New Zealand being marketed as people smuggling destination

WILLING TON: New Zealand is being “marketed and pitched” as a destination by people-smugglers, warning any tweaks in the border policy could see asylum-seekers headed to Australia. Mr Dutton said the problem of people smuggling had not gone away despite illegal boats being stopped from coming to Australia about three years ago. The fact that we’ve stopped boats now for about three years doesn’t mean that the problem has gone away, the people smugglers just trade in people like they do drugs or tobacco, prostitution and drugs,” Mr Dutton told Sydney radio station 2GB. It is just a business line for them and if they think the Australian government has gone soft, or the policies have changed or that they look at a new way of getting to Australia, they will grab it with both hands. The Australian reported this morning that asylum-seekers aboard a boat intercepted by a naval patrol just before Christmas had told immigration officials that smugglers had told them their destination was New Zealand. This followed the disruption by Sri Lankan authorities of two other people smuggling ventures destined for New Zealand. Mr Dutton said there had been increased chatter among people smugglers about the option of New Zealand as a destination since Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern put pressure on Australia to allow it to resettle 150 refugees from Manus Island. We do know that’s being marketed, it’s being pitched to people as a destination,” he said. He attacked Bill Shorten for saying there would be no difference between letting New Zealand and the United States take Manus Island refugees. Ms Ardern’s comments appeared to contradict Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull who earlier today confirmed Australian intelligence reports that people smugglers had been “very busy in marketing and promoting New Zealand as a destination recently.” A number of boats, people-smuggling boats, that have been intercepted by our Operation Sovereign Borders, stated that they were planning to go to New Zealand, so that’s been the case,” Mr Turnbull said. New Zealand benefits from our Operation Sovereign Borders. The people-smugglers are absolutely ruthless. They use all of the social media we use and they use it very skilfully and market any scrap of information that they can and so they were very busy in marketing and promoting New Zealand as a destination recently. Chatter among people-smugglers has ebbed and flowed for many, many years keeping in mind of course that Tampa was over 15 years ago so that’s not a new issue.