New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern (pictured) has made finding a solution to the Manus Island standoff a priority. The remaining refugees and asylum seekers of the Lombrom Naval Base insist that their new locations in Lorengau closer to community areas will be unsafe, and refuse to leave.
During this crisis, the Turnbull government has become visibly irritated at Ardern's offer to accept 150 men from the centre. Such indignation was going to be hard to avoid. The New Zealand Labour Party had been accused by Foreign Minister Julie Bishop for undue interference regarding the dual citizenship of Barnaby Joyce. Egg had to be promptly cleared off her face once Ardern formed government.
Given Australian coolness to the NZ refugee offer, Ardern has taken a different tack: approach the Papua New Guinean government for an independent arrangement, cutting out the intransigent middle man. Australian immigration minister, Peter Dutton, was far from impressed, adopting a threatening pose. New Zealand, he promised, 'would have to think about their relationship with Australia and what impact it would have'. 'They'd have to think that through, and we'd have to think that through.'
Dutton was so unimpressed as to directly question the judgment of New Zealand's prime minister. The offer, for instance, to supply up to $3 million to the PNG government to assist the refugees was 'a waste of money in my judgment, I mean give that money to another environment somewhere, to Indonesia, for example'.
Having berated Ardern's choices and suggestions, Dutton then did what Australian politicians in the past have done to their New Zealand colleagues: insist upon ample gratitude. 'We', exclaimed Dutton, 'have stopped vessels on their way across the Torres Strait planning to track their way down the east coast of Australia to New Zealand.' This had taken 'many hundreds of millions of dollars into a defence effort to stop those vessels ... We do that frankly without any financial assistance from New Zealand.'
Australian papers and media outlets have also been mobilised to undermine New Zealand refugee policy. Classified material had supposedly found its way to Brisbane's Courier Mail, registering 'chatter' from people smugglers pointing the finger to New Zealand as a richer target. Suddenly, it seems, Australia's Border Protection Force had gotten busier, intercepting four vessels, carrying 164 people destined for New Zealand — another reason for Auckland to be respectful.
The Turnbull government has also adopted another approach. If it cannot directly change Ardern's mind, it will undermine her position domestically. A salient feature of this strategy is to diminish the character of the refugees in question, to damage the product, as it were.
"Having berated Ardern's choices and suggestions, Dutton then did what Australian politicians in the past have done to their New Zealand colleagues: insist upon ample gratitude."
The Australian Financial Review, to take one notable example, received an Australian intelligence cable last month outlining advice to the PNG government citing 'broader allegations of drug taking and dealing (Marijuana)' by certain refugees on Manus and 'overarching community concerns regarding allegations that some residents were engaged in sexual activities with underage girls'. A number, for instance, 'were renting rooms throughout Lorengau and luring underage girls between 10 and 17 years of age, with money, goods, and food'.
The cable is problematic on several points. It cites no prosecutions or investigations — none took place, as no complaints were ever filed. It also proceeds to shift the blame from local hostilities and the dangers posed to refugees released into the community to the refugees themselves. They, we are told, are the ones to be worried about.
By way of example, the views of officials of the local provincial health authority are noted. There had been, for instance, an 'increased interaction between the residents and the young girls from a health perspective, saying they had seen an increase in sexually transmitted infections and HIV'. All the markers of refugee demonisation are there: disease ridden, depraved, exploitative.
These sprinklings of poison through the Australian press, with occasional mentions in New Zealand, serve two purposes. The first is to show Australian refugee policy as sound, and offshore detention and resettlement in an unsuitable third country as appropriate. After all, who would really accept such applicants? Certainly not Australia, and certainly not an interloping New Zealand.
The second is to deflect attention from the discharge of obligations under the UN Refugee Convention. The obsession with breaking a 'people smuggling model' (since when haven't there been those smuggling the desperate and the persecuted?) is being cultivated in New Zealand. Again, the theme of gratitude is emphasised: we are doing a job for you.
There is already some evidence that this obsession is taking hold in New Zealand. Bill English of the Nationals has little time for Ardern's position, which he deems purely opportunistic. But his point is similar to Dutton's: Canberra should be thanked for their efforts in preventing the small state from being swamped. The Australian effort to sabotage Ardern's Manus offer might yet work.
Dr Binoy Kampmark is a former Commonwealth Scholar who lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.