NZ offer to take Nauru refugees still on the table

Labor says Peter Dutton has no excuses for refusing to accept NZ’s “generous” offer to stop refugees travelling to Australia.

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Picture: Getty Images

Labor Immigration spokesman Shayne Neumann has said Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton had no excuses for refusing to accept New Zealand’s “generous” offer to close the back door to Australia for refugees.

In a press release which made no reference to Immigration Minister David Coleman, Mr Neumann said he had written to Mr Dutton and Mr Morrison, urging them to accept New Zealand’s offer so that eligible refugees on Manus Island and Nauru could be resettled as quickly as possible.

“If the Turnbull government was able to negotiate appropriate conditions for the US refugee resettlement agreement to prevent people smugglers exploiting vulnerable people, the Morrison government should be able to negotiate similar conditions for any deal with New Zealand,” Mr Neumann said.

Australia has so far rejected the NZ Prime Minister’s offer, saying it could allow refugees to eventually make their way to Australia if they gained New Zealand citizenship.

But NZ Foreign Minister Winston Peters said New Zealand could pass laws to ensure refugees from Nauru never came to Australia, if that was the issue preventing Australia from taking up Jacinda Ardern’s offer of accepting 150 refugees from Nauru.

“If the issue was that was (Australia’s) concern, that by then coming to New Zealand they would gain rights to Australia, we can fix that up,” he said. “So that’s not really my concern in my view.

“The mechanism is that you not give people the right because they have obtained a new status, and this would have to be a reform to our law.”

Mr Neumann said: “The New Zealand offer was first negotiated in 2013 between former Prime Minister Gillard and former New Zealand Prime Minister John Key – before being shelved by Tony Abbott who said it would only be called upon ‘if and when it becomes necessary’.

“Nauru and Manus Island were set up as temporary regional processing centres but have become places of indefinite detention because of the failure of successive Liberal government’s to negotiate other third country resettlement options.

“The embattled Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton needs to immediately do his job and accept New Zealand’s offer.

“If Peter Dutton is incapable of negotiating conditions on a deal with New Zealand – or he’s too distracted by his ministerial intervention drama – Scott Morrison needs to step in and take action to end the indefinite detention of refugees.”

Mr Peters today met with Australian Foreign Affairs Minister Marise Payne at the Pacific Island Forum in Nauru, where he said the issue of refugees was discussed.

His comments come a day after he expressed reservations with the resettlement of refugees from Nauau in New Zealand.

“There are 50,000 to 60,000 in this country looking for homes and opportunity, and our job is to make sure we fix our country up first than take on the whole world’s problems,” he told NZ’s 1 NEWS.

However, Mr Peters said yesterday that the New Zealand government would consider the issue as a whole.

Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton has repeatedly rejected New Zealand’s offer to resettle refugees due to concerns the country will become a route to settling in Australia.

“New Zealand, unlike any other country in the world, has the ability for people to go there and then to come to Australia and receive a visa on arrival,” he said in May.

However, Bill Shorten has said Labor will look at the “plan B” of resettlement in New Zealand.

“We will concentrate and put the resources into resettling these people regionally” he said.

Ms Ardern says New Zealand’s offer to Australia to take in offshore asylum seekers will still be on the table as the Pacific leaders meet in Nauru.

New Zealand since 2013 has had a standing offer to take in 150 detainees from Manus Island and Nauru, but it’s been repeatedly rejected by the Australian government in favour of a deal with the United States over fears it could be used as marketing by people smugglers.

Ms Ardern on Tuesday told reporters the offer had not changed with Australia’s foreign minister.

New Zealand's Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters, centre, attends the opening ceremony of the Pacific Islands Forum in Nauru on Monday. Picture: AP

“[It] remains on the table. Nothing has changed in that regard,” she said. “It’s certainly something I’ll be reiterating.” Concerns about conditions in the detention centres on Nauru have cast a shadow over the forum in recent weeks and made it a lightning rod.

A report from two prominent Australian refugee organisations on Monday highlighted concerns over the mental health of children being held and added to a slew of calls for the Australian government to take action to get more than 100 child asylum seekers off the island, including by taking up the New Zealand offer.

Ms Ardern has said she will be raising the detention centres with leaders and was hopeful to meet some of the people living on the island, despite her trip being shortened to a single day on Wednesday.

Nauru’s government has denied mistreatment of those being held as well as reports that a much-criticised tent encampment had been dismantled to polish up its image ahead of the forum.

With AAP