The Australian Government was not targeting New Zealanders last November when it made non-citizens who had served more than a year in prison liable for deportation. The tough policy was designed to have a wide sweep. But New Zealanders, many of whom regard themselves as true blue Australians, have become ensnared in it. Almost 200 sit in seven detention centres, including remote Christmas Island, awaiting their dispatch to a place some barely know. Now, the death of one of these, 23-year-old Junior Togatuki, has highlighted issues about both their treatment and the policy itself.
Togatuki took his own life two weeks ago in Goulburn's Supermax prison. Earlier, he had begged Immigration Minister Peter Dutton to be allowed to remain in Australia. Under that country's new rules, it was obvious his request would be denied. Togatuki, who left this country aged 4, had spent all his adult life and most of his youth inside New South Wales prisons. His latest sentence, for robbery and assault, ended in August and he was being held at Goulburn ahead of his deportation to New Zealand.
This country may well be happy to see the back of criminals with similar records. It might even have placed them in centres that serve as halfway houses between prison and deportation. Clearly, it is in everyone's interest that the period spent there is as short as possible. But Togatuki's case underlined questions over aspects of these centres, most notably access to medical care and lawyers. He suffered from schizophrenia and anxiety, conditions that must have been known to the authorities. Yet, according to the Labour Party leader, Andrew Little, he was left unsupervised in solitary confinement, where he died.
His death - and the wider issue of the New Zealanders caught out by the policy - has prompted discussions in New York between Prime Minister John Key, Foreign Affairs Minister Murray McCully and his Australian counterpart, Julie Bishop. At the heart of any such talks must always be the so-called "special relationship" forged between the two countries in peace and war, not least in the freedom of movement between them, and how that should be sufficient to ensure at least some of the detained New Zealanders are exempt from deportation.
In particular, it makes no sense for people who have lived in Australia for the vast majority of their lives and regard themselves as Australian to be deported because they have committed relatively minor offences. Placing someone in that situation simply because they have been convicted of, say, shoplifting, smacks of overkill. That was surely not contemplated in the case of New Zealand-born Australians.
