Australia offers helping hand as Britain struggles to stop wave of asylum seekers

1 week ago 3

London: Australia and Britain will tighten their joint work against people smugglers after a meeting in London on border security, as the British government struggles to stop thousands of asylum seekers crossing the English Channel.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke outlined the Australian approach to British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood in talks on Monday, insisting that the key principle of border sovereignty belongs to progressive political parties as well as conservative ones.

Britain’s Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood (left) greets Australia Minister for Home Affairs Tony Burke.

Mahmood took office on Friday in a sudden cabinet reshuffle that elevated her from the justice portfolio, in a move by British Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer to bring a tough new minister into the job to crack down on boat arrivals.

Burke and Mahmood were part of a Five Eyes meeting of ministers from the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand that sought to cement an intelligence-sharing partnership that dates to the 1940s and has countered Russian and Chinese espionage over many years.

The meeting is seen by some officials as proof that the Five Eyes agreement remains strong despite speculation that US President Donald Trump and his officials, including Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, would limit the intelligence being shared.

Noem joined Mahmood and Burke alongside Canadian Minister of Public Safety Gary Anandasangaree and New Zealand Attorney-General Judith Collins in London for the meeting.

From left, New Zealand minister Judith Collins, Canadian minister Gary Anandasangaree, British Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, Australian Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem in London on Monday.

“I’m completely confident of the partnership,” Burke said in an interview on the sidelines of the meeting at a defence facility.

“Every single person around the table knows that the Five Eyes co-operation is critical to keeping our own citizens safe.”

The agenda includes cyber attacks, foreign interference, child exploitation and border security. Burke is also expected to brief his counterparts on the Australian action to expel the Iranian ambassador last month after security advice found Iran had instigated attacks on the Jewish community.

In a sign that Starmer and his ministers are acting on Australian lessons, Mahmood announced on Monday that she was considering tougher visa measures to the UK, including refusing visas to visitors from countries that do not accept returned asylum seekers.

Migrant families wade into the sea at Gravelines, France, in an attempt to board a small boat heading to the UK.

“We do expect countries to play ball, play by the rules, and if one of your citizens has no right to be in our country, you do need to take them back,” she told the British media.

Burke oversaw the passage of the Migration Amendment (Removal and Other Measures) Bill last year to ban visas from countries that do not accept involuntary removals, prompting criticism from refugee groups. The law was expected to be applied to visitors from countries such as Iran, Iraq, Russia, South Sudan and Zimbabwe.

Starmer and Mahmood are under pressure from Reform UK leader Nigel Farage over more than 111,000 asylum seeker claims in the year to June – 43,600 of them from people who arrived by boat.

Burke said and Mahmood had spoken about the Australian experience in bringing asylum seeker numbers down, and he rejected the idea that conservative parties could claim to be more effective.

“The simple lived experience now is that under both sides of politics we’ve been able to make sure that the people smugglers don’t win,” he said.

“I’m really proud of that. The principle of sovereignty doesn’t belong to one side of politics. It’s simply the definition of being a nation.”

Burke was a cabinet minister throughout the governments of Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard and was appointed immigration minister when Rudd returned as prime minister in June 2013, after which the government reached agreements with Nauru and Papua New Guinea to host detention centres.

Tony Abbott continued those detention centres when he became prime minister three months later, while adding measures such as boat turn-backs and installing a military commander to head the border control operation.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage addresses delegates at the party conference on Saturday.

Labor has continued the practice of having Operation Sovereign Borders under a military commander – something the British government has not done. The UK’s border security commander is a former police chief.

“We’ve constantly adapted, but we’ve never changed the mission,” Burke said in an interview.

“The mission is simply to make sure that no people smuggling venture is successful.

“The caseload has involved different cohorts over time. The other thing that’s started to happen is we’ve increasingly been returning people directly to their country of origin.

“Sometimes people will be turned back directly to Indonesia. Occasionally, there’ll be people sent to Nauru.

“But in very but in very significant numbers, now, we send people directly back to where they started.”