Australia has confirmed 96 asylum-seekers are detained in Nauru and insists a deal to resettle them to New Zealand is not under threat despite criticism from the country's deputy prime minister.
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Home Affairs officials confirmed the figure during an estimates hearing on Thursday but would not provide an answer when Greens senator David Shoebridge asked if the detainees included minors.
A deal struck by previous governments on both sides of the Tasman agreed NZ would take 450 refugees from the detention centre from 2022 to 2025.
About 210 people have been approved to settle in New Zealand in the first two years of the pact and 172 have done so.
More have been referred to the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, for processing.
Speaking from the Solomon Islands before landing in Nauru on Wednesday, NZ Deputy Prime Minister Winston Peters struck a frustrated tone.
"It was a commitment made by a former government and what did they do about it?" he said.
"The promise was made by someone else and now you're asking us to keep their promise."
Home Affairs Secretary Stephanie Foster told the senate committee the deal would remain intact until June 2025 and that NZ counterparts had not indicated any policy change.
Australia has sent asylum seekers to the detention centre in the Micronesian nation for more than a decade, resettling the vast majority in third-party nations.
The facility was empty in 2023 but Australia has transported asylum seekers to Nauru in recent months.
In the same estimates hearing, Labor senator Murray Watt engaged in a testy exchange with Liberal senator James Patterson on the government's handling of visa cancellations of foreign-born offenders.
Immigration Minister Andrew Giles had been under intense pressure since the Administrative Appeals Tribunal overturned several visa cancellations involving foreign nationals found guilty of serious crimes under direction 99.
The opposition seized on these decisions, hammering Mr Giles throughout May and June and calling on him to resign, saying he was weak in policing immigration.
"It's a matter of record ... that the AAT overturned exactly the same proportion of cancellation decisions under minister (Peter) Dutton as they did under ministers in this government," Senator Watt said.
"I've never seen Mr Dutton take any responsibility for that when he was a minister."
Senator Watt said Senator Patterson had "attempted to hold the government to a different standard ... than to Mr Dutton's".
Ms Foster said there had been roughly five cancellations a year in the past decade that required the minister's sign-off.
The previous direction, which prioritised a foreign national's ties with Australia when making visa decisions, was revoked and the new measure came into effect on June 21.
Direction 110 theoretically gives greater weight to community safety when appeals tribunals decide on visa cancellations.
Australian Associated Press
