Appearing on the ABC’s 7.30 program, Mr Abbott declined to say where the 153 Sri Lankan asylum seekers currently involved in a High Court case were being held on the sea.
His interview coincided with deteriorating relations between Sri Lanka and Canada, whose Prime Minister Stephen Harper has pledged to axe funding over the human rights concerns in war-torn country.
Mr Abbott described Mr Harper as a “fine man doing a fine job”, but he disagreed with his stance.
“I don't agree with my best friends on everything,” he said.
“... Sri Lanka is a safe country and a country at peace.”
In April, Canada suspended voluntary funding for the Commonwealth Secretariat over alleged human rights abuses by Sri Lanka, the organisation’s chair.
The suspension of the $10 million in funding coincided with accusations by Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister John Baird that Sri Lanka had failed to take meaningful action on human rights and political reconciliation.
Mr Abbott said he respectfully disgreed with the Canadian stance on Sri Lanka, which Mr Harper described as a country with human rights abuses and religious intolerance.
Earlier today, lawyers acting for the asylum seekers held aboard an Australian Customs alleged they were being locked up in windowless cabins.
A statement of claims lodged in the High Court also says their phones and belongings have been confiscated, apart from the clothes they were wearing.
Lawyers argue their clients should not be returned to Sri Lanka or transferred to offshore immigration detention centres on Nauru or Manus Island in Papua New Guinea.
Carbon tax repeal
Mr Abbott also defended the abolition of the carbon tax, saying the savings will be passed on to voters.
“People will notice a significant difference when they get their next quarterly power bill,” he said.
“… Those reductions will be backdated to the first of July.”
Mr Abbott would not confirm other components of the much-cited $550 figure, but said the ACCC was monitoring more than 500 businesses in order to ensure additional refunds were passed on.
“Because the price of power is a component of just about every price in the economy, when the price of power falls, other prices should go down as well,” he said.
“We’ll have the ACCC there as a policeman.”
Mr Abbott also weighed on his relations with cross benchers, including the Palmer United Party senators.
He said he wanted to work constructively with their party leader Clive Palmer, but conceded that the party was “out there in competition with the Coalition”.
Share
