This week is Alexander Downer form Australian Foreign minister and now the countrys high commissioner here in london how does he justify a policy so widely condemned around the world. Alexander downer welcome to convince us thank you two months ago australia got what it lobbied so long and hard for a seat on the Un Human Rights Council in after years of sustained pressure over your own human rights record but you continue to brush off all criticism that you. Well were quite happy to answer any allegations that are made just that were very happy to stand up for ourselves but the record is i mean we had the last Prime Minister tony abbott saying we sure are strains were sick of being lectured by the us where the current immigration minister peter dutton is on record is calling the whole periodic review process of fast you dont take kindly to criticism well i think if people dish it out to you theyve got to expect to generate a debate they cant expect us just compliantly to agree with every allegation thats made if we dont regard the allegations as allegations of substance now sometimes allegations of substance have been made and weve investigated as them sometimes we even set up role commissions and they have often borne fruit but it varies a lot i mean we we basically accept the process though i mean why bother to get a seat on the Human Rights Council if you if you call the process a farce well we accept the process the existence of the process i mean we wouldnt go into the Human Rights Council its a different thing but we wouldnt go into the Human Rights Council if we didnt think that it had some value and we we do think it has some good you turned eighteen you you reject the human rights committees views well these are subcommittees and this is in the Human Rights Council the committee committed set of experts well they make they met they you know that they are entitled to make whatever claims they like about a stroller and we are of course quite happy to respond either way but sometimes we dont accept them thats true routinely they say in october youve shown is the vice chair of the Un Human Rights Committee said well let me ask you if you routinely reject the committee. Yes i think this is probably on the one issue with and this is on the. This the issue of irregular migration and we do have a very tough approach to that i mean i think youll find. That a lot of people in the u. N. System think that anyone who comes to your shores should be accepted and they they believe that to be. A fundamental right that anybody who comes to strangers shores should be taken into a straight we dont except that i mean we have an immigration policy we take migrants we have a Border Protection policy we have a refugee policy where we rest resettle refugees in australia but we dont take people who try to get to australia by paying people smugglers and i think we should i suppose but were not your Foreign Ministers as you see membership of the Human Rights Council is an opportunity to scrutinize the record of other countries with appalling records and put them subject to greater scrutiny but what right do you have to give it out if youre not prepared to take it you probably take it i mean its you know its not a criminal offense in this trailer to criticize the strain in government obvious trillion people here that people are welcome to criticize us where we dont shy away from criticism but as you know with the strains if you want to dish it out you know thats fine but we will we will vigorously defend ourselves if we think the defense is worthwhile sometimes we do sometimes we die and the controversy over the Regional Processing Centers for refugees and Asylum Centers this is where youve tracked it the largest amount of criticism you intercept the refugees and Asylum Seekers at sea the tow them back to where they came from or have them process mainly on the Pacific Island of narrow or Papua New Guinea. The guiding principle being that people who try to arrive by boat should never ever set foot in australia. If you pay a people smuggler and you try to get to a. Strayer that way and you can only get to australia by boat if you do that if you pay a people smuggler try to get to australia that way we will try to discourage that process we want to stop it we do resettle refugees were one of very few countries that has a Refugee Resettlement program but we dont think its appropriate for people to pay people smugglers and try and get to australia or to europe i mean what was accused of paying people smugglers itself to use. Handing over words of cash and telling the people smugglers to take the. People back to try try to understand what we are trying to do here so you dont we knowing this well im not sure of the reference by the way im just the high commissioner amnesty international. Doing very make it out. I have no idea but but what i can say to you is try to understand what were trying to do we have been. Quite traumatized as a country by seeing scenes on television of folks being wrecked on islands off the stroller particular Christmas Island off the northwest coast of australia and many people drowned hundreds and hundreds of people have drowned we want to stop this produce talk about being traumatized by it all but you know you have to understand see you might have been a little more traumatized if people in australia and seen the kinds of conditions in your Processing Center now arent we definitely wouldnt win which which the office of the u. N. Human Rights Commission called unsustainable inhumane and contrary to your human rights obligation and we absolutely reject that we absolutely reject that has being untrue you didnt read it or i dont know why they i dont know its been too personal that im not going to say why they made these allegations but ive told you you were right so i just want to make a lot of around the world let me make this clear these people oppose our policy so that every turn they. Tried to force us to change our policy and so of course of a lot of these Asylum Seekers who have been sent to pop or new guinea or new road now what we dont do with these people is send them back rafal if theyre found to be refugees we dont send them back to the countries they come from we make sure they have a place of safety to reside and thats our obligation im so very well trained being beaten by the purpura new Guinea Policeman but well bars it in the services in the conditions in five of the new like you cant see them Papua New Guinean i just griped as civilian at war thats completely wrong as well its kind of you only wrong you know this well because the Australian Government has has built these buildings i mean i personally havent been to a root personally by the way and the allegations made about nuru borne no relationship to what i saw when i went in the room no relationship at all so we would have joined the access of the miners if youre not going to hide that when you restrict access to lets say lets let me explain whats going on here there is a Huge Campaign to break our policy a Huge Campaign by people who dont approve of our policy who say we should let all these people in well let me make this clear no matter what i like ations they may come we are not inhumane we provide humane conditions no matter what allocations they make we are not going to bow to their demands and were not going to become the victims of people smugglers who are not all pushing you to the moon the pushing you to treat them humanely no they are none of that youd see but the greatest of respect im quite an expert on this topic the more they can make claims about Inhumane Treatment the more they then can put pressure on the Australian Government to change its policy which is the object of what theyre trying to do so they make all these claims about Inhumane Treatment you know their imprisonment is a Australian Medical Association or theyre a paper all over the place who support this come more into major. Yes i mean they demanded access last week to go in and to say well the health of these asylum because were not going refugee when im not necessarily doctors is there in pup or new guinea and there are doctors there already we dont need it i think what i would say was what would qualify so if you want to try this for dont let dr youre in the uk australia is not. Hiding is it its not hiding there are doctors and there are doctors who look after people who need medical assistance but why why would a group of other people want to go and try to look at whats already being done to know what the ancillary trust know because the argument is they dont trust though thats their argument but the real argument is they want to break the back of our policy and were not going to allow that to happen weve seen whats happened in europe we are not going to have our politics thrown into turmoil on the back. Page just an International Conspiracy to change your views its not only the National Tennis appear your own senate your own senate has reported several times on what they call serious allegations of abuse self harm and neglect of asylum seashells on narrow amount of this is your own son where in a democratic country your own so so you reject that absolutely where a democratic country people in the senate a lot of people in the Senate Whether its a good thing or a bad thing and i think its probably a good thing that there are mixed views in the senate but a lot of people in the Senate Oppose the Australian Government and oppose this trial in government policy whats more the government doesnt have a majority in the senate so all sorts of resolutions are passed through this trail in senate criticizing the essential you become more about the treatment of these of these Asylum Seekers and refugees going back years in twenty fourteen senate reports of the Australian Government had failed in its duty to protect Asylum Seekers from arm the government did nothing to rectify that a year later theyre going to go down. The government is the government well youre being very very general in these claims youre not being specific about where this was so for example if you take in power point you can take up when youre getting in manners holland a whole new body of accommodation has been built there recently and the accommodation that people were in in twenty fourteen has been closed all together it doesnt exist anymore between june twenty fourth july twenty fifteen the Senate Committee discovered cases thirty four instances of serious assault seventy five instances of force used against Asylum Seekers the report noted evidence from submitters who believe that harsh and indefinite conditions in the centers represent a deliberate policy on the part of the Australian Government to deter people from coming forward definitely deterring people from coming and they dont seem harsh when not actually using harsh and inhumane conditions and we would completely reject that but by the way some pretty right away groups tell you you dont like like like opponents of the government in the Australian Senate not just oh maybe very very special to us spectate human rights organized most of the night over the im not denying i mean look the thing to understand is there is a campaign by all sorts of organizations including members of the Australian Senate which you think its a Government Campaign i do dismiss it as a kid so i just the campaign was citing things training in very high dose and made his claims theyre making claims and if you drill into all those statistics and we havent got time to do that but if you. If you drill into all of those statistics youll find that these are over a long period of time there are all sorts of explanations behind these socalled incidents some of them major which are being investigated by the police you know where theres a criminal offense its obviously been dealt with by the proper new Guinea Police and where they really are is just running per and and where there are minor most french minutes theyre often base. Up out of all proportion in order to try to put pressure on the government to change its policy mr downer one of the army worst one of the worst claims one of the worst indictments of your system came from uncle peter young was the psychiatrys who had ultimate responsibility for Mental Health services in immigration detention and he likened the governments treatment of Asylum Seekers in the Processing Centers to torture he said the whole set up was deliberately designed to tell people to go back where they came from if we take the definition of torture he said to be the deliberate harming of people in order to coerce them into a desired outcome i think does fulfill that definition not well if he writes something that if he if he makes his own definition of torture then then he will always win the argument but of course very good definition in any course where not torturing coercing buy into it is understand no we we do not want people to pay people smugglers and try to come to the stranger that way and you know no matter how fierce what you try man is there is a go they said that the most dangerous mistruth in current australian politics who said this Human Rights Watch the most dangerous mr trevanion high results trail in politics is that in order for lives to be saved at sea other people accused of no crime must be indefinitely and arbitrarily punished of shore and not being punished offshore theyre being theyre being placed in Processing Centers and if theyve been found not to be refugees theyre asked turned in the so to say been placed in process theyre not mistreated in the centers theyre placed in Processing Centers theyre not jails theyre able to walk out often go to the village and go shopping or go to the big show whatever they want to do in in man asylum the ones who are in man and silent on in a route have freedom to move around the island theyre not prisons they dont like their bedroom they cannot be asked to to move. Another bedroom i mean its not as your. Summer very long term six carry crossroad blooms. Well use well fine well sexual abuse another these things are fine if there is assault thats a criminal offense or if theres sexual abuse thats a criminal offense theyll be investigated by the police but if people ever committed well in any country you can make that you can say thats not much of the Papua New Guinea to the syrian vest no no no papa new Guinea Police presumably if somebody is assaulted pup when you get the police would investigate it whats the situation if you did the suggestion here you slip up a new Guinea Police turn to investigate and its all thats also up when you get me i didnt thats a pretty tough thing to say about your theory and everything in Papua New Guinea doesnt use the word everything i said these are matters for the police to investigate and there have been incidents that have been investigated by the police and have been dealt with in the normal way where they are a criminal offenses but you know this sort of painting a picture that this whole operation is somehow beyond the law these operations are entirely within the law within the law rapoport new guinea or within the lore of the road people are free to move about those countries if they wish to when by the way when the proper new guinea government decided to close the Processing Center at man of solomon there were huge protests about the closing of this Processing Center with people in the Processing Center saying they didnt want to move because they want to then they move through for insanities which werent ready and have been there is where i draw un exactly are as severely you know i did and theyre not severe and theyre not how do you know they are not severely because the Australian Government has built them or had them but mr downer if everything was falling would did the government agree to pay seventy Million Dollars to settle a Class Action Lawsuit by almost two thousand refugees and Asylum Seekers from an asylum a lawsuit but a lawyer. They had been detained illegally and mistreated you paid up your government paid up without admitting liability. To avoid going to trial where it would have had to listen in open court to some pretty damaging claims well i dont know the details of that the government didnt. Know and not admitting liability doesnt something that you just yourself said didnt go to court doesnt constitute damning evidence in law thats not and thats thats not what damning evidence is and there were claims made that these claims were settled out of court and i dont know the details of the settlement and i dont know that the details of the settlement are widely known and even if you but i personally dont know if you lost in court you might well have been later well its hard with a whole string of other lawsuits well but it didnt happen so nobody knows the answer the immigration minister claimed the trial would have cost tens of millions of dollars which you ended up paying compensation so a settlement was in the best interest of the australian taxpayer probably one believe that well it certainly would have been a lot cheaper if these. If litigation heard had gone on for years on end for sure anyway it was settled so they were seventy million you paid it well and the immigration minister you said paid out for nothing if it was just a campaign way to install some way may have been devalued by paying hundreds of millions in legal fees if it had gone on for a very long time it may have been my father cheaper solution for us whats become clear through all this is that taking a tough line with the Asylum Seekers coming by its a vote when there isnt that successive politicians are going to stereotype not to show your tried to reach you sure sound im sure that characterization is exactly right by the way. No i dont know that its particularly its a more complex question and that i think prime a face its. Not much of a vote with that however theres a different point we have a very big Immigration Program in this trailer we take about two hundred thousand migrants a year that says people permanently settling we take another hundred or so thousand people over and above that is temporary workers and so on and we have broad public support for our Immigration Program and the reason we do is because we decide who comes to our country in the circumstances within which they come and we think thats right lets stand tall as that and that and that one about stigmatize but i think thats the right policy i think thats the right policy because i think the alternative the policy of chaos that you know and im sorry to say youve seen a bit of that in europe and germany and instantly and so on this causes a couple of things one is im not sure how humane that is but secondly it does cause huge political reaction and youve seen the rise of alternative for deutschland and all sorts of other political interest in europe to this stigmatizes so. Im just arguing with percentage night you make you make the point we do this for political reasons or that its popular i dont think wrestling with you know these campaigns that are run against the side of the Processing Centers and so on is easy or its particularly popular i think its weve done the right thing but i think overall where we have yielded some political dividends is that the public respect the fact that we have an organized and principled immigration policy and refugees routinely described as education. Illiterate not christian enough and a bunch of queue jumpers below is why to come by boat is not only are you not angry over everything everybody says but you know youll find in a country of tens of millions of people who will say all sorts of things that these are my savior a politician is i mean your former Prime Minister tony abbott i dont think its a very. Christian thing to come in by the back door rather than the front door he said i think the people we should accept should become in the right way not the wrong way now and i think hes right that people should come in the right way not the wrong way thats good point and the immigration somehow youre going to vet whos more christian than somebody else in here is that thats taking the his use of the word so much and now its a very christian thing that i mean by the back door well i dont know about christian or not but i do know that coming in the front door right rather than the back door is a much more appropriate way to come to australia and the immigration minister peter dutton those are many people wont be numerate or literate in their own language let alone english theyd languish in unemployment queues no medicare so theyll be huge cos theres no sense in sugarcoating. So theyre all fake. Impression he wants to give well i dont know about thick if youre a numerous an illiterate it doesnt mean youre thick it means you havent had the opportunity to learn its really only certain oh well you havent had the opportunity to be educated your energy curse a smear isnt that well if people are dont havent had it occasionally thats a fact of life i mean we we think its a spirit some knobs of asian we in our country choose who comes to our country understand that but we do take and this next year will be taking about eighteen thousand refugees from refugee camps we resettle refugees into israel. So obviously we vet these people before we take them but we dont take people who pay people smugglers and try to get to australia that way whatever their i dont know about their education qualifications at all which it doesnt matter what their education qualifications are were not going to take them if they try to get to australia that way is extraordinary ms to do is that you. Characterize all the criticism as a campaign so either a campaign by people in the Senate Campaign by people on the phone again for governments own policy yeah yeah youre right wendy by the human rights. By international margaret it suggests a remarkable degree of coordination among hundreds of this war those are coordinated up to attack you with no evidence whatsoever stretching credibility guys so i dont credit let me make two points first of all i dont. Claim that they coordinated sometimes they are and sometimes amp of the will is of organizations and people are not particularly coordinated as they come up with the same conclusion they make the same sort of allegations because they are all in their different ways no doubt trying to get us to change our policy i mean we put up with this for. Seventeen or eighteen years were pretty experienced there has been a huge attempt to change our policy so once we did. One stage in two thousand and eight the government decided to change the policy then thousands of people started coming to australia. Through paying people sparklers and hundreds of them were drowned on the way and the public really rebelled against this and the government came to the conclusion that it done the wrong thing and it reversed the policy back to the previous policy that weve had and so were not going nobody knowing these immense well i dont know there are no bugs not about will be you want isnt growing well the un is a Big Organization spirulina you video coming in the un done among the forty seven numbers on the human rights car i know you will be buying i think thats right by the way and by the way i also would like to make this point thinking of western countries i think the public. Throughout the western world would have a fair bit of sympathy for what were doing i dont think everybody would i dont think a lot of the sort of people who youve been quoting in this interview would but i do think the mainstream of the community in germany or in britain or the United States and the stranger itself i do think the mainstream of the international least western oriented International Community would understand the virtue of having a managed Immigration Program and a managed immigration policy not contracting some of it out to people smugglers most people would think that made good sense not everybody some people think we should take anybody who wants to come to his trailer no matter how they try to get out or not be or we are absolutely not going to do that not effort alexander the good stuff i think. Code. Above. Code. Move the young entrepreneurs eager to tackle global challenges in our series cofounders finally us in this interview saying. Only fresh water supply is running land its a basic human right of access for feed you know if needs people looking on a sustainable strategy uses a set of solutions to tackle those traumas allocating massive founders valley thirty. Quadriga. International talk shows says. The good news. Arguments analysis. For journalists discuss the topic of the week. Six quadriga on detail is. Losing your homeland because of persecution in society. Starting from scratch in an unfamiliar country five people who found a new home in a foreign land. With their stories and music theyve built bridges to the past to the future. After the escape starting december seventeenth on t. W. He finished it so i smile. Say a good leave come over and so comfortable for that event be a lonesome for to hide those good ladies feel for loans im in they give football goes an oil bond. Quiz show comes on it wouldnt. Be a yes the dont judge me them enough to get in the queue but just give a bit of a civil suit for the whole of the next part pick up the pieces mock him sit in politico and disappear for a. Top five new top priority that. This is. A fresh wave of unrest in the middle east after trumps decision to recognize jerusalem as the capital of answer out by