Australia will operate further repatriation flights out of New Caledonia as it seeks to bring home the last of its stranded citizens following deadly riots there.
Two Australian government-assisted flights are set to take off from the French territory in the Pacific on Friday following more than a week of riots that have resulted in at least six deaths.
Two Royal Australian Air Force planes and a French-organised flight have brought 187 Australians home alongside dozens of citizens from other nations.
Friday’s flights will repatriate Australians stranded in the capital Noumea as the government continues to work on organising further flights as it works with French authorities to access citizens on island resorts.
Some 300 Australians initially registered their interest to leave with the Department of Foreign Affairs.
Passengers are being prioritised based on need, Foreign Minister Penny Wong said.
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton backed the Department of Foreign Affairs work, saying it did a great job in helping Australians overseas.
“DFAT will be having a look at all of the available information on the ground … safety of Australians will be paramount in their minds, so we support the work that they’re doing,” he told Nine’s Today Show.
“Sometimes people are in dreadful, dreadful circumstances and you just want to get help to them as quickly as you can.”
It comes as French President Emmanuel Macron delays the controversial voting reforms that sparked the riots, with the Indigenous people on the colonised territory worried that the changes would have diluted their voice.
He still planned to enact the law but wouldn’t do so by force and only when peace had returned to New Caledonia, he said during a visit to the capital Noumea.
The changes allow French residents who have lived in the territory for 10 years to vote.
