Tony Abbott and other senior Australian ministers have defended a $55m refugee resettlement deal with Cambodia after a spokesman for Cambodia’s government said it had no plans to take any more than the four refugees it has already accepted.



Four refugees – an Iranian couple, an Iranian man and a Rohingyan man from Burma – were transferred from Nauru to the Cambodian capital Phnom Penh in June. They live in relative luxury in an Australian-funded villa, and will remain there indefinitely.

However, Cambodia expects it will take no more from Australia’s resettlement plan, which has so far cost $55m, or more than $13m per refugee.

“We don’t have any plans to import more refugees from Nauru to Cambodia,” interior ministry spokesman Khieu Sopheak told the Cambodia Daily. “I think the fewer we receive the better.”

Immigration minister Peter Dutton said he believed the agreement to resettle people in Cambodia was “ongoing”.

“Well, the government has not had that advice [that no more refugees would be resettled],” he said. “Obviously people at the low level will make comment from time to time but we have a good engagement with my counterpart, with counterparts at an official level and our discussions are ongoing.”

Australia’s foreign minister Julie Bishop denied the deal was collapsing. “That is not correct,” she told reporters in Sydney. “You’re relying on an alleged statement of one official.”

She said she had had a positive meeting with her Cambodian counterpart earlier this month and the south-east Asian country was keen to harness the skills of foreign workers to boost its gross domestic product.

Prime minister Tony Abbott said Cambodia had been helped by the international community when it was “in trouble some years ago” – a reference to the Khmer Rouge period – but that it was now keen to assist in managing refugee flows.

“This is an important agreement and it’s an agreement which indicates Cambodia’s readiness to be a good international citizen,” he said.

Under the deal, signed by then immigration minister Scott Morrison and Cambodia’s interior minister Sar Kheng last September, Australia promised an additional $40m in aid to the impoverished south-east Asian country as well as $15.5m in resettlement, housing, education and integration costs for the refugees.



The deal was not contingent on Cambodia taking a certain number of refugees.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen, a former battalion commander in the Khmer Rouge, who has ruled his country for 30 years, will visit Australia in December.

Labor’s immigration spokesman, Richard Marles, called on Dutton to explain the situation.

“This is an expensive joke and once again we are learning about this through comments from ministers in the Cambodian government rather than ministers in our own government,” he told Sky News.

When the Cambodian deal was signed it was condemned by the United Nations, who described it as “a worrying departure from international norms” and said Australia was shirking its responsibility towards people fleeing persecution.

“We are seeing record forced displacement globally, with 87% of refugees now being hosted in developing countries,” the UN’s high commissioner for refugees, António Guterres, said. “It’s crucial that countries do not shift their refugee responsibilities elsewhere.”

“International responsibility sharing is the basis on which the whole global refugee system works. I hope the Australian government will reconsider its approach.”