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AUSTRALIA
THE HIGH COMMISSIONER
AUSTRALIAN HIGH COMMISSION
C.C. Mr J. Hartland Swann
Head
South-East Asian Department
Foreign & Commonwealth Office Downing Street West
LONDON.
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Dear the Gerhold.
1 Mr. Hare 27424m
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7 January 1985
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Registry stamp overleaf.
Thank you for your letter of 21 November 1984 in which you advised that the Sub-Committee on Race Relations and Immigration was carrying out an inquiry into refugees, including the possibility that the acceptance by Britain of a further quota of Vietnamese refugees from Hong Kong would encourage other countries, such as Australia, to accept more Vietnamese from Hong Kong camps. You invited this High Commission to submit information to your sub-committee about the Australian Government's policy on the admission of Vietnamese refugees to Australia and any effects which British policy on admission might have on Australian policy.
Australian policy on resettlement of Indo-Chinese refugees, particularly the allocation of places from individual processing centres, reflects a number of considerations:
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The first is the size and nature of the case Load. Australia has viewed with concern the continuing heavy burden faced by Hong Kong in coping with over 12,000 Indo-Chinese refugees seeking asylum. Australia acknowledges that this is the largest aggregration of "boat-people" in the South-East Asian/East Asian region. At the same time Australia
is concerned that a large number of the Indo-Chinese refugees in Hong Kong appear to tack credible claims to refugee status and to third country resettlement as refugees. In the circumstances it considers that voluntary repatriation may be a
more appropriate solution for such persons.
A second consideration affecting Australia's attitude to resettlement of Indo-Chinese refugees is that it has traditionally given priority to resettlement of "boat-people" from Malaysia and Indonesia. The attached table sets out the numbers of Indo-Chinese refugees resettled in Australia since 1975 with reference to the countries of first refuge.
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