EXCLUSIVE

February 6 2017
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Malcolm Turnbull convinced Donald Trump not to dump refugee deal

Peter Hartcher

Donald Trump's intention in his phone call with Malcolm Turnbull last week was to terminate the refugee resettlement deal with Australia.

And that's exactly what he told the Australian Prime Minister, according to a US official who was briefed on the call.

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The official told Fairfax Media that the American President told Mr Turnbull that he "hated" the refugee deal and was "not going to do it".

The Australian Prime Minister responded forcefully that the two countries had a deal, and persuaded Mr Trump to change his mind, according to the official.

This disclosure puts a new complexion on the much-discussed call, which ended with Mr Trump describing it as "the worst call by far" of a series with national leaders, according to the Washington Post's account in details denied by neither government.

The experience, it seems, may have been so unpleasant for him because he didn't get his way. He cut short the scheduled one-hour call after 25 minutes.

Until now, it was not clear whether Mr Trump had opposed the deal, or had merely complained about it so that he could be seen to be reluctant, or that he had argued over its terms.

His unhappiness was on display when he tweeted, after the call with Mr Turnbull, that "I will study this dumb deal".

His spokesman, Sean Spicer, later conveyed the same reluctance when he told the media that "the deal that was cut by the last administration is something that he [Mr Trump] is extremely, extremely upset with.

"He does not like it, but out of respect for him [Mr Turnbull], he's going to allow that process - continue to study it and allow it to move forward under the conditions that have been set - that there will be extreme vetting on every single one of those individuals."

The disclosure also explains why Mr Turnbull has declined to elaborate on the call, other than saying it ended courteously.

Evidently, he didn't want to take credit publicly for persuading Mr Trump to change his mind in case this further antagonised the US leader.

Mr Turnbull didn't want to give Mr Trump a pretext for revisiting the vexed decision.

In resisting the arrangement, Mr Trump told his Australian counterpart that it was "the worst deal ever" and that he was "going to get killed politically" for it, according to the Washington Post.

The arrangement for the US to accept asylum seekers from the two Australian offshore camps was originally struck betwen Mr Turnbull and then US president Barack Obama.

Mr Trump decided to repudiate it as a deal between two men, but Mr Turnbull apparently persuaded him that it was a deal between two nations.

Mr Turnbull on the weekend said that there was "absolutely" no request from Mr Trump for any quid pro quo.

While this is accurate, it is not true that there is no Australian reciprocation. In a separate, earlier agreement, Australia agreed to join a US-led multilateral plan to resettle US refugees from Costa Rica.

Under this plan, Australia eventually will accept some of the Costa Ricans, though none has yet been resettled in any third country.

While the two arrangements are separate and not linked in any formal way, they do represent, in effect, a trade-off, as sometimes happens between allies with a wide range of shared interests.

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