Morrison stands firm on Australia’s border protection policy

This article was last updated on April 16, 2022

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Reemphasizing the importance of Australia’s sovereignty, opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said the Coalition government will never allow an external force to take decisions involving Australian borders.

On Saturday, Mr Morrison said the Abbott-government would not hand over border related decisions to another country. Although he accepted Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono’s offer to organize a regional summit on the asylum-seeker issue, he stood firm on not allowing a third party to interfere with Australia’s border protection policy.

“Australia is a sovereign nation and we have to take decisions on our side of the border … and that is what a coalition government will always do. Having strong co-operation in our region is no excuse to hand over decisions about what happens on our side of the Indonesian border to anyone else,” Mr Morrison said in Sydney.

Mr Morrison and Immigration Minister Tony Burke also stressed on the importance of avoiding unilateral actions which might jeopardize a comprehensive regional approach and which might cause operational or other difficulties to any party.

“We did not need this communique to know that Indonesia was opposed to what Tony Abbott has been saying,” Mr Burke told a news agency on Friday.

“To think that spinning the words around will solve the problem where you have got something loud and clear in a communique like this is another layer of evidence from Mr Abbott and Mr Morrison (that) they are far more concerned with cute words than in actually dealing with this issue,” he added.