PORT VILA – Vanuatu’s Minister of Education Alfred Carlot is among at least three government MPs who have defected to the opposition benches.

The opposition has been rallying support for a vote of no confidence in the Sato Kilman-led administration amid a political crisis triggered by last weekend’s pardon of 14 convicted MPs.

The opposition MP Ralph Regenvanu has confirmed Carlot, Don Ken and Isaac Hamariliu have crossed the floor.

He says a ruling on the motion is still to come from the Speaker Marcellino Pipite who pardoned himself and the other 13 convicted MPs last weekend.

“We’ll leave it for the Speaker to declare it in order. He’s probably going to rule it out of order. We definitely do have the majority of numbers in Parliament now as a result of people who signed the motion so we’ll continue to pursue avenues to get rid of the government which is full of criminals at the moment.” - RNZI

Pregnant woman must stay on Nauru

YAREN – The husband of a heavily pregnant asylum seeker is pleading with Immigration Minister Peter Dutton to transfer his diabetic wife from Nauru to Australia for medical care.

Rashid Dandanmozd told the ABC that his wife, Golestan, was 36 weeks pregnant and had been suffering serious health issues since being detained.

“She’s got kidney issues, she’s got back pain and she can’t barely be walking with a big stomach and now she’s pregnant and she’s got blood sugar,” Dandanmozd said from Nauru.

“She’s not normal, like other ladies – she struggles to walk from my room to the bathroom.

“I have to look after her for anything, especially when she needs to shower.”

Dandanmozd said the 34-year-old mother-of-one was in so much pain that she could barely walk, and did not want to be treated in the “dirty” Nauruan hospital.

Additional health services are available on Papua New Guinea, but Dandanmozd said his wife was the cousin of murdered asylum seeker Reza Berati and was unwilling to travel there.

“She don’t like going to Papua New Guinea,” he said. “When someone speaks about Papua New Guinea, my wife feels stressed and very bad stroke.

“She said ‘I remember my cousin killing there and I can’t go there’.”

Dutton has ruled out transferring the woman and an additional group of pregnant asylum seekers from Nauru to Australia, despite the women reportedly refusing medical treatment.

It is understood that seven pregnant asylum seekers are refusing medical treatment on the island as they urge the Turnbull Government to bring them to Australia.

Dutton said Australia helped pay for refurbishments at the Nauru hospital but he would not agree to transfer the women, saying the government would not “be taken for mugs”.

“The racket that’s been going here is that people at the margins come to Australia from Nauru,” he said.

“We can’t send them back to Nauru and there are over 200 people in that category.”

Dutton said the government had provided $11 million for a hospital within the regional processing centre as well as $26 million to help refurbish the Nauruan hospital.

“People believe that they’re going to somehow try to blackmail us into an outcome to come to Australia by saying we’re not going to have medical assistance,” he said.

“We’re not going to bend to that pressure. I believe very strongly that we need to take a firm stance.”

Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young described the situation as “hideous”.

Hanson-Young said a number of the women had health complications which could affect them during childbirth.

“We’ve got very vulnerable refugee women, soon to be mothers, crying out that they don’t want their children born on a prison island,” she told the ABC.

“We know that the horrors of treatment and conditions on Nauru, the stories continue to come out every day.”

Senator Hanson-Young said the Australian public did not want to see babies born on a “prison island”, referring to the staff at Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital who refused to discharge children back into immigration detention.

“We’ve seen doctors and nurses here in Australia this week cry out and say the detention of children is child abuse,” she said.

“If the detention of children is child abuse, then children being born into those conditions is just horrific.”

Refugee and Immigration Legal Centre executive director David Manne retains the “ultimate responsibility” for the expectant mothers.

“It’s clear that Nauru is not able to provide this care and it’s unsafe for mothers, for babies,” he said.

“It really beggars belief that our government is apparently prepared to risk the health and wellbeing of these babies and their mothers.”

Manne said transferring the women to Papua New Guinea should not be an option.

“Any proposal to send mothers and babies to Papua New Guinea raises the real question of whether again they will be safe,” he said.

The Refugee Action Coalition’s Ian Rintoul voiced concerns for the women, stating that Nauru was not equipped to deal with complicated births.

“One of the asylum seeker women due to give birth has a diabetic pregnancy that Nauru cannot safely manage,” he said in a statement.

“Every birth is a potentially a life-threatening situation for mother and baby. When there are complications the risk is even higher.

“The onus is on the government to provide proper medical care for a safe birth.”

Dutton’s comments come a day after he introduced legislation to tighten requirements for asylum seekers applying for protection.

If passed, he said the existence of a consistent pattern of mass violation of human rights would not meet the threshold.

People will also be denied protection if they could “take reasonable steps” to modify their behaviour, unless that behaviour was “fundamental” to their identity.