The Australian government has found itself in hot water following Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court ruling declaring the Manus Island regional processing centre illegal and unconstitutional.

Though PNG’s Prime Minister Peter O’Neill didn’t outline a time-frame for the centre’s closure, he did say in a statement that his government would “immediately ask the Australian government to make alternative arrangements for the asylum seekers”.

While he acknowledged that the majority of refugees appear to have no desire to settle in PNG, the PM said he would be willing to give each of them the option to do so.

“For those that have been deemed to be legitimate refugees, we invite them to live in Papua New Guinea only if they want to be a part of our society and make a contribution to our community,” he said.

It has already been noted that the closure of the centre will take a toll on the local economy, though Mr O’Neill said the transition would be eased and tackled with the assistance of the Australian government.

Founder of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, Kon Karapanagiotidis, made no secret that he was thrilled with the ruling.

“It was such positive news to see a court finally recognise what myself and most of the Australian community have already known: that the detention of refugees in an offshore prison indefinitely with no intention of safely resettling them is illegal,” he told Neos Kosmos.

However, despite the ruling and finding that at least half of the 850 men held in detention are refugees, Immigration Minister Peter Dutton is staying firm on his position against the processing of asylum seekers on Australian shores.

“The government has not resiled from its position that people who have attempted to come illegally by boat to Australia and who are now in the Manus facility will not be settled in Australia.
“We will work with our PNG partners to address the issues raised by the Supreme Court of PNG,” said Mr Dutton, a decision that Mr Karapanagiotidis has condemned as immoral.

“The moral, legal, decent thing to do would be to bring these 850 men that have languished on Manus for 1,265 days at a cost of a billion dollars to the Australian public, to Australia,” he said.

While Labor also remains committed to the policy of offshore processing, it has since come to light that three Labor MPs, lower house member Melissa Parke and senators Lisa Singh and Sue Lines are opposed and calling for the men to be brought to Australia.

“We have caused them enough suffering already. This is a sick game and it needs to end. It’s inevitable that the government will need to have another plan for what is going to happen and the most logical thing to do is to bring those people to Australia,” Ms Parke told Fairfax Media.

Since the ruling there has been speculation that the refugees from Manus could be relocated to Nauru or Christmas Island, which Mr Karapanagiotidis is calling a “tragedy”.

“They’re now looking at either dumping them on Nauru, where [on Wednesday] there were six suicide attempts, including a man who tried to set himself on fire. Or they’ll look to dump them on Christmas Island, or find some other poor, impoverished country like the Philippines, spend billions of dollars of our money to do everything but protect these people, and that’s awful,” he said.

Earlier this year New Zealand offered to resettle 300 refugees from Nauru as part of a two-year deal with Australia, signed in 2013 by former prime minister Julia Gillard, but Australia declined to take up the offer, a decision which is likely to be held until after the elections.

“We would rather leave them languishing. But the whole point of this is cruelty for cruelty’s sake and today they were hiding under the idea that it’s about saving lives, saving women and children drowning at sea,” says Mr Karapanagiotidis.

“The reality is, this is just about showing how cruel and brutal we can be for the purpose of winning votes in an election, that is all.”