Paul Little: Guilty until proved otherwise

Kim Dotcom. Photo / Sarah Ivey

Our public servants are an unsung national treasure. They keep the wheels turning as politicians and parties come and go, upholding and executing the policy made on our behalf.

They are hardworking, prodigiously well informed and now, it appears, we can add clairvoyant to the list of their remarkable skills.

The Immigration Department's Assistant General Manager Compliance and Border Operations, Peter Devoy, was assigned the defending-the-indefensible round at last Tuesday's roll call.

He had to explain on the wireless why Australian John Millar of the Rebels Motorcycle Club - or "Gang" if you're more comfortable with that - was stopped at Christchurch Airport, put in a cell for 12 hours and sent back whence he came.

I have no idea about Millar's character. He may be a guinea pig-burning psychopath who eats too many sugary foods, for all I know.

But the Immigration Department has no idea either.

So to those other qualities displayed by our public servants we should add revolutionary, because they have turned the principle that anyone is innocent until proved guilty on its head and treated a man with a clean record like a criminal.

They could do this partly because Millar's club is registered as a criminal organisation in Australia where gangs/clubs have been made handy scapegoats for all manner of social ills that are nothing to do with them.

And under the Immigration Act we can refuse entry to anyone we have reason to believe is likely to commit an offence punishable by imprisonment or deemed a threat to public interest.

There was no such reason in Millar's case.

Surely by that criterion, many non-immigrants should be called to account - MediaWorks' executives, for instance. Their demolition of current affairs television under their watch is the very definition of threatening public interest.

We already have a large number of people who identify as gang members here.

Some are people you would be proud to call friends. Others are dysfunctional ratbags. Just like any other group.

It calls our whole system into disrepute when we single out an innocent individual for the sort of treatment to which Millar was subjected.

In 2013, I published a book by Herald reporter David Fisher called Spies, Lies and the Internet: The Secret Life of Kim Dotcom. Then, as now, I felt privileged to be involved with a book by so fine a journalist and about so important a subject: the future.

Because Kim Dotcom is the future. He was at the forefront of technology that has only continued to develop while he has been harassed by the New Zealand justice system.

I was also mindful that, since Dotcom had been taken to the hearts of New Zealanders who were fascinated by the millionaire underdog, the book would sell its cyber-socks off.

Unfortunately, it appeared at just the moment a large section of the public turned on Dotcom. Whether it was coincidence that this was also the time he formed the Internet Party and recorded the dreadful Good Times album, I leave to you to judge.

But I have my suspicions. Now the courts say we can send the German to the US to face charges over acts that better-established corporates are performing with impunity.

The irony is that if Dotcom, whom the authorities worked very hard to allow in here in the first place, had the foresight to be born in Saudi Arabia rather than Germany, we would have taken a firm stand on a matter of principle, withstood any outside pressure and defended to our last breaths his inviolable right to bring his fortune here.