AUSTRALIA – Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers and refugees will come under scrutiny this week as Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull meets with world leaders in New York.

Turnbull, who is travelling with Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop, was due to take part in a Leaders Summit on Refugees hosted by US President Barack Obama.

The meeting is taking place on the margins of the UN Summit for Refugees and Migrants, where the Australian prime minister was scheduled to address a roundtable on the drivers of migration.

Refugees and migration will dominate the most important summit of the year, with more than 65 million people currently displaced around the world – a situation not seen since World War Two.

The summit aims to bring countries together for a “more humane and coordinated approach” to the movements of refugees.

But refugee advocates fear that the focus is too much on enforcement of border protection policies rather than protection of people fleeing persecution and conflict.

How to balance those twin challenges amid global volatility and terror fears will be central to the discussions.

Australia’s refugee policies are expected to come under scrutiny both from critics and from countries looking to strengthen border control.

Turnbull and Dutton will be characterising Australia’s hardline offshore detention approach as a success story.

They have both been talking up Australia’s immigration policy ahead of the meetings, with the prime minister telling reporters that “our policy on border protection is the best in the world”.

Asylum seekers trying to reach Australia by boat are either turned back or sent to centres on Nauru or Manus Island.

Dutton has described offshore processing, temporary protection visas and boat turnbacks as “the trifecta of success in securing our borders”.

As a result, the government says 740 people in 29 boats have been turned back since the current Coalition government came to power in 2013.

In addition, hundreds of people remain in immigration detention – 1346 on mainland Australia, 242 on Christmas Island and 1,44 across Nauru and Manus Island.

Last month, Dutton confirmed that the Manus Island facility would close, but no timeline has been established between Australia and Papua New Guinea.

Australia’s refugee policy also includes a humanitarian intake – 13,750 places will be made available for resettlement in Australia this year, rising to 18,750 in 2018-19.

The Coalition also agreed to a one-off 12,000 intake of Syrian and Iraqi refugees, with 3532 people resettled so far.

No timeframe for the overall resettlement has been made public.

Overall, the Department of Immigration and Border Protection accounts for one per cent of the nation’s total expenses.

The cost of processing refugees and asylum seekers offshore has been highlighted recently, most prominently by the Australian National Audit Office which slammed the Immigration Department over its handling of more than $3 billion in contracts for Nauru and Manus.

Among the findings, the audit found that annual cost of holding a person in offshore detention was $573,111, more than double the estimated $201,000

The Immigation Department agreed to a Transfield contract, despite its estimate blowing out by more than $1.1 billion. The department apparently did not seek clarification around the price increase or seek updated quotes from other tenderers.

Save the Children and UNICEF Australia also issued a report last week, citing the total cost of offshore processing, onshore mandatory detention and boat turnbacks between 2013 and 2016 to be $9.6 billion.

It stated that shutting down offshore centres would save nearly $2 billion over the next four years – but only if all other elements of the policy framework remained the same.

Offshore processing and regional resettlement are supported by both the Coalition and the opposition Labor party and, according to Dutton, Australia’s relationship with Nauru is expected to “continue for decades”.

He defended the conditions of the centres, telling the ABC that they were necessary due to the ongoing operations from people smugglers, but added that the government was in discussions with a number of third countries regarding resettlement.

But opposition shadow immigration minister Shayne Neumann told the ABC that more action was needed.

“If the minister and prime minister don’t come back from the US with a durable third-party option, they would have failed,” he said.

“And if they don’t come back with an additional commitment to take more people, they would have failed.”

Turnbull told reporters in New York that an increase in the humanitarian intake relied on border security.

“Frankly, public opinion will not accept a generous humanitarian programme, a substantial migration programme, unless the government is seen to be in command of its borders,” he said.

“You’ve seen around the world, the way in which uncontrolled migration flows start to destabilise countries and undermine support for migration.”

While Turnbull said he would not dictate policy to other countries, his predecessor Tony Abbott told the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists in Prague that governments had to “stop the boats”.

Citing the situation in Europe, Abbott added that: “a million people coming by boat and almost a million people coming by land last year has the look of a peaceful invasion”.

Human rights advocates remain scathing about Australia’s treatment of refugees, and continue to call for offshore detention to be shut down.

- ABC