New Zealand’s conservative Prime Minister John Key is indicating that his country’s offer to accept 150 refugees a year from Australia’s immigration system still stands and could include taking some, or all, of the 267 asylum seekers. The offer reflects the general paradox in New Zealand’s approach to refugees and asylum seekers: in a theoretical sense, it looks and feels comparatively generous, yet in a concrete sense it’s not nearly enough.

We live in an age of paradoxes: a time when Australia tries to conceal its mistreatment of refugees through various nefarious methods – for example, criminalising the disclosure of child abuse in the Nauruan detention system ­­– even as it trumpets its concern for violence against women, which is, according to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, ‘unAustralian’. Yet, in the case of ‘Abyan’ – the refugee on Nauru flown to Australia for a termination following a rape on the island and then deported before the procedure could even occur – violence is the direct result of Australian government policy.