Mr Key said Parliament would today consider a bill under urgency to ensure Corrections and Police had the ability to conduct "proper oversight" of those people who came back.
"These are, as I have pointed out in the past, some quite dangerous people, potentially, and we have a responsibility to ensure we protect New Zealanders as best we can and that the oversight provisions are the same as if the person had been in a New Zealand Corrections facility."
Labour leader Andrew Little this morning said his party had no choice but to support the urgent legislation.
"The reality is, the Government has handled this so badly. A situation they have known nearly a year ago was upon us, they have now introduced legislation to deal with it.
"They have a plane load of roughly 20 deportees ready to come out of Australia. For the sake of New Zealanders' safety and security, we won't have much choice but to support it."
Mr Little said Labour had put a proposal which would see the Government introduce two bills, one under urgency and one under the usual process, allowing public input through the select committee stage.
The urgent bill would ensure deportees were adequately supervised, but would contain a sunset clause and expire once the other legislation was law.
"They have rejected that proposal, but through the urgent legislation we will continue to press that case, and see if we can get some movement on it."
Mr Key said he had been in text contact with Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull about the G20 in Turkey, which Mr Turnbull is attending, and about catching up at Apec in Manila.
Mr Key is leaving Vietnam today for the Apec summit where he and Mr Turnbull will discuss the issues that have put a strain on one of the closest bilateral relationships in the world.
"We will be getting together, there's no doubt about that," Mr Key said. "The form of the bilateral will be over a glass of red wine, hopefully New Zealand red wine.
"But yes, there will certainly be a sit-down and discussion about what's been happening and how things are playing out in New Zealand."
Following a law passed by Australia a year ago, resident visa holders who have served a term of imprisonment for a year or more automatically lose the right to reside in Australia - it used to be two years or more.
About 580 New Zealanders are being held in detention pending an appeal to Immigration Minister Peter Dutton and many of the detainees have little or no connection to New Zealand.
New Zealand has had assurances from Mr Dutton that appeals lodged from New Zealand would suffer no disadvantage.
About 40 Kiwis are thought to be on the remote Christmas Island where riots and fires just over a week ago caused about $11 million in damage.
The new law also gives the Immigration Minister the right to deport someone deemed to have failed the "good character" test. One of those being held, Ngati Kanohi Te Eke Haapu, also known as Ko, a former New Zealand soldier who guarded Mr Key in Afghanistan, has been ordered out of the country on "character" grounds even though he has committed no crime.
Though New Zealand is putting pressure on Australia to hasten its procedures for appeal or repatriation to New Zealand to appeal, the delay lies partly at New Zealand's end, because it wants new laws to monitor the deportees, which at present it has no legal right to do if they have completed their sentence in an Australian prison.
Mr Key said he intended to discuss with Mr Turnbull the treatment of New Zealanders in Australia, where they pay taxes but are denied services such as the right to belong to the national disability insurance scheme and an easy an route to citizenship.
"I'm certainly continuing to reiterate the points to him, that the steps Australia are taking are unpopular in New Zealand and seen as unfair," Mr Key said.
"I'm also interested in trying to push on the issue of the rights of New Zealanders in Australia. We were really starting to make progress on that issue with [former Prime Minister] Tony Abbott.
"I had a brief discussion with Malcolm Turnbull about that when we sat down a few weeks ago in New Zealand.
"At the core of all of this issue around deportation sits the fact that these are people who in many cases have no pathway to citizenship.
"I'm not suggesting we are going to resolve it over a glass of red wine in Manila but I do think it's something I'd like to see some progress be made on."
