Australia’s ‘Offshore Processing’ for Refugees as Neo-Colonialism in Papua New Guinea

Natasha Yacoub

January 2022

In October 2021, Australia and Papua New Guinea announced the end to the offshore processing arrangement in Papua New Guinea. However, the harm as a result of the policy is ongoing. Australia’s offshore processing policy involved the forcible transfer, detention and attempted ‘resettlement’ of people seeking asylum to its former colonial territories in the Pacific Island States of Papua New Guinea and Nauru. This policy primarily serves Australia’s unilateral political interest to deter people seeking asylum by sea to the overall detriment of the communities to which it transfers people. While the failure of the policy and suffering of asylum-seekers transferred to Australia’s detention centres in Nauru and Manus Island in Papua New Guinea is well documented, there remains a lack of attention to the ongoing harm to local communities.  

This contribution focuses on the enduring detriment to local populations in Papua New Guinea. It demonstrates the neo-colonialism of Australian policy in two key areas: lack of consultation and terra nullius (a term meaning ‘land belonging to no-one’ used by British colonisers to justify acquisition of indigenous land in Australia without payment or treaty); and the colonial practice of exploiting local economies for unilateral gain.

Australia’s offshore processing policy is not over after the end of the bilateral agreement in Papua New Guinea, with ‘no end in sight’. Australia announced that its border protection policy has not changed and that anyone who arrives by sea without a visa will be returned or continue to be sent to Nauru.  Individuals transferred to Papua New Guinea experience ongoing suffering as a result of Australia’s detention policy, and continue to require protection and solutions. For communities in Papua New Guinea, there are ongoing consequences. In important research on the impact of offshore processing on Manus Island, Rooney explains that ‘Manus people say that [it] has ‘broken the social fabric’ of their community.’ This harm represents part of a long colonial history steeped in geopolitical interests, a connection that is ‘largely overlooked’.

In the history of Papua New Guinea, colonisation harmed communities in ways that are still being felt. Australia became the governing power in 1906.  During both the First World War and Second World War, control over the territory transferred several times. In 1951, Australia established a Legislative Council (without indigenous MPs) based on an Australian democratic model. Australia’s policy of detention and attempted resettlement of refugees in Papua New Guinea, according to Salyer, Dalsgaard and West, ‘depends on and reinscribes colonial and postcolonial relationships of dispossession and exploitation and is rooted in longstanding colonial policies, ideologies, and assumptions that see the island Pacific as isolated, remote, and primitive.’ Australia first moved refugees to Manus Island in 1968, settling West Papuan refugees (a majority of whom were children) to Lorengau. Although PNG attained full independence in 1975, Australia maintained a strong strategic interest and engagement in local affairs as the biggest aid donor.

In 2001, the first iteration of the policy, referred to as the Pacific Solution, commenced. Australia detained 357 asylum-seeking men, women and children in Manus during this phase of the policy. The second iteration of offshore processing commenced in 2012, as the Manus detention centre opened and asylum-seekers were transferred there in July 2013. The total number of men and boys transferred to the Manus Island detention centre peaked in 2014 at 1,353.

In 2016, the Supreme Court of Papua New Guinea held in Namah v Pato that the forcible transfer and detention of asylum-seekers on Manus was unconstitutional and illegal under Papua New Guinea’s laws. In October 2017, the Manus Island detention closed. Around 600 individuals were expected to move to an Australian-funded ‘open’ facility in Lorengau (Manus Province). A few refugees moved to towns within Papua New Guinea for attempted resettlement, and some 52 ‘failed’ asylum-seekers were eventually detained in Bomana prison in the capital, Port Moresby.  By 31 October 2021, of the asylum-seekers transferred to Papua New Guinea, 122 remained and were mainly in Port Moresby.

Lack of consultation and terra nullius

Neither the Australian nor central government in Papua New Guinea adequately consulted with local community leaders who were expected to host asylum-seekers on Manus Island or other areas of Papua New Guinea. Australia’s approach is a continuation of terra nullius, which views the land as uninhabited and not only ignores but infringes the rights of the local population. It has been described as an extension of the ‘imagination of non-European or non-Western lands as ‘empty’ and of the oceanic spaces between them as ‘lawless’.’  

The ‘ethos of hospitality’ is central to Manusian history and identity.  Yet community leaders were not able to have input into policies that would have a significant impact on their lives and communities. One of the consequences is that their self-perception as welcoming outsiders is challenged by refugees, who became viewed as a ‘population of strangers who cannot be accommodated within the small community’s social and material limits’.

As a consequence, misunderstandings about refugees are rife. According to Salyer, Dalsgaard and West:

For the local communities in which refugees have been detained and resettled, the policy has been disruptive and disorienting. These small, tightly woven communities have experienced jarring change as securitization of the asylum seekers has locked them away, making them seem a new, mysterious, and potentially dangerous category of people, and as security forces have themselves been a source of violence and fear.

The legacy of the lack of consultation continues to create disharmony for local populations in Papua New Guinea expected to host refugees. Despite acts of support from members of society, there remain ongoing challenges for communities to integrate them. Many of these difficulties could have been avoided had Australia liaised with the communities, rather than approaching them from a continuing perception of terra nullius.

Exploiting local economies for unilateral gain

Colonial practices of economic exploitation of local populations continued through offshore processing arrangements.  The north-eastern part of the New Guinea island, which included Manus Island, came under German control in 1885, through the German New Guinea Company, and from 1912 was under Australian colonial rule. Under Australia’s administration, Papua and New Guinea were governed as two separate territories. Ferns explains that Papua was ‘administered in keeping with British traditions, which were rooted in notions of racial and cultural superiority’ and in New Guinea ‘there was a much greater emphasis on profit, with indigenous labour employed in conditions of near-slavery’.

First, Australia’s administration of the offshore processing contracts perpetuated long-term colonial practices of economic exploitation of the local population.  While Australia purported to assist the local population on Manus Island and Papua New Guinea more broadly, the majority of Australian funds flowed to international companies and did not benefit the local community. From the beginning, local Papua New Guinea landowners raised concerns about whether benefits from the detention centre would flow to them and demanded compensation.  While certain companies in Papua New Guinea contracted by Australia gained financially, these funds did not flow to local landowner businesses.  Although some individuals gained employment in Manus detention centre and related projects, local wages were significantly lower than their Australian counterparts. This economic exploitation of local communities will have a lasting negative impact.

Second, the injection and withdrawal of Australian funds to detain refugees on Manus Island leaves local residents in a precarious situation.  The increased flow of money into Manus Island brought expectations of local income that cannot be met after the centre was shut down in 2017. It has been ‘transforming Manus reality’ in a devastating way. The increased demand resulted in a rise in the price for food and other basic necessities on Manus Island.  Upon the withdrawal of Australia from Manus in October 2017, the local population on Manus Island have been left in a state of limbo as ‘fossil-fuel capitalism’s climate change and environmental damage... [left them] facing displacement and uncertain futures’. The assistance to their displacement will not be commensurate with Australia’s spending on offshore processing. Salyer, Dalsgaard and West outline the ‘novel use of Australia’s unequal political and economic power to impose burdens and obligations on its neighbours in the Pacific while signalling an intent to deny assistance to displaced people across the broader region‘.

Third, Australia’s transfer of asylum-seekers to Papua New Guinea and subsequent withdrawal strains local services. Notwithstanding the funds Australia poured into offshore processing, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) documented upon the closure of the Manus centre that ‘the most basic services needed for asylum seekers and refugees are still not adequately provided for outside the centre’. Local services, including health services and police, struggled to meet the needs of the local population and could not extend to meet the needs of refugees.

The announcement about the end of offshore processing states that Papua New Guinea will assume ‘full management of regional processing services in Papua New Guinea’ for the people Australia left behind. Early in the agreement, the UNHCR warned against the attempted resettlement of refugees in Papua New Guinea, which would present ‘formidable challenges’. Papua New Guinea is not a traditional resettlement country. The economic strain on local services will continue and be exacerbated after Australia’s withdrawal.

Conclusion

The implications of Australia’s actions in the Pacific extend beyond the harm to refugees to the local populations of Manus Island and Papua New Guinea. Australia’s practice evidences its ongoing exploitation of the power imbalance with its Pacific neighbours as part of neo-colonial practices. Salyer, Dalsgaard and West explain that Australia’s offshore processing policy ‘shows how colonialism, as a continuing process and ideology, still operates in the creation and re-creation of global inequality, in the control of non-European populations, and in the protection of Euro-American metropoles from the consequences of imperial actions abroad’. Among the long list of wrong-doing through offshore processing that Australia is responsible for, harm to Pacific neighbours can be added to it.