Australia’s Labour government may have to resort to sending asylum seekers to Nauru without their preferred option of transferring them to Malaysia after appeals by the government for the opposition to meet it halfway on policy fell on deaf ears.
Despite three cabinet ministers urging yesterday the opposition to allow Labour’s Malaysia plan in return for reopening a processing centre on Nauru, the Opposition Leader, Tony Abbott, was unmoved, saying it was his way or nothing.
“’What is needed here is not compromise for compromise’s sake, but policies that work,” he said.
As the search for bodies continued following the capsizing of a boat carrying asylum seekers on Thursday, from which about 90 are feared dead, another vessel carrying 60 people was intercepted south-west of Christmas Island yesterday.
Abbott and the Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, who returned from overseas yesterday, face growing internal pressure to combat people smuggling. Only 110 survivors have been found and 17 bodies have been pulled from the sea since the tragedy.