Does this sound like a response to a crisis?
In fact, there was not even mention of a humanitarian emergency, just a lot of debate about how the release would play out in terms of PR.
This government sees no crisis bigger than a threat to their reputation and electability. The Syrian refugee crisis should be about halting the catastrophic loss of life, not about managing public perception. John Key was happy to chide the UN for their response to the crisis, but visibly cringed when TV3s Tova O'Brien asked him to elaborate on hints New Zealand might do more.
In Australia they offered 12 000 places for Syrian refugees in the next year. That is from a country that is being taken to the International Criminal Court for their maltreatment of asylum seekers.
Australia are aiming to process 500 applications per week. It'll take New Zealand more than one hundred weeks to process the same.
In Canada, new Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has stuck with his election campaign of offering 25,000 places for Syrian refugees by December 31. There is debate over whether they'll be able to fulfil the pledge in time. But who cares if they just manage 20,000 - winter is hitting Europe soon and some without homes will literally freeze to death.
What has New Zealand done? 100 places added to our quota by July 2016 with the first not arriving until January.
Shutting down calls to do more in coming years, Key has determined we would take an extra 250 in the following two years. "It's stretching the system", he says with no thought - and no research - into what a bigger system would look like.
If we take the government at face value, it looks like our tiny quota is stretching the country to capacity. What the increase really shows is that we're stretching our current system to capacity without spending one extra cent on new infrastructure or resettlement centres.
But could we do more if we wanted?
In the released documents Immigration NZ suggests that their maximum capacity would be to take up to 1000 more refugees a year in 2016 and 2017.
But two days after the release Steve McGill from Immigration NZ told a select committee that the rebuilt Mangere Resettlement Centre could host more than 1500 people a year from 2016. We'd need the right level of investment, he noted, but we also need community support.
All around the country communities are coming together and wanting to do their bit for refugees. Dunedin, Levin and Masterton have all had public meetings to discuss what they can do. Positive stories about opening their towns up to a small number of families have appeared in Tauranga, Rotorua and Whangarei.
At present, none of these cities and towns resettle refugees. But their communities have the will to help, and nationwide opinion polls from both Colmar Brunton before the crisis, and Research NZ since, show the rest of New Zealanders want to do more too.
If we matched Australia or Canada we would have to spend some money on new buildings at the Mangere Resettlement Centre. We'd have to hire some new translators. We'd have to get the Red Cross to organise volunteers in these communities. We'd have to take the churches at their word to help resettle 1200 people, which they say they can do immediately.
In the first half of 2016 the government is reviewing our annual refugee resettlement quota. But most New Zealanders already know what needs to be done and they want it done now, when the need is the greatest.
Every story of a displaced person freezing to death this winter will also be the story of our government doing too little, too late.
Murdoch Stephens leads the Doing Our Bit campaign that aims to double New Zealand's refugee quota and funding.
