Party’s national conference will not adopt any position ‘that would start the drownings again’, manager of opposition business says

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Senior Labor MP Tony Burke has shut down a push from within the Labor party to adopt radical changes to its asylum-seeker policy.

Some refugee advocates within Labor are calling for an end to offshore processing and boat turnbacks ahead of the party’s upcoming national conference.

The Sydney Morning Herald is reporting that delegates aligned to Labor for Refugees are expected to put forward motions to close offshore processing centres. But Burke said a similar article appeared before every national Labor conference.

“Every national conference has been a determination that we don’t adopt any policy that would start the drownings again,” the manager of opposition business told Sky News on Sunday.

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“If you stop the turnbacks policy, I don’t think there is any doubt that the drownings would commence again.

“I don’t mind that there’s some delegates who have that view and they push it, but they haven’t been in the majority in the past.”

A push by the crossbench, Labor and the Greens last week in parliament to urgently transfer sick asylum seekers on Manus Island and Nauru to Australia did not come to fruition.

The legislation would have allowed critically ill refugees to be flown to Australia for medical treatment on the advice of two doctors.

It was the culmination of months of pressure from doctors for Australia’s government to adopt a more humane policy towards refugees in its offshore processing regime and the new independent MP Kerryn Phelps.

But the Morrison government prevented the bill from going to a vote in the lower house to avoid an embarrassing defeat – which would have the first of its kind in almost 90 years. It said the bill would have compromised Australia’s border protection policies, and it prosecuted that argument again on Sunday.

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“When the Labor party puts up bad policy – policy which will unravel our offshore protection procedures as we know it – we’ll fight them every step of the way,” the treasurer, Josh Frydenberg, told ABC TV on Sunday.

However, the bill could still be put to a vote when parliament resumes in February.

The public’s mood on border protection has evolved this year. In October, nearly 6,000 doctors signed a petition calling on the Morrison government to remove the remaining children from Nauru because of serious mental and physical health concerns.

At the same time, a poll commissioned by the Refugee Council of Australia found 65.4% of a sample of 870 residents living in the Sydney seat of Wentworth – a blue ribbon Liberal party seat – wanted children on Nauru brought to Australia.

Before the Wentworth byelection on 20 October, then-candidate Kerryn Phelps told a local forum organised by the group Wentworth for Refugees that she was “ashamed” of Australia’s refugee policies and urged voters in Wentworth to use the unique opportunity of the byelection to protest Australia’s “inhumane” offshore detention policies.

She said if elected she would work to find a coalition of like-minded MPs to support an immediate end to offshore detention. She went on to win Wentworth resoundingly as an independent, snatching the seat away from the Liberal party as voters repudiated the Liberals’ current policy direction and the unhinged coup culture in Canberra.

In last month’s Victorian state election, conservative-leaning parts of Melbourne also backed the most progressive political leader in the country, Labor premier Daniel Andrews, helping to wallop the Victorian Liberals in the process.