Limbo could end: Karen Andrews eyeing off New Zealand asylum-seeker deal

Asylum seekers held in limbo in Australia after seeking medical treatment away from offshore detention could be sent to New Zealand within months, after Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews confirmed she is negotiating a resettlement deal.

Almost 200 people were transferred from Manus Island and Nauru while the contentious medevac legislation was in place between February and December 2019, with another 1200 in some form of detention or on final departure bridging visas in Australia. About 80 people are still on Nauru and 91 in Papua New Guinea.

Home Affairs Minister Karen Andrews has spoken about New Zealand’s offer to take asylum-seekers.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

Ms Andrews confirmed for the first time on Wednesday she was working with her New Zealand counterparts to resettle asylum seekers who had been medically evacuated to Australia.

“We’re doing all that we can to work through resettlement options for them,” Ms Andrews told Brisbane radio 4BC. “We clearly want to do that as soon as we possibly can.”

The New Zealand government has a longstanding offer to resettle up to 150 refugees who have been rejected by the federal government because they attempted to arrive by boat. The offer has been repeatedly rebuffed since a failed attempt to legislate a lifetime visa ban to stop them returning to Australia at a later date.

Instead, former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull struck a deal with the United States to resettle up to 1250 refugees. To date, 940 people have been resettled in the US, including 34 this year. Another 258 refugees had been provisionally approved for resettlement but were still waiting to travel.

Of the 192 people who came to the mainland under the medevac laws, fewer than 30 have left Australia. None have returned to offshore detention, with all either taking up third-country resettlement or returning to their country of origin.

Some within the government are optimistic the US will be willing to take the full quota and potentially more after President Joe Biden increased the annual humanitarian intake to 62,500 last month, including 6000 people from east Asia, which takes in Australia’s regional processing cohort.