The Green Party will press on with a human rights complaint about the detention and treatment of Kiwis in Australia, following an apparent failure of Prime Minister John Key today to secure any reasonable concessions from his Australian counterpart.
It's been reported today that Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull had made a vague commitment to increase resources to allow appeals over deportations and detentions by Kiwis to be processed more quickly.
"It seems John Key has failed to achieve anything meaningful for the New Zealand citizens who've had their human rights breached after being forcibly removed from their families, or detained in offshore centres," Green Party human rights spokesperson Catherine Delahunty said.
"Malcolm Turnbull's talk of a close relationship with New Zealand is meaningless unless that relationship comes with respect.
"This first meeting of the two prime ministers was an opportunity for John Key to show some leadership, and to demand that the human rights of New Zealanders is put ahead of the Australian Government's attempt to score cheap political points at our expense.
"It remains to be seen how hard John Key really tried to get a commitment from Malcolm Turnbull today to uphold the basic human rights of New Zealanders and other detainees," Ms Delahunty said.
The Green parties of New Zealand and Australia announced this week that they will be jointly lodging a complaint with the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) about the detention and treatment of New Zealanders in Australia.
"The Green Party has called on John Key to secure a commitment from Mr Turnbull to repatriate all Kiwi detainees to the mainland of Australia, review all detentions and deportations on a case by case basis.
"In addition, John Key should intervene to ensure that the New Zealand consulate in Australia is providing support to Kiwis caught up in this mess. We have received several reports that Kiwis' calls for help are going unanswered by the consulate, despite John Key saying that's where they should go for help," Ms Delahunty said.
