NZ should take boat people: Greens

The Green Party is asking the Government to help Australia and take some of the Sri Lankan boat people who are refusing to leave a customs vessel.

Australian authorities have been trying for two weeks to persuade the 78 asylum seekers to leave the customs vessel Oceanic Viking, which picked them up, and enter a detention centre on the Indonesian island of Bintan.

Green MP Keith Locke said today the Government should offer to take some of them.

"We certainly have the capacity to take in some more asylum seekers who are fleeing persecution in their home country," he said.

"The current crisis is caused by the repressive actions of the Sri Lankan government towards Tamils in the aftermath of that country's civil war."

Mr Locke said he was sending emails to Immigration Minister Jonathan Coleman and Foreign Minister Murray McCully asking them to intervene.