I agree with ttbn. We need to stop importing people/cheap labour and just train those we have here!

If there are skills we don't have? Then allow some temporary guest labour to come and assist the training of our own! And be sure we bid them a fond farewell when they have served our purposes!

As we automate and we will, we just will not need as many workers! We might need some more fruit/crop pickers from time to time and our temporary south sea islander guest labour program is all we need for that!
Alan B.

Since the refugees are no longer behind fences, what stops New Zealand from just sending a ship and take them all aboard?

PNG would surely agree, so who needs Australia's acceptance?

Toby O'Brien said- Put simply, the xenophobic claim that refugees resettled in New Zealand will use that country as a 'backdoor' to resettle in Australia is entirely unfounded.

Answer- I guess Toby O'Brien has told us the answer he wants to hear- and will label us as xenophobes if we respectfully disagree with him. This seems to be the standard of polite discussion in the contemporary age.

Yes the open borders between NZ and Aus are problematic and based on an era passed- tricky politics. I suspect that many New Zealanders see our relationship as different than presented by the NZ Prime Minister- sad that she wasn't more supportive of our Anzac Family

The huge mass movements of refugees in the world has become unsustainable- and seems to have become ideologically communist.