'If true it is a harrowing tale, but I also have to make the point that we are going to stop the boats, that we are going to maintain our policies,' PM says

This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

Tony Abbott has said the government will not be blackmailed by reports that several mothers have been placed on suicide watch on Christmas Island.



Guardian Australia was told the mothers believed that if they sacrificed themselves, their children would have a better chance of being resettled in Australia.

“The conditions women are having to survive are so grotesque that they obviously can’t bear it any more,” the Christmas Island shire president, Gordon Thomson, said.

But Abbott said his government would not be “held over a moral barrel” when it came to asylum seeker policy.

“If true it is a harrowing tale, but I also have to make the point that we are going to stop the boats, that we are going to maintain our policies,” he told the Nine Network on Wednesday morning.

"This is not going to be a government which has our policy driven by people who are attempting to hold us over a moral barrel – we won't be driven by that.

"No Australian government should be subjected to the spectacle of people saying, ‘Unless you accept us, I am going to commit self-harm.'

"I don't believe any Australian – any thinking Australian – would want us to capitulate to moral blackmail."

The opposition leader, Bill Shorten, said he was “not sure why Tony Abbott said these words”.

“What I’ll also say to Tony Abbott is these people are human beings in the care of Australia and the care of the Australian government.

“It is not enough for the government to wash its hands of people in their care.”

The Greens immigration spokeswoman, Senator Sarah Hanson-Young, accused Abbott of pushing people to a "point of self-destruction" and criticised him for saying the mothers were trying to blackmail the government.

"It's pretty horrific to push a mother to a point of saying, 'Well, if I need to sacrifice myself for my children, maybe that's what I'll do,' " she said.

She had spoken to people inside the Christmas Island detention centre, she said, and there was truth to the reports of attempted suicide.

"Two nights ago almost 10 mothers were on suicide watch," she told Sky News.

Abbott also said the government had no intention of sending 153 asylum seekers at the centre of a high court challenge to Sri Lanka, the Australian reports.



At a hearing in Melbourne on Tuesday, counsel for the immigration minister, Scott Morrison, told the court that the boat, first reported by refugee advocates nearly two weeks ago, had been intercepted outside Australian territorial waters and was therefore not subject to Australia's migration laws.

It was the first time the government had admitted the boat existed, after Morrison and Abbott repeatedly refused to comment on its whereabouts.

At the hearing, the government agreed not to send the asylum seekers to Sri Lanka without three days’ notice.

The government has acknowledged that another boat, carrying 41 asylum seekers, was handed over to the Sri Lankan navy during an on-water transfer off the coast of Sri Lanka.

The UN’s refugee body raised deep concerns about the move and a group of 53 legal scholars from 17 Australian universities described it as a violation of international law.

A UN High Commissioner for Human Rights spokeswoman, Ravina Shamdasani, has strongly criticised the handover.

"We are deeply disturbed that Australian authorities on Sunday returned to Sri Lanka 41 people seeking asylum, apparently without adequate screening of their protection claims and needs,” Shamdasani said.

“International law requires that each and every case be properly and individually examined on its own merits. This is not something that can or should be done hurriedly, remotely and on the high seas, without procedural safeguards and due process guarantees for those involved.”

Shamdasani said it was unclear whether the Australian government had been given any assurances that the returnees would not face ill treatment upon their return to Sri Lanka, nor was it clear how the Australian government planned to monitor their treatment.

“We welcome the high court of Australia’s issuance of an interim injunction against the return of 153 other Sri Lankan asylum seekers, reportedly including 37 children, intercepted by Australian authorities,” she said.

“We understand that since their interception more than a week ago, the individuals on this vessel have not been able to make contact with family members or refugee organisations.”

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