Exclusive: Labor’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, returns from Pacific islands tour and says Australia should plan early to accept ‘people on the move’

This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

Australia should be at the forefront of efforts to resettle climate change migrants forced from their homes across the Pacific, Labor says.

The opposition immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, visited Papua New Guinea, the Marshall Islands and Kiribati last week, observing the impacts of climate change on the low-lying islands.



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Writing for Guardian Australia, Marles argues that as climate change raises existential questions for the nations of the Pacific, “this also has implications for [Australia’s] obligations”.

“The desire for the peoples of the Pacific to migrate because of climate change will not happen tomorrow,” he says. “The focus of all these communities right now is naturally on how they maintain their homes, lives and cultures. And currently they see the critical role for Australia as playing its part in reducing greenhouse emissions and in supporting them with adaptation efforts.

“But if climate change is placing the viability of communities in question, then inevitably some people will move as a result. So Australia being a destination for climate change migrants surely has to be up for discussion.”

Marles says Australia has enormous capacity to assist Pacific Island nations. Australia’s annual net migration intake is more than 200,000 people. The combined population of atoll nations Kiribati and Tuvalu is less than 120,000.

“Not all of these people will seek to come to Australia,” Marles says. “Indeed none may come. And if any do it will not be in the next few years and it will not be all at once. But if we are to avoid another fraught debate in a space which has been the source of more than its fair share, then we have to talk about this now rather than wait until the issue is upon us.

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“It is in this sense that the Pacific must be our issue. And the movement of people is a part of that.”



A new legal framework may be required to deal with forced migration caused by climate change. People displaced by rising seas, catastrophic weather events or climate impacts do not qualify as refugees under the 1951 refugee convention.

An i-Kiribati man, Ioane Teitiota, failed to have his claim accepted by New Zealand courts as the world’s first climate change refugee and he was deported last month.

Different Pacific nations have different migratory plans, and options.

The population of the Marshall Islands – 72,000 people – has the right to migrate to the US.

People from Palau, the Cook Islands, Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Tuvalu and the Federated States of Micronesia have legal rights, or practical access, to labour markets in New Zealand or the US.

But the people of PNG, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Nauru and Kiribati have no such rights, and essentially no place to go. Kiribati – population 105,000 – is particularly vulnerable to rising sea levels: 97% of its land mass is less than five metres above sea level.

The president of Kiribati, Anote Tong, who in September referred to Australia as “the big polluting island down south”, has implemented a program called Migration with Dignity, designed to provide his people with education and vocational training so they can find work abroad if – as most projections suggest – their homeland becomes unliveable.

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A policy analyst with the Migration Council Australia, Henry Sherrell, says although forced migration as a result of climate change is often overemphasised globally, the Pacific was unique.

“There is a compelling case that a number of Pacific countries will become unliveable in future decades,” he says.

“As one of the Pacific’s most prosperous countries, Australia must consider what role to play. Our capacity to assist Pacific citizens is unrivalled in terms of positive migration experiences.”

Sherrell says Australia should begin discussing policy responses, such as a dedicated Pacific permanent visa lottery, immediately, not in two or three decades when movement was imminent and potentially disordered.



“Being proactive instead of reactive on these issues will show this is an opportunity where Australia can help, and not in any way a threat,” he says.



