YAREN - Nauru will demand more control over Australia-bound asylum-seekers than it had under the Howard government's Pacific Solution, entrenching the physical and legal isolation they will face when transfers recommence.
Nauru Foreign Minister Kieren Keke said local authorities had "pretty much handed over" to Australia the original detention centres, operated between 2001 and 2008 before Labor dismantled offshore processing, but he said it would not happen again.
A scoping team of defence and government personnel arrived on Nauru Friday, and terms could be worked out to allow asylum-seekers to be kept in the island state within weeks, possibly in tent accommodation.
"We are much clearer this time around how we want the arrangement structured," Dr Keke told The Weekend Australian in an interview from Nauru.
"I think back in 2001 the land wasn't ceded as such to Australia -- it was pretty much handed over to their full control. "That's something we are looking at doing differently this time. We are happy to host the centre, but we want it really to be much more under Nauruan control."
RAAF engineers Friday inspected the ramshackle, termite-ridden huts that housed asylum-seekers on Papua New Guinea's Manus Island, before the reconnaissance team flew to Nauru, nearly 3000km northeast of Cairns. News Limited photographer Gary Ramage said the conditions were "unliveable".