Steve Georganas, who strived to broker a compromise on refugee policy in the 43rd parliament, says detaining people indefinitely is ‘insane’

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Labor MP Steve Georganas says he wants to revive and reboot a cross-party working group to keep the pressure on for a more humane policy for asylum seekers in the wake of the recent revelations from the Nauru files.



Georganas, who was a key player in a cross-party effort during the 43rd minority parliament to broker a compromise between the major political parties on refugee policy, told Guardian Australia on Monday he wanted to kick off a new multipartisan initiative once parliament resumes next week.

“Refugees will always be around, and they will always want to come to Australia, whether we have policies like Nauru, or something else,” Georganas said.

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“We haven’t solved the refugee problem, and we never will. We are just going to have to deal with it,” he said. “We don’t want to return to a situation where people drown at sea, but we can’t detain people for indefinite periods. It’s insane.”

Georganas won back the South Australian marginal seat of Hindmarsh at the recent federal election with a 2.5% swing after losing the seat in the 2013 election.

In 2012, Georganas, with a cross-party group of concerned backbenchers, launched a structured effort to intervene in the asylum debate, calling on Labor and the Coalition to wipe the policy slate clean and begin again.

The group came together in the wake of a tragedy at sea where up to 90 asylum seekers drowned when their boat sank on its way to Australia, and in the middle of a frenzied parliamentary debate about the so-called “Malaysia solution” – a Labor initiative, where the Gillard government proposed to send 800 asylum seekers who arrived in Australia by boat to Malaysia in exchange for 4,000 verified refugees.

The Malaysia proposal was thwarted by the Coalition after it was rebuffed by the high court. The former prime minister Tony Abbott recently expressed public regret about that decision.

The cross-party group in the 43rd parliament made no practical progress, but Georganas said such groups remained a useful means of keeping focus and pressure on important policy questions, and educating MPs about the complexity of the issues.

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He acknowledged the last initiative “raised the issue, it got it back on the national agenda”.

Georganas’s move comes after Labor’s decision to establish a parliamentary inquiry into allegations of sexual assault and child abuse at Australia’s detention centre on Nauru.

It also comes as key church groups are planning to intensify their lobbying efforts to persuade parliamentarians to overhaul current policies.

Jan Barnett, a Josephite nun, who is the justice coordinator of the Sisters of St Joseph, was writing on Monday to both the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, to call for a summit to discuss asylum policy on a bipartisan basis.

Barnett was a key external driver of a cross-party group of MPs during the last parliament which included Liberals Craig Laundy and Russell Broadbent, Labor MPs Melissa Parke and Anna Burke, Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young and the independent MP Cathy McGowan that worked in a low-key way to get children out of immigration detention.

Barnett told Guardian Australia she would step up her lobbying efforts in the wake of the Nauru files in coordination with other church groups, such as the Australian Churches Refugee Taskforce.

“We would hope both major parties would come together and have a summit to discuss alternatives to the current impasse,” Barnett said on Monday.