The Herald reports that after nine years, Australia has finally accepted Aotearoa's offer to resettle people from its offshore concentration camps. Which sounds like great news. Except there's a catch:
The deal was confirmed "in principle" in the Australian Senate this week but awaits further negotiation, including Australia seeking a guarantee there would be no "backdoor" for the people transferred to come to Australia.Australia is obsessed with the idea that people who have the temerity to request asylum from them can never be allowed to set foot there (apparently they think they're such a great country that people will still want to visit their dry racist shithole even after being tortured by them for nine years). Refugees in New Zealand of course are eventually granted citizenship, which means a right to travel to and live in Australia. Australia's "solution" to this is to ask us to continue to oppress its victims on their behalf by denying them citizenship. Successive New Zealand governments have continuously told them that that's not happening, which is why this has taken nine years. But shuffling this fundamental disagreement behind an "agreement in principle" doesn't make it go away, and its likely that Australia's desire for a "guarantee" will continue to hold things up. So we probably shouldn't expect any concentration camp victims any time soon, unless we rescue them ourselves.
Australia could of course solve this problem itself, simply by exercising its right to refuse entry at the border in the unlikely event that any of its victims show up there again. The fact that they are instead seeking to make us complicit in their oppression speaks volumes about the moral character of their government. Aotearoa shouldn't have a bar of it. Once we accept these people, they're part of the whanau, and we should not cooperate in any way with their abuser.
(Australia's offshore detention regime has been found to constitute cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment and is unlawful under international law).
