Call for refugee boy to be sent to Aust

The immigration department should stop playing political ping-pong and transfer an 11-year-old refugee boy from Nauru to Australia for urgent surgery on a broken arm, the Greens say.

"This boy has a broken arm, can't be that hard to fix it, let's bring him to Australia and make sure he gets the care he needs," Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young told reporters in Canberra on Tuesday.

The Nauru government wants a specialist medical team sent to the island to carry out the surgery after Australian doctors determined he was at risk of being permanently disabled.