Sydney - Australia tried to salvage its asylum-seeker policy on Thursday after a plan to send boatpeople to Malaysia was blocked in a court decision the government said would only boost the people-smuggling trade.
The nation's highest court on Wednesday scuttled Canberra's proposal to send 800 boatpeople to the Asian nation - a key plank of its regional approach to halting the flow of thousands of refugees arriving on its shores each year.
It was a huge embarrassment for Prime Minister Julia Gillard and her fragile Labor government that had heralded the policy as a sure-fire strategy to deal with the politically divisive issue.
Gillard said the High Court ruling was a missed opportunity “to enhance our region's response to the evil of people-smuggling”.
“A missed opportunity to make a real and important contribution to the region's approach to the transnational crime of people smuggling through the Bali framework,” she said, referring to a regional cooperation deal.
“And it is a missed opportunity... to send a message to asylum-seekers not to risk their lives at sea and get into boats,” she told reporters.
The nation's top court found that under Australian law the government could not send asylum-seekers to be processed in a country which was not bound to adequately protect them.
Malaysia is not a signatory to the UN convention on refugees, and rights groups had accused Australia of abandoning its international obligations to asylum-seekers by dumping them in a country without proper safeguards.
The ruling could have broader ramifications for offshore processing, including Australia's plan to send asylum-seekers to Papua New Guinea and the possibility of re-opening a detention centre on the Pacific island of Nauru.
Gillard said it remained unclear whether all offshore processing was affected, and that the government was seeking legal advice.
“There are questions over the future of offshore processing arrangements that must be considered,” she said.
“And it is far from clear whether the court's ruling would, practically speaking, permit the operation of offshore processing in other locations, even in locations where offshore processing has been conducted in the past.”
Some legal experts said one strategy could be to change the Migration Act to make it easier for any government to meet the High Court's criteria.
The minority coalition government's popularity had sunk to record lows in opinion polls before the court ruling and newspaper editorials said Gillard was now seriously floundering.
The Sydney Morning Herald called the decision “a humiliating setback” and that the Malaysia plan had been “morally and legally dubious from the start”.
The Australian said “this saga underlines a perception of grave incompetence”.
Newspaper reports said that people-smugglers appeared ready to exploit the uncertainty, suggesting boats bound for Australia were preparing to depart Indonesia in the next few days.
The Daily Telegraph cited a naval source as saying “there will be a spike in the next four to eight days” while The Australian quoted refugees in Malaysia predicting a tide of departures within the coming weeks.
Immigration Minister Chris Bowen also said there could be a rush for Australian shores.
“I think you can expect people smugglers to be capitalising on this arrangement and to say that, 'You can come to Australia now because the Malaysia agreement has been ruled invalid by the High Court,'“ he said. - Sapa-AFP