Key unmoved over Kiribati appeal

John Key
John Key
A Kiribati man who claims to be the world's first climate change refugee is an over-stayer and to claim otherwise is not credible, Prime Minister John Key says.

Ioane Teitiota is set to be deported tomorrow after a court yesterday rejected his last-minute bid for a release from custody. His wife and New Zealand-born children are also facing deportation.

A Kiribati-Tuvalu delegation will today bring a petition to Parliament in support of Mr Teitiota.

"In my eyes he is not a refugee, he is an over-stayer ... there are plenty of people living on Kiribati, and President Anote Tong would confirm the fact that he can live there like anyone else," Mr Key said today.

"He chooses not to live there and I can understand those reasons. But to claim he is a refugee I think is just not correct."

Mr Key said there were a number of over-stayers in New Zealand from Kiribati and Tuvalu.

Future New Zealand Governments may need to examine the case for climate change refugees from the Pacific, he said - but the time for that was not now.

"I am certainly not ruling out that a future Prime Minister and a future Government wouldn't take that compassionate view, and I suspect actually that they would. But it would be on genuine grounds that they actually can't live in their country.

"What I have always said about climate change when it comes to our low-lying Pacific neighbours, is that we as New Zealanders are very compassionate people, and if in decades to come a real issue presented itself, I think New Zealand would take that compassionate view."

Labour Party MP Phil Twyford, whose electorate includes Mr Teitiota's home in Ranui, said Government ministers had an obligation to meet the delegation.

"This family are devastated at the prospect of being shipped back to Kiribati; a place their kids have never lived and which is sinking below sea level," Mr Twyford said.

"Reverend Sumalie Naisali is bringing a 140-signature petition from a packed public meeting in West Auckland last night asking the Government to let the Teitiotas stay on humanitarian grounds, and asking ministers to show more leadership in addressing the threat to Kiribati and Tuvalu posed by rising sea levels."

Mr Twyford said Pacific members of the National caucus should be listening to their communities. He urged MPs Alfred Ngaro and Peseta Sam Lotu-Iiga to meet the reverend today.

"Ioane Teitiota may have failed in his legal bid to be a climate change refugee but his case highlights National's refusal to seriously address the most important humanitarian and environmental issue facing our region.

"The very least the Government can do is reconsider the Teitiota family's plight."

 

 

 

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