The Australian Human Rights Commission has come up with an alternative set of policies it says would allow Australia to defend its borders in a humane way.

The new approach was outlined in an AHRC report released last week which focused on an Asia-Pacifc regional plan for permanent resettlement, restoring aid to countries from which refugees are fleeing and dismantling detention centres while maintaining some form of offshore processing.

Commission President Professor Gillian Triggs said the plan, titled ‘Pathways to Protection’, was an attempt to come up with positive ideas that allowed Australia to defend its national borders in a humane way.

The AHRC said the plan was a human rights-based response to the flight of asylum seekers by sea and called for the creation of more opportunities for safe entry to Australia and enhanced cooperation between Australia and countries in the region to improve the protection of refugees and people seeking asylum.

“The Commission does not underestimate the challenges that flight by sea poses for Australia and its neighbours in the Asia–Pacific region. The proposals discussed in this report aim to achieve policy solutions that meet Australia’s international human rights obligations and continue Australia’s historical generosity to those who have sought its protection over many decades,” the report said.

“In suggesting options for an alternative response to flight by sea, the Commission recognises that there are no easy or comprehensive solutions. We do not have all the answers. Nor are our proposals necessarily original. The report is not prescriptive and aims only to inform debate and more humane policy responses to claims for asylum,” it said.

Prof Triggs said: “There are more imaginative ways in which we could establish legal avenues of coming to Australia and making a claim for asylum, rather than, in a sense, leaving it open to people in absolute despair to use illegal methods of arriving through people-smuggling.”

“We are suggesting that there are much more diplomatic and collaborative ways of doing it in our region that would deliver the results,” she said.

Central to the plan is an increase to Australia’s refugee intake and an Asia-Pacific regional plan for permanent resettlement.

The report also suggested restoring or increasing aid to countries that refugees are fleeing.

While it recommended dismantling the detention centres on Nauru and Manus, some form of offshore processing would remain.

Professor Triggs said the commission has long argued offshore processing itself is not illegal.

But she said asylum seekers should not be held indefinitely on remote islands where there was no real prospect of permanent resettlement.

“It may very well be that we could rescue people at sea, for example, and take them to an agreed island, perhaps in collaboration with Malaysia and Indonesia,” she said.

Professor Triggs said people could have health, security and identity checks.

Then if they were deemed to be refugees under international law, they would be resettled somewhere in the region.

“It is the current means by which offshore processing is conducted that is our primary concern,” she said.

Australia would also be encouraged to reintroduce temporary visas, with a category that allowed people to travel to Australia by air for the purpose of seeking asylum.

The commission said there could also be a private and community sponsorship scheme.

Professor Triggs said addressing barriers to skilled and family migration could be part of the solution as well.

“It might be that it would be possible to apply for a visa to arrive in Australia legally and to claim asylum on arrival,” Prof Triggs said.

“It might be that we could have rather more generous approaches to family reunions, that we could even have study scholarships for people who are at risk, young people,” she said.

Professor Triggs has put the Commission’s recommendations to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, and the federal opposition.

Laurie Nowell
AMES Australia Senior Journalist