Families leave Nauru for Australia
CANBERRA: Several asylum seeker families have left Nauru and flown to Australia for medical treatment as pressure builds on Prime Minister Scott Morrison to get children off the island.
Refugee advocates confirmed three families left on Monday, while another three families left on Tuesday, and two more on Wednesday.
The prime minister has been under pressure from his own backbench to get asylum seekers off Nauru, as doctors say they are mentally ‘‘shattered’’ after years in limbo.
The government has opened talks with crossbench senators about reviving a stalled 2016 Bill to send asylum seekers to New Zealand, as long as they can never travel to Australia.
New Zealand Foreign Minister Winston Peters said that would create two tiers of New Zealand citizenship; one group of New Zealand citizens that could travel and work in Australia, and another group that could not.
‘‘We’re going to have to consider whether or not, as a result of our 2013 commitment (to offer to take 150 refugees from Nauru), we end up with people who are secondclass citizens in New Zealand.
‘‘Do we, in our endeavour to be humanitarian about it, end up with a substandard level of citizenship, which is not what this country is about?’’
New Zealand has a longstanding offer to take 150 refugees, an offer that has so far been rebuffed by Australia, which fears they may use New Zealand as a backdoor entry to Australia.
But at least one senator had a briefing on the Bill postponed and they now expect it will not be addressed until the November sitting of parliament.
A multifaith delegation of Christian, Muslim and Jewish leaders met Immigration Minister David Coleman yesterday to call for all refugees in detention to be resettled.
‘‘We need to bring them here and either offer resettlement in Australia or find another suitable country that welcomes them,’’ Anglican Bishop Philip Huggins said.
Mr Coleman said Australia could only go down the New Zealand resettlement path if the laws to close future entry to Australia were passed.
‘‘People smugglers don’t deal with nuance,’’ he said of watering down the laws to allow tourist and other nonpermanent entry to the resettled asylum seekers.
The Law Council of Australia has also called for asylum seeker children to be taken off Nauru, after doctors from Medecins Sans Frontieres revealed their mental health had been ‘‘devastated’’.
The push came as one of the senior doctors Australia paid to be on Nauru left on Wednesday after she took a photo of an asylum seeker child.
International Health and Medical Services senior medical officer Nicole Montana arrived back in Australia but the Nauru government denied she had been deported.
‘‘There was no removal order issued against the doctor nor was the doctor deported from the island as reported in media,’’ the government said.
‘‘It is regrettable that this occurred as the doctor has been an integral part of the medical services.’’
Under Nauru’s local laws governing its regional processing centre, taking a photograph of the asylum seekers Australia put on the island is banned.
Dr Montana was welcome to return as her services were needed, the Nauru government said.