(Transcript from World News Radio)
Prime Minister Tony Abbott says there are plans for Papua New Guinea to begin resettling asylum seekers granted refugee status by mid-year.
But PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill says the country may not take all refugees, and Australia may need to help find a third country for resettlement.
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As Thea Cowie reports, there's still no indication of what work rights, freedom of movement or access to government support refugees will receive.
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It's almost nine months since the Rudd government signed the Regional Resettlement Arrangement with Papua New Guinea and until now there's been limited information on plans for asylum seekers granted refugee status.
One of the biggest hurdles has been the fact that PNG does not have an appropriate visa for refugees.
After meeting his visiting Australian counterpart, PNG Prime Minister Peter O'Neill says the relevant legislation will be introduced to parliament in two months.
"What we are working on now is organising a legislative structure in which we can conduct the resettlement exercise and our office is working on that at present. It will go to Parliament in May and then we'll proceed from there onwards. But this does not mean that the interviews have stopped. The interview and the processing of the refugee people at Manus is now taking place as we speak and that will continue."
On Manus Island, a lack of information about resettlement plans has been linked to last month's riot which ended in the death of an Iranian asylum seeker.
But it's not the first time PNG has outlined a time frame for the introduction of visa legislation.
On a visit to Australia in August last year, the country's Foreign Minister Rimbink Pato announced the government was likely to introduce the relevant legislation in September.
As for where the refugees will be settled, Prime Minister O'Neill says that remains unclear.
"There are already some communities in the country who have already offered to participate in this program. It is pretty hard to speculate when we don't precisely know the actual numbers of the number of people we are talking about. We expect it to be less, because people expected to go home and many that have been processed, a good majority of them are economic refugees, they're not genuine refugees."
The Australian government has insisted that in the hours before deadly rioting broke out on Manus Island, authorities told asylum seekers their only option for resettlement was PNG.
Now Prime Minister Tony Abbott says Australia is considering its options in the region.
"I accept that depending upon how many of those at Manus are found to be refugees, I accept that it might be hard for PNG to take all of them, but we're grateful for the fact that some of them will be here in PNG and we're continuing to work with other countries in our region to ensure that people don't come to Australia if they arrive illegally by boat."
The Prime Minister's visits to Port Moresby has also yielded an economic cooperation treaty designed to strengthen the trade and investment relationship.
Mr Abbott emerged from the meeting with Mr O'Neill declaring the countries are more than friends, they're like family.
"There will long be a very strong government-to-government relationship between Australia and PNG but increasingly I would like the focus of the relationship at the government-to-government level to be trade at least as much as aid. And that's why I was so pleased to have such a large and powerful business delegation with me here today."
Tony Abbott is not visiting Manus Island during his trip to PNG.
