PM defends travel plans for Nauru

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has defended her plan to travel to the Pacific Islands Forum separately from the rest of her contingent, saying it wouldn’t add much cost.

The main New Zealand delegation, including Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Peters and a media contingent, arrived in Nauru for the forum yesterday.

Ardern will be travelling to the Micronesia island tomorrow in the same Air Force plane, once it returns to New Zealand to pick her up.

The prime minister can’t go for a longer period as her 11-week-old daughter, Neve, is too young to be given the appropriate vaccinations for the trip so could not join her.

Ardern said she had weighed up whether or not to go. She was told the extra cost would not be exorbitant and the plane could not stay on Nauru anyway, as there was not enough room on the runway to store it.

‘‘Weighing up the logistics around travel, I asked officials to check what the extra costs I would be imposing on the Crown if I were to travel separately.

‘‘They assured me that because of the 757 not being able to remain on Nauru anyway but having to leave the island so other planes could come in and depart – and also the fact that if it was not flying there, it would be taking up an hour somewhere else, anyway – then, on balance, I decided it was worth me travelling.’’

She made the comments after Newstalk ZB political editor Barry Soper estimated that the extra fuel costs would be $50,000.