Editorial: PMs must work to end Kiwis' Australia limbo

John Key and Mr Turnbull should discuss more than the deportation issue this weekend. Photo / Stuart Munro

A new Australian Prime Minister's first visit to New Zealand is always greeted with great interest, and this is especially true of Malcolm Turnbull.

He and John Key share a background in the same business as well as high personal regard and a similar political outlook.

They may be the most similar pairing the two countries have produced, and we might dare to hope their talks this weekend will provide more than the usual bromides about the transtasman relationship.

The burning issue on their agenda is the detention and deportation of non-Australian citizens who have been convicted of crime and served their time.

It is by no means the first issue to arise from the ill-defined position of New Zealanders, who can live in Australia for as long as they like but cannot easily adopt Australian citizenship.

Many of those facing deportation will have been taken to Australia by their parents, will have grown up there and will have no close family and no connections in New Zealand.

They will have Australian accents, all their friendships and shared loyalty will be there - they will be Australians in every sense except civil rights.

Tony Abbott appeared impervious to this plight. Mr Turnbull might be more reasonable, although he has to answer to the same voters.

Immigration - or at least border control - has been a hot issue in Australia for years. Under Mr Abbott, the Government made a virtue of "turning back the boats" from its northern coasts, and the public mood is probably not well disposed to exemptions to deportation for convicted migrants from New Zealand.

The best we can probably expect from the prime ministers this weekend may be an agreement to treat New Zealand-born criminals on a case-by-case basis, so those with no social connections to New Zealand, whose repatriation would be a recipe for personal disaster - the prospect has already caused a suicide - could be granted exemptions.

New Zealand is not in a position to push Australia very hard on these problems because it enjoys an immigration privilege Australia gives no other.

The right to live and work in each other's country has existed since time immemorial, and caused no problem when both were fairly homogenous societies and travel was harder.

But when airlines brought the world within reach of everyone and international migration became more diverse, Kiwis flocked to Australia in numbers that gave rise to the "Bondi bludger" image and concern that New Zealand had become a "back door" to Australia for third-country migrants.

The crunch came in 2001 when the Howard Government restricted expats' rights to some of Australia's social benefits.

Since the alternative was to end our unrestricted access to Australia, then-Prime Minister Helen Clark could do little more than appeal to Mr Howard's tender mercies.

Mr Key is in much the same position now. But he and Mr Turnbull should discuss more than the deportation issue this weekend.

We need a definitive agreement on the rights of Kiwi Australians. Those who have grown up there have been in a citizenship limbo for long enough.