New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern defiant on asylum-seeker offer

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has been forced to defend her offer to take 150 asylum-seekers from Manus Island.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Picture: AFP

New Zealand Prime Minister ­Jacinda Ardern has been forced to defend her offer to take 150 ­asylum-seekers from Manus ­Island after Australian intelligence directly linked the proposal to increased chatter among ­people-smugglers trying to sell New Zealand as a destination.

In an escalation of the tensions over the issue, Malcolm Turnbull yesterday reminded New Zealand that it was a direct beneficiary of Australia’s border protection operations, after confirming intelligence reports that people-smugglers had been “very busy in marketing and promoting New Zealand as a destination recently”.

“A number of boats, people-smuggling boats, that have been intercepted by our Operation Sovereign Borders, stated that they were planning to go to New ­Zealand, so that’s been the case,” Mr Turnbull said.

“New Zealand benefits from our Operation Sovereign Borders.

“The people-smugglers are absolutely ruthless. They use all of the social media we use and they use it very skilfully and market any scrap of information that they can and so they were very busy in marketing and promoting New Zealand as a destination recently.”

But Ms Ardern yesterday defended the offer to resettle people from Manus Island and Nauru, claiming it was “not new” and had been first made in 2013. “Chatter among people-smugglers has ebbed and flowed for many, many years … keeping in mind of course that Tampa was over 15 years ago, so that’s not a new issue.

“I’m advised that none of the activity we have seen in recent times is unusual. I don’t want to comment on specific intelligence briefing and reports.”

Ms Ardern said New Zealand would continue to work alongside Australia to tackle people-­smugglers, whom she described as ­“parasites”.

The Australian yesterday revealed that asylum-seekers aboard a boat intercepted by a naval patrol just before Christmas had told immigration officials that smugglers had informed them their destination was New ­Zealand. This followed the disruption by Sri Lankan authorities of two other people-smuggling ventures destined for New Zealand.

Labor leader Bill Shorten ­yesterday appeared to question the intelligence reports.

“If the government really believe this, why are they concluding the American deal?” Mr Shorten said. “If the argument is that people may want to go to New Zealand, I’m sure that people want to go to America. If you follow (Home Affairs Minister Peter) Dutton’s logic, the only way to deter people from people-smuggling is keeping them indefinitely for the rest of their lives in settlements on Manus and Nauru.”

Mr Dutton accused Mr Shorten of failing to grasp the issue and contradicted Ms Ardern’s comments, claiming there was evidence that New Zealand was being “pitched” to asylum-seekers as a destination. “The fact that we’ve stopped boats now for about three years doesn’t mean that the ­problem has gone away.

“The people-smugglers just trade in people like they do drugs or tobacco, prostitution and drugs,” Mr Dutton told Sydney radio station 2GB.

Additional reporting: Greg Brown