at the end of last year, which would have seen up to 1,250 refugees currently stranded in Australia’s offshore detention camps on Nauru and Manus island considered for resettlement in the US. In return, Australia would take refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
  • A source told the Washington Post that Trump had accused Australia of trying to send over the “next Boston bombers”, raging that keeping to the agreement would “kill” him politically and calling it:

The worst deal ever.

  • While Turnbull told reporters he would not comment on the content of the conversation, he did deny that the US president had hung up on him, insisting the call – which lasted for 25 minutes instead of the hour afforded other world leaders – “ended courteously”.
  • The Australian prime minister insisted the US remained committed to the deal:

We have a commitment from the US president, confirmed several times now by the government.

This is not a deal that he would have done or that he would regard as a good deal … But the question is, will he commit to honour the deal and he has given that commitment.

  • Just an hour and 40 minutes before Trump tweeted, a spokesperson for the US embassy in Canberra said the “decision to honour the refugee agreement has not changed … This was just reconfirmed to the State Department from the WH [White House] and on to this embassy at 1315 Canberra time.”
  • But Trump’s tweet – labelling the agreement a “dumb deal”, saying he would review it, and incorrectly calling those affected “illegal immigrants” (they are refugees) – now seems to have put those earlier assurances very much in doubt.

Read more

Updated

Just a few days ago, the Australian treasurer, Scott Morrison, refused to be drawn into widespread criticism of Trump’s travel ban, saying the rest of the world was now “catching up” with Australia’s harsh policies on immigration:

We are the envy of the world when it comes to strong border protection policies.

The rest of the world would love to have our borders and the way they are secured and the immigration arrangements we have put in place, particularly most recently, over the last three or four years.

We’ve got a good history around this. Really, the rest of the world is catching up to Australia.

Morrison also praised the refugee resettlement deal – then apparently confirmed between Trump and Turnbull – as “an extraordinary achievement” by the Australian PM:

[The prime minister] is very pleased we’ve been able to secure this arrangement. They are both business people, aren’t they, and a deal’s a deal.

What you need to know about the refugee deal

The deal relates to 1,250 refugees held on Australia’s offshore detention camps on Nauru and Manus Island, including many from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Iraq. The refugees, some of whom are stateless, have spent years languishing in the offshore detention camps, which the United Nations has repeatedly criticised as cruel and illegal.

They are unable to go home, but the government says they cannot come to Australia – even where confirmed to be genuine refugees – because they travelled to Australia by boat. The vast majority of those in Australia’s offshore detention regime have been confirmed to have a valid claim to refugee status, meaning they are legally owed Australia’s protection.

The deal was also to include hundreds of refugees who were in Australia receiving medical care, provided they had been found to be refugees.

A protest in Sydney calls for refugees on Nauru and Manus island to be settled in Australia.
A protest in Sydney calls for refugees on Nauru and Manus island to be settled in Australia. Photograph: Carol Cho/AAP

In November, the US agreed to take an undisclosed number of refugees. Applicants were to be interviewed twice by US officials before being resettled, in a process that was to take between six and 12 months.

The deal was seen as a significant win for the Turnbull government. Australia has searched in vain for a sustainable plan for refugees. For more than three years Australia has maintained it will never settle on the mainland asylum-seekers who arrive by boat. But the policy has led to regular reports of human rights abuses, many of them documented in the Guardian’s publication of the Nauru files, and is bitterly condemned by refugees advocates inside and outside Australia.

At the time of the US agreement, only 24 refugees had been resettled in Papua New Guinea, and a handful in Cambodia.

Read more in our explainer:

Updated

American commentators continue to wonder why the US president has decided to pick a fight with Australia:

An interesting analysis here by Simon Tisdall on how governments around the world are responding to the new Trump order.

Australia doesn’t feature – probably because up until a couple of hours ago, that was one relationship that didn’t seem to be wobbling.

Is the refugee resettlement plan over? Katharine Murphy and Ben Doherty report on what happens next:

Australia is scrambling to save its agreement to resettle refugees in the US after Donald Trump raged publicly at “a dumb deal” and told the country’s prime minister Malcolm Turnbull in private it was the “worst deal ever”.

Trump’s pledge to “study” the agreement sparked immediate concern in Canberra. But Turnbull dug in, saying in radio interviews he had a personal commitment from the president “confirmed several times now by the [US] government”.

“We have a clear commitment from the president,” Turnbull told Melbourne radio station 3AW. “We expect that the commitment will continue.”

But an Australian official acknowledged: “It’s over. It can’t survive … It was never going to survive Trump’s immigration ban.”

This Twitter account adds context to each of Trump’s tweets:

Malcolm Turnbull has been keen to stress – while declining to give details of the phone conversation with Trump – that the US president did not hang up on him.

The Washington Post report – which divulged details of what Trump was said to have described as “the worst call by far” with a foreign leader – did not claim anyone had hung up the call, though it did say it had been cut short “abruptly”:

25 minutes into what was expected to be an hour-long call, Trump abruptly ended it …

Trump made the call to Turnbull about 5pm Saturday* from his desk in the Oval Office, where he was joined by chief strategist Stephen K Bannon, national security adviser Michael Flynn and White House press secretary Sean Spicer.

At one point, Turnbull suggested that the two leaders move on from their impasse over refugees to discuss the conflict in Syria and other pressing foreign issues. But Trump demurred and ended the call, making it far shorter than his conversations with Shinzo Abe of Japan, Angela Merkel of Germany, François Hollande of France or Putin.

[*Sunday morning in Australia.]

Updated

Trump’s use of the description “illegal immigrants” is loaded, and wrong.

It is not illegal to arrive in a foreign country without a visa or other documents in order to seek asylum: international law permits it, as does Australian domestic law.

The vast majority of the people held on both of Australia’s offshore detention islands have been found to be refugees – that is they have a well-founded fear of persecution in their homeland and they are legally owed protection.

It is unlawful to forcibly return those people to their home country under the principle of non-refoulement.

On Manus Island, of 859 people finally assessed, 669 (78%) have been found to be refugees; 190 have been found not to have a claim for protection.

On Nauru, of 1200 refugee status determinations, 983 people (82%) have been found to be refugees, while 217 were refused refugee status.

Only those whose refugee status had been granted were eligible for the US resettlement deal.

Children on Nauru speak: ‘I want to feel the pain I am having in my heart’

Refugee resettlement: what the US and Australia agreed

Here is what we knew about the deal as it was struck with the Obama administration – in the Trump world, it’s far from clear which parts of it will stand:

  • Australia announced in November 2016 that some refugees currently held in detention on Manus Island and Nauru would be eligible for resettlement in the US as a “one-off” deal.
  • The deal is open only to those found to be refugees. Asylum seekers whose refugee claims are not accepted have been told by Australia to return to their home country or face indefinite detention.
  • Up to 1,250 refugees were believed to be eligible for the deal, should it go ahead.
  • In return, Australia would resettle refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
  • Refugees who attempt to reach Australia by boat are kept on offshore detention islands and told they will never be allowed to settle in Australia. Some have been on Nauru or Manus for years.
  • Applicants for resettlement in the US – who will already have gone through screening processes that determined their refugee status – would have to undergo the “extreme vetting” introduced by the Trump administration, White House spokesman Sean Spicer has said.

Updated

Australian opposition leader Bill Shorten has said Malcolm Turnbull should be more open about his conversation with Trump, saying the Washington Post account of their phone call was worrying:

We shouldn’t be finding out about what’s happening to Australian policy through the news of foreign countries.

It’s not only Australia’s leader who endured a bumpy phone call with Trump, it appears: Mexico, a longtime target of the new US president, shared the brunt.

David Agren reports from Mexico City:

Donald Trump spoke of sending troops south of the border to take care of “bad hombres” while on the telephone with his Mexican counterpart, according to a transcript cited by the Associated Press.

Trump was said to have made either an offer – or a veiled threat – of the US military weighing in to fight Mexican gangs in a conversation on Friday that Enrique Peña Nieto’s office later described as “constructive”.

According to reports that were apparently based on a leaked White House document, the US president told Peña Nieto: “You have a bunch of bad hombres down there. You aren’t doing enough to stop them. I think your military is scared. Our military isn’t, so I just might send them down to take care of it.”

Turnbull: US-Australia alliance 'rock-solid'

Turnbull says the US is not committed to take all 1,250 refugees eligible for the resettlement deal.

The US will apply its own vetting processes, which could see some turned away.

Is Trump difficult to deal with, Turnbull is asked:

It’s my job to stand up for Australia … I’ve dealt with many people over the years and I’ve enjoyed my dealings with President Trump.

The alliance is absolutely rock-solid, it is so strong … It will continue and strengthen during my time as prime minister and, I’m sure, President Trump’s time.

He says dealings have been “frank and forthright” on both sides.

Updated

Turnbull repeats his denial of the report that Trump hung up on him.

He won’t answer a question on whether the call was cut short, but does say it was 25 minutes long.

(The Washington Post report that broke the story of the “worst call by far”, in Trump’s reported words, said the call had been scheduled to last an hour.)

Updated

Quick as a flash, Malcolm Turnbull is over to Melbourne’s 3AW radio.

I think we know his line on this now, but he’s doubling down:

The deal was to process and consider as acceptance as refugees … it was always premised on their very vigorous processing.

He repeats the assurances from the phone call, from Sean Spicer, the US state department and the US embassy in Canberra, that all would go ahead.

We have a clear commitment … it’s been confirmed … we expect the deal will continue.

Is there a plan B?

Turnbull says Australia is always looking for options to resettle people from Nauru or Manus – apart from the option to come to Australia, which is off the table.

Updated

And here’s Guardian Australia political editor Katharine Murphy’s analysis of that slightly uncomfortable Turnbull interview:

Turnbull on Trump: summary

  • Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull once again refused to be drawn on reports that his call with Donald Trump was a fraught one, with the US president reportedly describing it as “the worst call by far” with a foreign leader.
  • But Turnbull did insist that Trump had not hung up on him:

The report that the president hung up is not correct – the call ended courteously.

  • Despite a tweet by Trump calling the US-Australian agreement to resettle up to 1,250 refugees from Nauru and Manus island a “dumb deal”, Turnbull said the president would honour the commitment:

We have a commitment from the US president, confirmed several times now by the government.

  • Trump himself would not have signed up to such an agreement, the Australian PM conceded:

This is not a deal that he would have done or that he would regard as a good deal … But the question is, will he commit to honour the deal and he has given that commitment.

  • Pressed on the Trump tweet that appeared to chuck aside that commitment, Turnbull said:

Well, that is his tweet. I’m telling you what’s been said to us.

Officials are working in Washington this week to secure the details of the deal, Turnbull says.

My job … is to defend our interests. America is our most important ally. We have very frank discussions.

Turnbull: Trump tweet doesn't affect deal

Turnbull refuses to be drawn on whether Trump described their phone chat as the “worst call ever”, saying he made the case for Australian interests “powerfully” and “persuasively”.

We have a commitment from the US president, confirmed several times now by the government.

He says he doesn’t think Trump’s tweet changes that.

This is not a deal that he would have done or that he would regard as a good deal … But the question is, will he commit to honour the deal and he has given that commitment.

Turnbull says he will not reveal details of the conversation but insists that Trump did make a commitment in the call to the refugee resettlement deal.

What the president is doing … he committed to honour a deal done by his predecessor that, no doubt, he would say he wouldn’t do himself.

Turnbull: Trump did not hang up on me

Turnbull says he is “very disappointed that there’s been a leak of purported details” of the call with Trump.

But he adds:

The report that the president hung up is not correct – the call ended courteously.

These calls generally, naturally, remain confidential.

He says he won’t comment on details beyond his denial that Trump hung up on him.

Malcolm Turnbull is speaking now on Sydney’s 2GB radio.

I had a call with President Trump … and the president committed to honour the refugee resettlement deal.

Turnbull says Sean Spicer and the US embassy in Canberra also confirmed this.

He’s seen the Trump tweet, he confirms.

Well, that is his tweet. I’m telling you what’s been said to us.

Malcolm Turnbull looking at his phone: not the precise moment he saw the Trump tweet.
Malcolm Turnbull looking at his phone: not the precise moment he saw the Trump tweet. Photograph: Reuters

Donald Trump told Malcolm Turnbull the US-Australia refugee resettlement agreement was “the worst deal ever” and warned he was going to “get killed” politically during their one-on-one call last weekend, according to a detailed account of the conversation in the Washington Post.

The Washington Post reported that Trump had fumed during his Sunday phone call with the Australian prime minister, telling Turnbull he’d spoken to other world leaders on the same day, and this was “this was the worst call by far”.

Trump, according to the report, accused Australia of seeking to export the “next Boston bombers”.

The report says the friction between the two leaders “reflected Trump’s anger over being bound by an agreement reached by the Obama administration to accept refugees from Australian detention sites even while Trump was issuing an executive order suspending such arrivals from elsewhere in the world”.

The White House declined to comment on the report.

The call, scheduled for an hour, was terminated after 25 minutes, the Post said. The source of the account is attributed as a “senior US official”.

The to-ing and fro-ing on whether a Trump administration would honour a resettlement deal secured by its predecessor has been difficult to keep up with.

Yesterday, Sean Spicer, the White House press spokesman, said it would go ahead:

There will be extreme vetting applied to all of them.

That is part and parcel of the deal that was made, and it was made by the Obama administration with the full backing of the United States government.

But ABC correspondent Zoe Daniel later reported:

We’ve just had a call from a different person at the White House, not Sean Spicer but another spokesperson wanting to clarify … the president himself is still considering whether to actually go ahead with the deal, has not fully decided whether to do that.

Today saw the US embassy in Canberra confirm the deal would go ahead, as per Spicer’s comments … only to be contradicted by Trump on Twitter.

Very shortly before Trump tweeted his anger at the refugee resettlement deal, a spokesperson for the US embassy in Canberra issued this statement:

President Trump’s decision to honor the refugee agreement has not changed and spokesman [Sean] Spicer’s comments stand.

This was just reconfirmed to the State Department from the WH [White House] and on to this embassy at 1315 Canberra time.

One hour and 40 minutes later:

Earlier on Wednesday, quizzed on claims that Trump had hung up on him during their phone call, Malcolm Turnbull said he was not going to comment on a private conversation:

I’m not going to comment on the conversation.

During the course of the conversation, as you know and it was confirmed by the president’s official spokesman, the president assured me that he would continue with, honour the agreement we entered into with the Obama administration, with respect to refugee resettlement.

With Trump’s latest comments, that assurance is looking much less convincing.

Many US commentators have expressed bafflement at Trump’s decision to ruffle feathers in Australia – a country that has long been a close ally of America and (along with Canada, New Zealand and the UK) one of the Five Eyes, an intelligence-sharing alliance.

Updated

What is the refugee resettlement deal?

Donald Trump appears set to abandon his government’s agreement to resettle refugees from Australia’s offshore detention islands, calling it was a “dumb deal” and describing the refugees as “illegal immigrants”.

Less than two hours previously, his own state department had insisted the deal was on.

“President Trump’s decision to honor the refugee agreement has not changed,” a US embassy spokesperson in Canberra said in a statement.

The deal brokered between former US president Barack Obama and Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull originally forecast the resettlement of up to 1,250 refugees from Australia’s offshore detention islands of Manus island and Nauru.

Both Australian-run detention camps have been the subject of sustained criticism by the UN, human rights groups and other nations over systemic sexual and physical abuse of those detained, including rapes, beatings and the murder of one asylum seeker by guards; child sexual abuse; chronic rates of self-harm and suicide; dangerous levels of sustained mental illness, harsh conditions and inadequate medical treatment leading to several deaths.

The deal with Australia does not commit the US to unconditionally accepting any number of refugees from Australia’s offshore detention islands. The deal only commits the US to allowing refugees to “express an interest” in being resettled in America. Any, even all, refugees may be rejected during the “extreme vetting” process.

Currently, there are about 1,900 people, refugees and asylum seekers, on Australia’s two offshore detention islands. The latest Australian government statistics show there are 871 men in detention on Manus Island and 373 people living in the regional processing centre on Nauru. About 700 more refugees sent to Nauru by Australia live in the community on that island. Only refugees – those recognised as having a well-founded fear of persecution in their home country – will be considered for resettlement.

After reports in the last few hours that Donald Trump “abruptly” ended a phone call with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull over what Trump reportedly called the “worst deal ever”, the US president has now launched a Twitter outburst against the plan:

We’ll follow the fallout here.

Updated

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