An unexpected row has broken out between Australia and the US, prompted by (what else?) a tweet by Donald Trump:
Donald J. Trump
(@realDonaldTrump)
Do you believe it? The Obama Administration agreed to take thousands of illegal immigrants from Australia. Why? I will study this dumb deal!
February 2, 2017
The tweet followed a report in the Washington Post that claimed a phone call between Trump and the Australian prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, had ended abruptly and acrimoniously, with the president reportedly labelling it “the worst call by far” with a foreign leader.
The two were said to have clashed over a deal struck between the Turnbull government and the Obama administration at the end of last year, which would have seen up to 1,250 refugees currently stranded in Australia’s offshore detention camps on Nauru and Manus island considered for resettlement in the US. In return, Australia would take refugees from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.
A source told the Washington Post that Trump had accused Australia of trying to send over the “next Boston bombers”, raging that keeping to the agreement would “kill” him politically and calling it:
The worst deal ever.
While Turnbull told reporters he would not comment on the content of the conversation, he did deny that the US president had hung up on him, insisting the call – which lasted for 25 minutes instead of the hour afforded other world leaders – “ended courteously”.
The Australian prime minister insisted the US remained committed to the deal:
We have a commitment from the US president, confirmed several times now by the government.
This is not a deal that he would have done or that he would regard as a good deal … But the question is, will he commit to honour the deal and he has given that commitment.
Just an hour and 40 minutes before Trump tweeted, a spokesperson for the US embassy in Canberra said the “decision to honour the refugee agreement has not changed … This was just reconfirmed to the State Department from the WH [White House] and on to this embassy at 1315 Canberra time.”
But Trump’s tweet – labelling the agreement a “dumb deal”, saying he would review it, and incorrectly calling those affected “illegal immigrants” (they are refugees) – now seems to have put those earlier assurances very much in doubt.
Just a few days ago, the Australian treasurer, Scott Morrison, refused to be drawn into widespread criticism of Trump’s travel ban, saying the rest of the world was now “catching up” with Australia’s harsh policies on immigration:
We are the envy of the world when it comes to strong border protection policies.
The rest of the world would love to have our borders and the way they are secured and the immigration arrangements we have put in place, particularly most recently, over the last three or four years.
We’ve got a good history around this. Really, the rest of the world is catching up to Australia.
Morrison also praised the refugee resettlement deal – then apparently confirmed between Trump and Turnbull – as “an extraordinary achievement” by the Australian PM:
[The prime minister] is very pleased we’ve been able to secure this arrangement. They are both business people, aren’t they, and a deal’s a deal.
What you need to know about the refugee deal
The deal relates to 1,250 refugees held on Australia’s offshore detention camps on Nauru and Manus Island, including many from Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Iraq. The refugees, some of whom are stateless, have spent years languishing in the offshore detention camps, which the United Nations has repeatedly criticised as cruel and illegal
.
They are unable to go home, but the government says they cannot come to Australia – even where confirmed to be genuine refugees – because they travelled to Australia by boat. The vast majority of those in Australia’s offshore detention regime have been confirmed to have a valid claim to refugee status, meaning they are legally owed Australia’s protection.
The deal was also to include hundreds of refugees who were in Australia receiving medical care, provided they had been found to be refugees.
In November, the US agreed to take an undisclosed number of refugees. Applicants were to be interviewed twice by US officials before being resettled, in a process that was to take between six and 12 months.
The deal was seen as a significant win for the Turnbull government. Australia has searched in vain for a sustainable plan for refugees. For more than three years Australia has maintained it will never settle on the mainland asylum-seekers who arrive by boat. But the policy has led to regular reports of human rights abuses, many of them documented in the Guardian’s publication of the Nauru files
, and is bitterly condemned by refugees advocates inside and outside Australia.
At the time of the US agreement, only 24 refugees had been resettled in Papua New Guinea, and a handful in Cambodia.


https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2017/feb/02/donald-trump-dumb-deal-australia-refugee-resettlement-live

This guy is not a politician at all.
He is a real Leader.