Howard faces anger over tough refugee Bill

The Australian parliament was presented with tough new laws today that would force all asylum seekers who arrive by boat to be sent to island detention camps.

The controversial legislation was drafted after Indonesia strongly protested against an earlier Australian decision to accept 43 asylum seekers from the restive province of Papua as refugees.

Two governing party MPs have told prime minister John Howard that they will vote against the Bill.

While it is not clear whether the dissent within the centre-right government’s ranks would be enough to defeat the legislation, it creates a destabilising rift as Howard seeks re-election to a fifth three-year term next year.

The first MP to speak on the legislation, opposition Labour Party immigration spokesman Tony Burke, likened the Bill to the rejection of Jews who fled Germany at the outset of the Second World War.

He said the Papuan asylum seekers, who have been settled in Melbourne, would be languishing in a camp in the South Pacific nation of Nauru if the law had been passed before they arrived in a dugout canoe in January.

“They would be there waiting indefinitely while Australia went through the fiction of trying to find another country to take those individuals, knowing full well that no other country is going to take them,” Burke told parliament.

“Why would other countries of the world that are currently dealing with refugees arriving in the thousands … want to help out Australia when our crisis amounts to 43?”

The governing party holds a majority in both houses of Parliament.