LATIKA M BOURKE: Alexander Downer’s stark warning Reform’s ‘carbon copy’ of Australia’s turnbacks can’t work

Australia’s longest-serving foreign minister Alexander Downer has flatly rejected Nigel Farage’s hopes of using the Navy to turn back migrant boats in the English Channel, saying they can’t work as they did in Australia.

The Reform UK leader this week seized on the scenes of thousands of migrants swarming the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, who have all but been returned, to propose the drastic measure for the UK.

He proposed using the military to turn back migrant dinghies coming from France in what he said would be the biggest military operation for Britain since the Second World War.

“Under a Reform government, within a fortnight, there would be no more boats,” Mr Farage said, unveiling his Operation Fortress policy.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott praised the idea as a “carbon copy” of his own Operation Sovereign Borders, which he implemented after winning power in 2013 to stop boat journeys that restarted after the Rudd government unwound the Pacific Solution of offshore detention.

“Largely with the cooperation of the Indonesians, that’s what we did, and the issue for the British government is how much cooperation will they get from the French, but it has to happen,” Mr Abbott told his former close aide Peta Credlin on her News24 program.

“By hook or by crook, it just has to happen.”

Reform has seized on Mr Abbott’s endorsement to justify their radical proposal.

Zia Yusef, Reform UK’s Chair, said it was the backing that mattered.

“He has said that it must be done, so I would place a higher weight on someone who’s actually done the thing than a bunch of theorists and technocrat talking heads who’ve never actually delivered any positive results in any endeavour they’ve been involved in,” he said.

But Mr Downer, who sat alongside Mr Abbott in Cabinet during the Howard Government and crafted the first Pacific Solution to offshore asylum seekers, said the same methods could not work, because the French would not accept boats back.

“The French would never accept it,” Mr Downer, who served as High Commissioner to the UK after he finished up as Australia’s longest-serving foreign minister, told The Nightly.

“In our experience, we had a legal basis for turning back the boats. The UK doesn’t. What is more the type of boats are tiny so they would have to take the asylum seekers to France on naval vessels and the French could stop that and probably would.

“The French could also create havoc for cross-channel passengers and trade if they wanted to. The only option is offshore processing, e.g. Rwanda.”

The French and British share a maritime border through the Channel, meaning that, unlike Australia, the UK does not have a buffer of international waters.

Australia would transfer migrants onto unsinkable orange lifeboats and tow them into international waters, leaving them to navigate to Indonesia.

The former Conservative government had developed a virtual turnback system, whereby migrants would be deported to Rwanda and have their asylum claims processed, and if accepted, would be sent to another country for resettlement.

But the Labour government dismantled the project upon winning government. It has implemented tougher measures and stepped up cooperation with the French and boat crossings have reduced 65 per cent this year compared to last year when 41, 472 migrants successfully journeyed across the Channel to England.

This year 218 boats carrying 14,531 migrants have succeeded.

France has suggested it would not cooperate, with an Interior Ministry spokesperson lambasting the Reform proposal as a “violation of French sovereignty, as well as a violation of the law of the sea and international law.”

Pre-empting France’s rejection, Reform’s policy document stated: “We do not believe for one moment that the French Navy or Gendarmerie would open fire on Royal Marines conducting a humanitarian mission and transporting civilians”.

Mr Yusef said French military retaliation would be a crime against humanity.

“I am not (French) President (Emmanuel) Macron’s biggest fan, I think there is no chance that he would do such a thing,” he said.

He said the worst-case scenario was a big diplomatic row that would be averted if Marine Le Pen’s far-right party was victorious next year, this could change.

“Nigel Farage did meet Jordan Bardella, for example, who, certainly the polls would suggest, is odds on to become French President, now probably French Prime Minister. He actually went on the record, he said he would be very open to the idea of a Farage government returning boats back to France,” he said.

“We have said, look, we would much rather that the French cooperate with this, right, but make no mistake, we do envisage a scenario in our document in Operation Fortress, where they don’t.

“And what we have said is Royal Marines will return the migrants that they pick up off those boats attempting to come to Britain, every single one, and take them back to the shores, the very shore that they left in the morning in France.

“It’s absolutely bonkers to allow the status quo to continue.”

Reform’s policy document also singled out the fact that Australia had faced no punishment from the international community for its pioneering hardline measures.

“Australia has faced no meaningful legal consequences for Operation Sovereign Borders,” the document said.

“In 2014, the Australian Government was referred to the International Criminal Court (ICC); in 2020, the Office of the Prosecutor declined to open proceedings.

“In 2017, various United Nations committees made rulings against Australia’s foreign processing centres, but no international body has brought prosecutions against

Australian politicians. The Australian Government rejected the UN Human Rights

Committee’s orders to pay compensation in 2025 … and no country has brought a case against Australia on the basis of violating either treaty.”

Mr Farage has been leading in the polls but has suffered a setback in public support following revelations that he accepted £5 million from an offshore crypto investor. Labour’s change from Keir Starmer to the new Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, has also put the government back on top of the polls.

Mr Farage did not declare the funds as required by MPs and, in an attempt to puncture an upcoming parliamentary inquiry which could force a byelection in his seat, quit early to force a preemptive poll next Friday instead.

But the tactic backfired when the major parties left the Reform UK leader to contest the seat against a comedian who contests against the prime minister of the day in every election under the moniker Count Binface.