If ever there was a time for New Zealand to exert what pressure it can on its friendship and ties with Australia, it is now.
The devastating trauma and abuse inflicted on children held by Australia in offshore detention has been laid bare in the largest cache of leaked documents released from inside its immigration regime.
The Guardian newspaper released the documents online on Wednesday, following up the first release with detailed accounts from those held in detention in Nauru and talking to teachers employed to educate child asylum seekers.
The teachers accuse Australia of exposing children to excessive harm and trauma they say may damage them for the rest of their lives.
Australia has twice used Nauru and its bankrupt government as a remote site for offshore processing of people seeking asylum.
It is current Australian government policy no person who arrives in the country by boat seeking asylum is ever settled in Australia.
They are instead sent to Nauru or to Papua New Guinea’s Manus Island, for offshore processing — something critics of the policy call a bleak dysphemism because no genuine resettlement ever takes place.
New Zealand last year cut $1.2million in aid to Nauru, slashing its budget for helping the island nation by more than half over concern about a growing crackdown on human rights. New Zealand continues to provide $1 million a year in aid.
New Zealand, Nauru’s second largest donor after Australia, increased pressure on it in July last year following the arrest of two outspoken opposition lawmakers.
Nauru, a tiny Pacific island with just 10,000 citizens, has been plagued by allegations of corruption, rights abuses and a crackdown on press freedoms.
Nauru’s economy has been heavily reliant on foreign aid since its rich phosphate mines were depleted in the 1980s.
Australia has taken unfair advantage of the situation.
The Nauru files released by The Guardian set out as never before the assaults, sexual abuse, self-harm attempts, child abuse and living conditions endured by asylum seekers held by the Australian Government.
Children are vastly over-represented in the reports, which cover a timeframe from May 2013 to October 2015.
They are cited in a total of 1086 incidents, or 51.3%, although children make up only about 18% of those in detention in Nauru.
The files make heart-breaking reading for those with any conscience and it appears little can be done from the outside.
Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully regularly travels on New Zealand Government business.
Perhaps now is the time for him to detour to Nauru to see for himself what is happening.
If the reports, as detailed in the leaked files, are anywhere close to the truth, the international community needs to stand up to Australia and seek better treatment for those detained in Nauru and Manus.
The world is now dealing with a diaspora as people move from their homelands seeking a better life and a safer future for their children.
There will always be those among the refugees who seek to harm the countries in which they settle.
But the future is the children they bring with them.
So far, the future of the asylum-seeker children on Nauru is unclear.
No permanent solution has been found to settle them.
And no permanent solution has been found for detained adults when the issued visas expire.
Nauru has become a client state of Australia without the means to refuse its demands to act as a place to house refugees.
The two countries need each other, they need the detention centre and those detained — one for economic survival and the other for political expediency.
Both countries are diminished by Nauru and what happens on that barren outpost.
