The issue of deporting people who have completed sentences in prison for criminal offences is a vexed one. It has been brought sharply into focus by the application of Australia’s so-called s501 policy which since 2014 has seen the deportation to New Zealand of around 2,000 people who had previously been sentenced to a term of twelve months or more in prison. Events over the last week regarding the apparent deportation of a 15-year-old child have sharpened that focus further and aroused some anger, although the precise circumstances of that case are still somewhat unclear.

It is an accepted principle that countries have the right to send home convicted criminals who are neither citizens nor residents and many countries do so. New Zealand, for example, allows a residents or other form of visa to be cancelled and a person sent home if they have been sentenced to a term of three months or more in prison.

But that is not the point at issue here. The objections to Australia’s deportation policy are less because of the policy itself and much more about the harsh and indiscriminate way it has been applied under both Labor- and Liberal-led governments. Often people have been deported to New Zealand after lifetimes in Australia, having left New Zealand as babies or small children, and with few remaining family connections in New Zealand.

Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton’s callous analogy to putting out the trash may resonate well with his domestic electorate but exemplifies the contemptuous approach Australia has always taken to this issue. Australia’s response that it is simply putting the safety and welfare of its own citizens first does not justify treating those who do not fit as vermin. Their approach is completely out of step with a wider world that no longer tolerates discrimination against minorities in this way.

I was Minister of Internal Affairs at the time when the deportation flights commenced. The first flight had not even obtained clearance to land in New Zealand prior to arriving, causing some panic in civil aviation and Foreign Affairs circles before it was finally permitted to land here. Moreover, the Australian authorities had made little effort to ensure any of the deportees on that flight had valid papers to enter New Zealand, leaving Internal Affairs and Immigration officials literally scrambling to process arrivals on the tarmac. Such was the contempt that underpinned the Australian approach.

The difficulty all along has been that from a sovereignty standpoint Australia is following the provisions of its own law as passed by its Federal Parliament. The issue is therefore not a legal one, but a moral one, and Australia has shown itself to be utterly deaf to any criticism of it.

It is symptomatic of the wider approach Australia has been taking since the early 2000s to New Zealanders who have made their homes in Australia. Despite the annual ritualistic invocation of the special relationship between the two countries each ANZAC Day, Australia has been moving steadily to ensure that New Zealanders living in Australia are treated no differently from any other non-Australian residents. The problem is, though, as the deportation policy typifies, because of the large number of New Zealanders living in Australia – well over half a million at last count – and the basic similarity of our cultures, treating New Zealanders no differently from other non-Australian residents is actually a form of discrimination.

That is what makes the issue political and is why successive Prime Ministers from Helen Clark onwards have been vocal in their remonstrations to Australia about the policy’s adverse impact on New Zealand. Jacinda Ardern has gone so far as to describe it as a “corrosive” factor. However, reports this week that New Zealand did not raise its concerns with the United Nations when it was reviewing Australia’s human rights policy detract from this somewhat.

Be all that as it may, New Zealand is right to take the moral high ground approach it has since the early 2000s and to push for better treatment for its citizens resident in Australia. While the brutal candour of Peter Dutton’s comments suggest the current Australian government is a lost cause, it is more worrying that the Opposition Labor Party is showing little enthusiasm to turn things around. But then deportation policy began during its last term in government.

So, it seems an awful bipartisan consensus is emerging about New Zealand, reflecting once more the maxim that “all politics are local”. As long as the approach remains popular with Australian voters, as currently appears to be the case, the harsh reality is that awful consensus will prevail. More New Zealanders will be deprived of access to government health and welfare services in Australia, despite being taxpayers there, and more petty criminals will be deported to a country that while theirs by birth, they may have never known.

It will be fascinating to see how Scott Morrison justifies this modern Australian interpretation of “mateship” and the “Spirit of ANZAC” this April 25th.

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