Election 2016: Julie Bishop backs Peter Dutton on 'illiterate' asylum seekers
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has backed comments by her colleague Peter Dutton that "illiterate and innumerate" refugees would take Australian jobs or "languish" on the dole if Australia was to significantly increase its humanitarian intake.
Labor and the Greens have blasted the Immigration Minister's comments as "deeply offensive" and "xenophobic". But Ms Bishop said Mr Dutton was making the "self-evident" point that it is highly expensive to resettle refugees and that it is time for a "reality check" on the issue.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop has backed Peter Dutton's comments. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Facing demands to slap down his Immigration Minister, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull refused to comment on Mr Dutton's statements at a press conference on Wednesday, saying he would only take questions from local journalists.
The Greens have proposed increasing Australia's refugee intake from around 13,700 currently to 50,000.
Asked about the proposal on Tuesday, Mr Dutton said: "They won't be numerate or literate in their own language, let alone English.
"These people would be taking Australian jobs, there's no question about that.
"For many of them that would be unemployed, they would languish in unemployment queues and on Medicare and the rest of it so there would be huge cost and there's no sense in sugar-coating that, that's the scenario."
Asked repeatedly whether Mr Dutton's comments were appropriate, Ms Bishop on Wednesday declined to criticise her colleague.
"Peter Dutton is pointing out the very real cost involved in issuing humanitarian and refugee visas," she told Sky News.
"Often the people who come to Australia on these visas are from very troubled backgrounds - particularly from Afghanistan but also Pakistan and beyond - and there is an extremely high cost involved in ensuring they an be a contributing member of society.
"Let's have a reality check here.
"Of course the cost of cost of ensuring people who come here to Australia as a refugee on a humanitarian visa is very high."
Ms Bishop said the government's plan to resettle 12,000 Syrian refugees had been costed at $700 million over four years, a significant amount of money.
"Peter Dutton is pointing out the self-evident fact that it costs a great deal of money to settle people in Australia," she said.
Asked about Mr Dutton's specific comments on literacy and numeracy, Ms Bishop said: "The costs involved are also education costs - teaching people English because they speak another language.
"These are all significant costs and we shouldn't run away from it."
Ms Bishop said it was easy for the Greens to propose vastly increasing Australia's refugee intake because they are not a party of government and will never have to implement the policy.
Speaking in Cairns, Mr Turnbull said Australia has the most successful multicultural society in the world.
"We invest more in settlement than many other countries do," he said.
"So it is, it's very expensive.
"We don't begrudge the money but it's important to get it right."
He then shut down questions on the topic, saying: "We are going to do have another doorstop in Townsville and this is really for the local Cairns media."
Labor has vowed to increase Australia's annual humanitarian refugee intake to 27,000 people by 2025.
Labor immigration spokesman Richard Marles accused Mr Dutton of using the asylum seeker issue for political advantage and trying to "fan the flames" of debate.
"This is very ugly indeed,' he said.
"Malcolm Turnbull must reject it. He must come out and in unequivocal terms say that today."
Unless Mr Turnbull does so, it will show he is leading the "Abbott government", he said.
Greens immigration spokeswoman Sarah Hanson-Young said: Peter Dutton's scare mongering on refugees over jobs exposes the Liberal policy as being steeped not in care for people in need, but xenophobia."
The Coalition has used the election campaign to hammer Labor about divisions over its asylum seeker policy - particularly boat turnbacks.
Mr Turnbull on Tuesday appeared in front of a Border Force patrol boat in Darwin to promote the government's success at stopping the boats.
Last month, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection revealed the cost of Australia's immigration detention policy.
A Senate estimates hearing heard Australian taxpayers fork out $1458 a night each for 167 men held at the Christmas Island detention centre, costing a staggering $243,000 a day.
This is on top of spending on mainland detention centres and the $1.2 billion cost of running offshore detention centres last financial year.
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