Brian Rudman: Aussie deportations no better than penal colonies of old

Christmas Island Detention Center Australia. Photo / Paula Bronstein

Australian national myth-making dwells heavily on the evils of transportation. How the founding fathers and mothers of Australia Fair, all British and Irish prisoners, arrived in 1787 in the "First Fleet". They'd been dispatched by judges to distant shores to build their own jails. More than 160,000 were to follow over the next 80 to 90 years.

For the English government, it was a simple and cheap way of removing "criminals" from society without actually hanging them.

More than two centuries later, the inheritors of this continental-sized penal colony have decided to dip into the past and get rid of present-day miscreants in the old-fashioned way. Since a law change in November they've been targeting Kiwis and other foreigners, rounding them up and throwing them into detention facilities prior to transportation. These days, it's back to their places of birth. Even those who arrived as infants decades ago are dragged away from wives, husbands, children, siblings and parents.

The added twist to the present day model is that miscreants are forced to first do their time in an Australian jail, then get doubly punished by being tossed into an immigration facility for months on end, then deported.

The November law change was also retrospective. Immigration authorities are dredging through old convictions and if they add up to a year or more's jail, into a holding cell goes the victim. Even the 18th century gaolers were not that cruel.

Listening to an Australian senator on the radio proudly defending the policy, you have to wonder how long it will be, after they've cleaned up the "New Zealand problem", that the Australians start rounding up born-in-Australia law breakers and start expelling them to the country's expanding diaspora of penal colonies on Christmas Island, Nauru and Papua New Guinea.

There are close to 200 New Zealanders in Australian immigration detention centres, including some in remote Christmas Island. It's reported another 406 have had their visas cancelled and 95 have already been sent home this year.

Last year, following a visit to the Christmas Island facility, Australian Human Rights Commissioner Gillian Triggs called conditions "inhumane, dangerous and extremely poor". Professor Triggs expressed great concern about detainees being isolated from family, friends and their legal advisers.

Of course one can sympathise with Australia's desire to rid itself of foreign criminals. New Zealand does the same. Romanian pick-pockets, Chinese drug smugglers, Australian con men. Out they go after serving their time inside.

But in the case of many of the New Zealanders facing modern day transportation, they have spent most of their lives in Australia, arriving as youngsters in the days before Australia toughened its rules about population flows between the two countries.

For example, 23-year-old Junior Togatuki, a victim of mental illness and held in solitary confinement in Sydney's Goulburn "Supermax" prison until he killed himself, arrived in Australia as a 4-year-old. Angela Russell, aged 40, who has been detained for nearly six months awaiting deportation, arrived as a 3-year-old. She has two children and parents in Australia. She has a string of minor convictions. Her 16-year-old daughter has never been to New Zealand and is terrified the family will split up.

It's a recipe for social mayhem on both sides of the Tasman. On the New Zealand side, the Australians are dumping criminals, some serious offenders, some less so, at our airports, often with no links or support systems to engage. There's no system in place to warn either the police or social agencies of potential problems. On the Australian side, there's the splitting of families to cope with.

It's hard to drum up much sympathy for criminals. But the cases that have so far been highlighted all involve long-term Australian residents who arrived as kids and are, in effect, products of Australia. Like native-born Australians, they had no choice about their place of upbringing.

To round them up, incarcerate them for months, then stick them on a plane and dump them with no support in Auckland makes our Anzac partners no better than the 18th century English who first came up with the uncivilised idea.