NZ may take in Nauru refugees

By FRANCESCA MOLD political reporter

New Zealand may again help Australia out with its boatpeople crisis by taking in refugees detained on Nauru.

Immigration Minister Lianne Dalziel said yesterday that the Government was expected to decide in the next couple of weeks whether to accept more asylum-seekers whom the United Nations had approved as genuine refugees.

They would be taken as part of New Zealand's existing quota of 750 a year.

Ms Dalziel said the Government had previously indicated it wanted to ease the burden for transit countries in this region and encourage asylum-seekers to seek refugee status rather than use people smugglers.

Ms Dalziel's comments came after reports yesterday that 311 boatpeople detained in Papua New Guinea and Nauru under Australia's "Pacific Solution" border-protection policy had been declared genuine refugees by the UN.

A further 1100 are still waiting to be processed.

The Australian Government has accepted the UN decision but said it would wait to see if other countries would volunteer to take some of the newly confirmed refugees before taking its share.

The UN Human Rights Commission has decided that only seven of the 292 Afghans sent to Nauru after being picked up from a sinking ship by the Norwegian freighter the Tampa were genuine refugees.

New Zealand accepted all but one of the 131 Tampa asylum-seekers it took in after a plea for help from the Australians.

Act leader Richard Prebble said this indicated that New Zealand needed to review the way it handled refugee applications.

He accused the Government of rushing through the approval process for political gain.

"All the New Zealand Government has done is reward queue-jumpers and people smugglers, while depriving 131 genuine refugees of the opportunity to come to New Zealand."

But Ms Dalziel said immigration officials had assessed the Tampa asylum-seekers as likely to be genuine candidates.

They were mostly unaccompanied minors and family groups.

Ms Dalziel also said the UN planned to interview the Afghan refugees on Nauru again.

"So I think we shouldn't make any predetermination of what will actually occur there."

The minister said the Government had put extra money towards cutting the waiting list for refugee application processing, which had ballooned to more than 3000.

Waiting times had dropped from three years for a first hearing to three months.

Quick processing meant people did not become settled if they were not genuine refugees and it was possible to get rid of them quickly, she said.

Mr Prebble claimed the Government should have given asylum-seekers from Afghanistan temporary permits until the situation was settled and then sent them home.

The Australians are seeking an agreement with the Afghanistan interim Government to allow it to pay for asylum-seekers from that country to return now the Taleban regime has been overthrown.

Ms Dalziel said the Afghan refugees accepted here could not be sent back because they were now New Zealand residents.

National's immigration spokeswoman, Marie Hasler, said the refugee processing system needed to be reviewed.

She said she was concerned that the distinction between refugees and asylum-seekers had become blurred.

Ms Hasler was also uneasy about New Zealand's developing a policy of taking refugees from its neighbouring region rather than other parts of the world, where people were in desperate need.

Feature: Immigration