New Zealand PM repeats offer to take refugees held by Australia

PHNOM PENH: New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern yesterday again offered to resettle 150 asylum seekers sent by Australia to offshore camps, including one in Nauru, a Pacific island nation where leaders from both countries are set to meet next month.

Australia declined New Zealand’s offer last November to take asylum seekers sent to Australian- run detention centres in Nauru and Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, because the country was negotiating with the United States to accept 1,250 migrants.

About 250 people have left for the United States under an agreement made by the administration of former President Barack Obama, which President Donald Trump has called a ‘dumb deal’.

“New Zealand has reiterated our existing offer to Australia to take 150 refugees from Nauru and Manus Island,” Ardern’s office told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in emailed comments.

“We remain ready and willing to help.”

The offer comes as the Australia and New Zealand prime ministers plan to attend the Pacific Islands Forum next month in Nauru, an isolated island with a population of just over 11,000.

Australia’s hardline immigration policy requires asylum seekers intercepted at sea trying to reach Australia to be sent for processing at detention centres, including one on Nauru.

They are told they will never be settled in Australia.

In 2016, Papua New Guinea’s Supreme Court ruled it was illegal to detain the nearly 800 refugees and asylum seekers in a facility on Manus Island. — AFP