BROOKE BONEY & DANIELA RITORTO | SBS with AAP
PAPUA New Guinean prime minister Peter O’Neill has hinted he's keen to see the closure of the Manus Island detention centre.
Mr O'Neill says hosting the Australian-run immigration detention centre had damaged his country's reputation.
“Yes, it has done a lot more damage to PNG than anything else,” he said during Thursday’s address to the National Press Club in Canberra.
He said PNG communities have been accused of many things, but noted that Manus Islanders were among the loveliest people in the world.
“In terms of the refugee safety, they are being well looked after,” he said.
“Most of them are engaging very well with the communities in Manus.”
Mr O’Neill has signalled he hopes to see the closure of the immigration detention centre on Manus Island, but the timing was up to Australia.
“At some stage of course we need to close the centre, these people cannot remain in Manus forever,” he said.
“We need to make a determination where they should go and take a firm decision on it.”
PNG's Supreme Court will hear a constitutional challenge to the detention centre in April in a case that involves 600 asylum seekers.
Mr O'Neill said his government would wait for the legal process to take its course.
"You always plan for a worst possible scenario," he told AAP.
Mr O'Neill attended bilateral talks with Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull on Thursday afternoon.
An agreement to house refugees in PNG was struck between Mr O’Neill and former Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd in 2013, ahead of the federal election.
Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young said the Australian government urgently needed an "exit strategy".
"Clearly Prime Minister O'Neill is sick of his country being used by the Liberal government in this way and it's time to shut the Manus Island camp down," she said in a statement.