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Concept
Pacific Solution
Summary
The Pacific Solution is the name given to the government of Australia's policy of transporting asylum seekers to detention centres on island nations in the Pacific Ocean, rather than allowing them to land on the Australian mainland. Initially implemented from 2001 to 2007, it had bipartisan support from the Coalition and Labor opposition at the time. The Pacific Solution consisted of three central strategies:
Thousands of islands were excised from the Australian migration zone and Australian territory;
The Australian Defence Force commenced Operation Relex to intercept vessels carrying asylum seekers (SIEVs);
The asylum seekers were removed to detention centres in Nauru and on Manus Island, Papua New Guinea, while their refugee status was determined.
A number of pieces of legislation enabled this policy. The policy was developed by the Howard government in response to the Tampa affair in August 2001 and the Children Overboard affair, and was implemented by Immigration Minister Philip Ruddock on 28 September before the 2001 federal election of 24 November.
The policy was largely dismantled in 2008 by the first Rudd government following the election of the Labor Party; Chris Evans, the Minister for Immigration and Citizenship described it as "a cynical, costly and ultimately unsuccessful exercise".
In August 2012, the succeeding Gillard government (Labor) introduced a similar policy, reopening the Nauru and Manus detention centres for offshore processing.
On 19 July 2013, newly returned Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, during his short-lived second term of office, announced that "asylum seekers who come here by boat without a visa will never be settled in Australia", striking a Regional Resettlement Arrangement between Australia and Papua New Guinea, colloquially known as the PNG Solution, to divert all "unauthorised maritime arrivals" to mandatory detention on Manus Island with no possibility of attaining Australian residency.
The Operation Sovereign Borders policy took over from the Pacific Solution after the 2013 federal election, won by the Coalition.
Official source
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