Analysis: White House leak reveals more about refugee swap deal than Australia’s leader has ever shared with his people

In a hostile phone call with Donald Trump, Malcolm Turnbull has revealed more about the controversial US refugee swap deal than he ever shared with the Australian people.

A leaked transcript of the January phone call, which neither man thought would become public, confirms reports that the US president and the Australian prime minister clashed over the controversial deal, brokered by Trump’s predecessor, Barack Obama, and that Turnbull sought to cajole Trump into accepting it.

Full transcript of Trump's phone call with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull Read more

We are taking people from the previous administration that they were very keen on getting out of the United States. We will take more. We will take anyone that you want us to take. The only people that we do not take are people who come by boat. So we would rather take a not-very-attractive guy that helps you out than to take a Nobel Peace Prize winner that comes by boat.

Turnbull’s call raises significant questions about Australia’s acceptance of Central American refugees. There are 31 people – from seven cases, understood to be family groups – who are being considered for resettlement. The phone call raises the question of why the Obama administration was “very keen on getting [them] out of the United States”? Who are these people? And why is the US so anxious to move them elsewhere?

Australia does control its offshore immigration detention centres

For four years of offshore detention, the Australian government has consistently maintained that violence, physical and sexual abuse on the islands were “matters for the governments of PNG and Nauru”. This has been rejected by human rights groups, the United Nations and other national governments, who argue Australia has financial and operational control of the centres, and a legal and moral responsibility for the people it has sent offshore.

In his phone call with Trump, Turnbull conceded Australia does have full control over the refugees.

They have been under our supervision for over three years now and we know exactly everything about them … They have been on Nauru or Manus for over three years and the only reason we cannot let them into Australia is because of our commitment to not allow people to come by boat. Otherwise we would have let them in. If they had arrived by airplane and with a tourist visa then they would be here.

Turnbull falsely claimed those held on Australia’s offshore islands were ‘economic refugees’

They are basically economic refugees from Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan. That is the vast bulk of them.

There is no such thing as an economic refugee. The word refugee has a strict legal definition, defined under the refugees convention, as a person, outside their country of nationality, who faces a “well-founded fear of persecution” on any of five grounds: race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion. Economic hardship is not a criterion for refugee status.

'You are worse than I am': Trump told Turnbull he admired offshore detention Read more

All the people being considered for resettlement in the US have undergone an extensive refugee status determination and have been found to be refugees. They all have a “well-founded fear of persecution” and are legally owed protection by Australia, the country in which they sought asylum.

Australia’s refugee resettlement program from the Syrian and Iraqi conflicts was discriminatory in favour of Christians

Australia accepted 12,00 refugees from the Syrian and Iraq conflicts, additional to its annual humanitarian intake. Turnbull explicitly told Trump Christians were prefered over Muslims:



This is exactly what we have done with the program to bring in 12,000 Syrian refugees, 90 per cent of which will be Christians. It will be quite deliberate and the position I have taken — I have been very open about it — is that it is a tragic fact of life that when the situation in the Middle East settles down — the people that are going to be most unlikely to have a continuing home are those Christian minorities.

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Australia has been criticised for its preference for Christian refugees. Refugees are usually accepted for resettlement on the basis of greatest need – those facing the most acute circumstances, often women and children, are resettled first.



Christians do face persecution in Iraq and Syria – large numbers of Christians have fled both countries – but Muslims, particularly ethnic or sectarian minorities, also face severe persecution and are a much larger population.



Statistics released under freedom of information laws show that 78% of those resettled from Syria and Iraq between July 2015 and January 2017 identified as Christian.



Christians are less than 0.1% of the Iraqi population and 10% of the Syrian.



And Australia’s intake is disproportionate too, to the presence of Christians among the region’s displaced. The UN high commissioner for refugees estimates the number of Christian refugees from Iraq at 15% and from Syria at less than 1%.