FED:Govt could revive Malaysian deal: expert=4

AAP General News (Australia)
08-31-2011
FED:Govt could revive Malaysian deal: expert=4

Former Labor powerbroker Graham Richardson says the government has taken a thumping
in the High Court and now has no alternative but to swallow its pride and opt for a Nauru
solution for asylum seekers.

Mr Richardson said the decision made the government look like a joke "because frankly
at the moment it is."

He said everyone would have told the government there would be a legal challenge and
whoever provided the legal advice that it was safe should be sacked.

"This is a thumping in the High Court," Mr Richardson told Sky News.

"They didn't just go down. They got slaughtered."

The former Hawke and Keating government minister said there was simply no way Malaysia
could adopt the measures necessary to satisfy the Australian legal requirements.

"Malaysia is just dead. In any event we'd look so silly trying to keep chasing the
Malaysian solution.

"There's nothing else for the government to do but to look elsewhere, and where else
can you look bar Nauru?"

Mr Richardson said if the government did opt for Nauru it should "announce it quickly
in the next couple of days".

"Don't muck around and get dragged kicking and screaming there - just do it."

The federal opposition has long called on Labor to reopen the mothballed processing
centre on Nauru which was a key plank in the former Howard government's so-called Pacific
Solution.

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