Australian deportee crime wave never slowed

Tuesday, 11 June 2024

The Australian Government’s softening of the “501” deportation policy did not meaningfully reduce the crime wave fuelled by deportees to New Zealand.

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon said on Monday the Government would “monitor” a change in Australia’s policy on deporting criminals, which promises to unwind a “common sense” softening of the policy that New Zealand lobbied hard for.

Data provided by police shows, while the original policy change may have reduced the flow of deportees into New Zealand, it did little to stem the volume of crimes committed when the criminals arrived in the country.

The risk for New Zealand is that Friday’s policy change in Canberra will ratchet up the number of criminal deportees and again fuel a crime wave.

“I take [Australian] Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s word when he says the common sense approach will continue to apply, and so we'll need to see it worked out, we'll need to see it executed, and move from a form of words into action, and we'll continue to monitor that,” Luxon said on Monday.

The Albanese Government in March 2023 adjusted its deportation policy by directing an immigration tribunal to consider a person’s connection to Australia when deciding on cases where criminal’s visas had been cancelled.

This was a direct response to New Zealand’s concern that criminals who had grown up in Australia, and had no connection to New Zealand other than a passport, were unreasonably being deported across the Tasman.

The change may have addressed this concern. In the 14 months since, data shows the number of deportees dropped from an annualised average of about 25 people a month to about18 people a month.

But, since March 2023, a further 4644 offences have been committed by “501” deportees, and the number of offending deportees rose by 240 people.

There were more than 970 violence offences, more than 50 sexual offences, more than 634 drug and “anti-social” offences, and more than 1300 dishonesty offences committed by the deportees.

Averaged out since the beginning of 2015, the monthly rate of offences increased, indicating crimes were being committed at a greater rate after March 2023. In total since 2015, the deportees have committed 21,404 offences in New Zealand.

On Monday, Luxon said he had looked at the deportations numbers and saw them coming down, and Albanese had put “a lot of personal capital” in both bringing about the common sense approach, and opening a pathway for New Zealanders to gain Australian citizenship.

“We have argued consistently under successive Governments that actually it doesn't make sense to have people deported with little connection to this country, [this] has actually been well received. [These are] two impediments to our relationship that have actually been constructively resolved.”

Nonetheless, the Albanese Government last week rewrote deportation policy by replacing “direction 99” from March 2023, with a new “direction 110” that would give “greater weight” to community safety when an immigration tribunal considers cases of appealed visas.

The change was a response to weeks of political controversy over Australian Immigration Minister Andrew Giles’ handling of criminals that the government sought to deport but were released back into the community.

Directive 99 became a source of political controversy after an Australian high court ruling in November determined the government could not hold people in immigration detention indefinitely. This led to the release of a number of convicted criminals the government tried to deport, including Emmanuel Saki who allegedly committed murder after the tribunal decided against deportation due to his connection to Australia.

The law which allows the Australia Government to cancel the visas of non-citizens, and the “501” clause which the deportees are named after, has remained unchanged.