Plenty on Ardern’s plate in Oz
Erosion of Kiwis’ rights on the menu of two-hour brunch with Australian PM.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says she will stick to her guns over her vow to reciprocate if Australia hikes university fees for New Zealanders, but does not intend to take a broad tit-for-tat approach.
Ardern will fly into Sydney this morning for a two-hour brunch meeting with Australia’s PM Malcolm Turnbull at Kirribilli House — formal residence of the Prime Minister.
Ardern will have to push hard to fulfil the rhetoric Labour delivered in Opposition about the erosion of New Zealanders’ rights in Australia.
Former Labour leader Andrew Little had called on the then National Government to “stiff arm” Australia over the issue of Manus Island, and to cause “international embarrassment”.
Labour was also critical of Australian policies such as deporting criminals and plans to charge New Zealanders’ international student fees.
Ardern said Labour believed National’s advocacy had been been weak.
“It’s one thing as to whether or not you’ll walk away with success but it’s another issue whether or not the effort was made in the first instance.”
She was not underestimating the difficulty, saying since Australia had stripped back the social security rights of New Zealanders in the 2000s there had been little progress in clawing those back.
“But that doesn’t mean we can’t do work on both emphasising that and preventing any further erosion.”
She said that was why she had
decided to reciprocate if Australia went ahead with plans to charge New Zealanders international student fees — a policy that would triple some fees.
She would not rule out taking a similar approach if further policy changes came up affecting New Zealanders, but did not intend to follow Australia’s lead in cutting off wider entitlements for Australians in New Zealand such as social security.
“Rather than diminish those rights, we’ll keep arguing there should be equal treatment of those rights.”
National Party Foreign spokesman Gerry Brownlee denied National had been weak in advocating for gains,
saying the pathway to citizenship Turnbull agreed to for many working New Zealanders living in Australia was a significant achievement.
He said the proposed changes to fees for international students were aimed at securing budgetary savings and had also seen hikes for Australian students.
He said Labour would not be able to take all the credit if it secured further gains.
“Obviously we would have continued to work to get better arrangements for New Zealanders living in Australia and the current Government will do so.
“If they can achieve more than we’ve able to so far, you’d see that as part of the continuum of the very strong and positive relationship between the two countries.”
Ardern’s visit will be fleeting — just four hours on the ground before she returns to New Zealand.
But it ticks off a number of firsts for Ardern — the first overseas trip as Prime Minister and the first motorcade among them.
The brunch is also the entree to the more significant APEC visit next week which will mean discussing issues including the TPP 11 and international security issues including North Korea.
Ardern said she was not worried the relationship would be weaker because she did not have former Prime Minister John Key’s close personal ties to Turnbull — or because she was from a left Government, rather than conservative.
“I don’t think it diminishes the relationship we will have.”
Turnbull could seek clarification from Ardern about the future of joint deployments, such as the trainers in Iraq, which Labour had opposed.
Australia’s Federal Labor says Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull must ask President Donald Trump to speed up the resettling of refugees in the US as the stand-off at the Manus Island detention centre enters a fifth day.
More than 600 refugees have barricaded themselves in the mothballed detention centre, which closed on Tuesday.
Food and drinking water has run out and the group is too scared to move to alternative accommodation in the main township out of fear they’ll be attacked by locals.
The last food packs were distributed on Sunday.
“Turnbull is meeting with President Trump in coming weeks, in Asia, he should raise again the possibility of taking some people,” said Opposition leader Bill Shorten.
“There is something going on at Manus which is deeply disturbing to the Australian people.”
Rallies were held in Sydney and Melbourne yesterday to call for an end to the stand-off. Hundreds of people gathered at Hyde Park in Sydney where they heard there was no safe place for the refugees to go.
Nicole Judge, who worked for the Salvation Army at the centre, said she had advocated for closing Manus Island but didn’t want refugees and asylum seekers to be left there.
In Melbourne CBD, recorded messages from men who remain inside the detention centre were played to a rally of hundreds of supporters.
“We are forgotten people who have been tortured . . . even though we have committed no crime,” one of the men said in his message.
The groups have called for the refugees to be resettled in Australia.
Previously, the Obama administration agreed to resettle up to 1250 people from Nauru and Manus Island.
President Trump has reluctantly agreed to honour the deal, and so far about 50 people have gone to the US.
Turnbull is meeting with New Zealand’s leader Jacinda Ardern in Sydney today. She has repeated a previous offer to resettled 150 people, and Shorten backed that plan.
“The Government should accept that offer. Where you have got 600 people without food and water for days, the Government needs to take an active interest in their welfare.”
Immigration Minister Peter Dutton said this week that the three alternative locations for the detainees were much better facilities than the closed centre, despite claims at least one was still under construction.
“The advocates who are here telling them not to move, they are not doing those people any favours,” he told Nine Network on Thursday.
New Zealand, which takes a total of 750 refugees a year, made the initial resettlement offer in 2013 to the then Labor Gillard government.
It has been rejected, more than once, on the grounds that it would give refugees a backdoor into Australia and become a marketing opportunity for people smugglers.
Meanwhile, the United Nations human rights office has called on Australia to restore food, water and health services to the group on Manus Island.
“We are forgotten people who have been tortured . . . even though we have committed no crime.” Manus Is detainee