New Zealand to take 150 asylum-seekers from Australia

JULIA Gillard insisted that New Zealand's decision to accept 150 refugees a year from Australia would not encourage more asylum-seeker arrivals.

JULIA Gillard insisted today that New Zealand's decision to accept 150 refugees a year from Australian detention centres would not encourage more asylum-seekers to head for the two countries.

The Prime Minister said asylum-seekers being processed on Nauru and in Papua New Guinea who might be selected to go to New Zealand would still have to meet the no-advantage test that would mean they could only leave for New Zealand once the time they spent in immigration detention matched the time they'd have spent in the normal refugee pipeline.

Ms Gillard and her New Zealand counterpart John Key announced the plan at a media conference in the resort centre of Queenstown today.

New Zealand will not be increasing its refugee intake to take those from Australia.

The 150 refugees each year will be included in New Zealand's total annual humanitarian intake of 750 people.

Mr Key said he believed boats would eventually come directly to New Zealand and he stressed the need for both a regional solution and strong cooperation between his country and Australia.

Mr Key said New Zealand worked very closely with the Australians and they provided a lot of support for New Zealand.

"So in that regard we are looking to work with Australia."

He said New Zealand benefited from Australian border protection operations and received comprehensive intelligence from Australian agencies on people smuggling operations and other issues.

It made sense to avoid duplicating the processes, Mr Key said.

Mr Key said he considered people smuggling an Australasian and a regional issue.

"And from New Zealand's point of view I stand by my public statements of the past that it my view that a boat will at some point turn up in New Zealand. It's a matter of time."

Ms Gillard said the people-smuggling issue had been discussed at meetings of the two leaders for some time.

She said people who did try to sail directly to New Zealand would have to navigate treacherous waters at great risk to themselves.

The ocean did provide a natural barrier preventing people getting to New Zealand.

New Zealand did take asylum-seekers from Australia during the Howard era including scores from the cargo vessel Tampa.

But the latest deal was "pointless'' and would force more asylum-seekers onto boats, Greens and refugee advocates said today.

Australian Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young said: "This isn't a regional solution; this is a band-aid cover-up for Julia Gillard for what a failure Manus Island and Nauru have been".

"It's not going to save lives, in fact it is going to put more lives at risk," she told reporters in Canberra.

"More people will be taking dangerous boat journeys as a result of less people being resettled directly (from Malaysia and Indonesia).'

Senator Hanson-Young said instead of resettling refugees from Australia, both countries should instead beef up their ability to assess claims in Malaysia and Indonesia: "and resettle people directly from those places in much larger numbers".

"Why wait for someone to take a dangerous boat journey, only then to consider whether they are a genuine refugee and be assessed and then resettled?" she said.

"This whole process forces people to take dangerous boat journeys rather than dealing with the bottleneck further up the line."

The Refugee Action Coalition said the agreement with New Zealand was "a pointless deal, a regional non-solution".

"Asylum-seekers are still going to have to get on boats and get to Australia before they have any hope of protection," spokesman Ian Rintoul said in a statement.

"Rather than offload refugees to another Pacific neighbour, the Gillard government should be upholding its obligation to asylum seekers to protect and process them in Australia."

Opposition immigration spokesman Scott Morrison said it was "an arrangement that barely scratches the surface".

"This arrangement of 150 people next year is the equivalent of one or two boats. It's less than one per cent of the number of people who turned up last year," Mr Morrison told reporters in Sydney.
 
"Julia Gillard just keeps putting sugar on the table for people smugglers and now she is trying to put Kiwi sugar on the table as well."

Additional reporting: AAP