Sonny Bill wants Australia to accept NZ offer to resettle refugees from offshore detention centres

June 6, 2021

The former All Black recently travelled to Queenstown to campaign for Australia to accept Aotearoa’s offer to resettle 150 refugees per year from their offshore detention centres.

Sonny Bill Williams and former Australian footballer Craig Foster are leading the charge to get Australia to accept New Zealand’s offer to resettle 150 refugees a year from offshore detention centres.

The former All Blacks star was in Queenstown this week to appeal to Australian PM Scott Morrison, who remained unmoved despite Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern saying the offer from eight years ago still stood.

"It’s inhumane, like let’s just get that paper signed," Williams said as he made a personal plea to Morrison.

"Just sign the deal man please, please bro for this, for humanitarian’s sake."

In 2015, Williams joined UNICEF to visit Syrian refugees stranded in Lebanon following years of violent destruction in their country, with the trip affecting him deeply and adding to his reasons for being involved.

"It was so heart-breaking seeing what I saw," he added.

Two-hundred-and-forty refugees are currently detained in offshore Australian facilities, desperately seeking resettlement.

Foster, who has been the driving force to relocate Australia's refugees, recruited Williams to the cause.

"Sonny Bill's brand, and this is what I love, is humanity. his brand is helping everyone, his brand is ensuring all kids around the world are provided with opportunities and treated with dignity and given right," Foster said.

Foster said Australia was also incurring an economic cost, coupled with the human cost, for the offshore detention of refugees.

"When we start raising both the human costs and the economic costs it's simply indefensible on the human side, we've had eight years of severe psychological and physical trauma of literally hundreds of people, trapped offshore of course in Nauru and Port Moresby but on the financial cost alone it's cost Australia $10 billion over the last eight years and $800 million this year alone," Foster said.

"Australian taxpayers could put them on a first class flight fly them here to extraordinary, stunning Queenstown buy them a house on the water put them through an MBA and buy them an Audi and still be saving money."

Williams slammed arguments from Australia that refugees could potentially use New Zealand citizenship as a way to get into Australia via the backdoor.

"That argument itself is ridiculous," he said.

"I think we’ve come a long way in the narrative of refugees, in changing that narrative and, and understanding that they are humans just like us."

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