An Australian deportee at the Ramada hotel MIQ facility in central Auckland on July 14, 2020. Photo / Dean Purcell
An Australian deportee at the Ramada hotel MIQ facility in central Auckland on July 14, 2020. Photo / Dean Purcell
OPINION:
The transtasman punch-downs are likely to worsen.
Currently, there's a piece of proposed legislation before the Australian Senate aimed at increasing visa cancellation powers, specifically under section 501 of the Migration Act.
This part of the act, used frequently in deportation cases to New Zealand, already enables the responsibleminister to cancel visas if they are satisfied the holder does not meet requirements of the "character test". Being sentenced to 12 months or more in prison means you'll fail.
A visa can also be cancelled based on suspicion of criminal activity - that is "there is a risk that the person would engage in criminal conduct" in Australia.
Alongside other aspects of Australia's visa-cancelling legislation, the policy has been widely criticised as discriminatory and in breach of human rights.
It has also been a major source of angst for the New Zealand Government, with more than 2000 New Zealanders being returned via 501 visa cancellations since the policy's 2014 implementation. The ongoing social and criminal impacts of that have been well publicised.
The amendment before the Australian Senate proposes an even harsher status quo. If passed, the threshold for visa-cancellation decisions under the "character test" would be lowered so a person convicted of a crime with a maximum imprisonment sentence of two years or more would be captured. The actual sentence they received or served would not matter.
To paint a picture of its severity, it's been opposed by a raft of human rights and justice advocates, including the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, the Australian Human Rights Commission and the Law Council of Australia. The New Zealand Government also weighed in - making a submission against the original version of the bill at the end of 2018.
The arbitrary and blunt nature of the proposed amendment has been outlined by the Australian Lawyers for Human Rights (ALHR) in its submission.
"There are numerous offences across State and Territory jurisdictions which may be punishable by imprisonment for a term of two years or more, but which ... the criminal law system may not find it appropriate to impose the two-year imprisonment sentence," the ALHR said.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Jason Oxenham
"For example, in Western Australia, the summary penalty for damaging property by graffiti ranges from a community-based order to a two-year term of imprisonment ... This is the type of offence the bill captures through its expansion of powers without any proper consideration of the actual sentence imposed by the criminal law system."
Significantly, while there is division over the bill (it failed to win a majority of votes at its first reading in the Senate), it does have the support of the Scott Morrison government. Indeed, it was his government which reintroduced the bill two years ago after it failed to make headway in 2018.
For New Zealand, which has consistently objected to Australia's deportation policies under Jacinda Ardern, it poses the question of what's next.
This week it emerged a 15-year-old New Zealand boy had been separated from his family and detained in an adult facility after his visa was cancelled in Australia. The boy is now in an MIQ facility in New Zealand.
In 2018, another New Zealand teenager spent four months in an adult immigration detention centre in Melbourne when his visa was revoked. He was released after a successful appeal. The then-17-year-old had lived in Australia since he was 11.
Filipa Payne, co-ordinator of the Iwi n Aus advocacy group, highlights the need for a multi-layered approach from New Zealand if problems with Australia's visa cancellation policies are to be addressed.
"We have a Prime Minister ... who talks about deportation, but never ever talks about detention - what happens in that arbitrary detention and the mental and physical abuse that our people and many other thousands of people from across the globe, who have been subjected to Australian immigration detention are going through," Payne said on Newstalk ZB.
Payne, supported by Community Law Centres o Aotearoa and the New Zealand Human Rights Commission, petitioned the Government last year to take a stand against Australia's severe immigration detention, deportation and citizenship policies at its review before the UN.
The then-Minister of Foreign Affairs, Winston Peters, responded directly to the petition and said New Zealand would "continue to raise these issues directly with the Australian government".
Sue Moroney, chief executive of Community Law, says as a result, there was no questioning from the New Zealand Government about this issue at Australia's UN hearing in January.
"What we've observed is that the bilateral process hasn't worked," Moroney says. "In fact, the Australian government, if anything, has become more oppressive in its approach. That's why we're pressing for the New Zealand Government to do the right thing and raise it as a breach of human rights through the United Nations process."
Payne and Moroney are correct. In the past few months alone, Australia has used publicity around deported New Zealanders to gloat about the privilege of life across the Tasman, and the ease at which that can be cut off.
The New Zealand Government must escalate its own response and use all avenues to oppose policies which leave New Zealanders in such dire circumstances.
