Australia’s 501 deportations to NZ continue to slow after policy change

Deportations to New Zealand under Australia’s controversial “501″ policy have halved under a “common sense approach” adopted by the Government there, marking a massive turnaround in what was one of the thorniest issues between the transtasman neighbours.

Data provided to the Herald by police show that over the past 12 months an average of just over 18 people a month have been deported to New Zealand - well down on the height of the deportations policy in mid-2018, when the average was just under 44 a month.

The current 12-month rate is the lowest since the policy came into force in 2015, and nearly half that of before the pandemic, with the border closures heavily affecting the practice.

The “501″ policy is a nickname for Section 501 of Australia’s Migration Act, under which the minister can refuse or cancel visas on character grounds if someone has “a substantial criminal record” or has been sentenced to imprisonment for 12 months or longer.

The deportations, often of people who have lived much of their lives in Australia and with no personal connections in New Zealand, became a sore point in relations between the countries, reaching a low in 2021 when Australian Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton referred to the policy as “taking out the trash”.

Deportees have also been linked to a rise in gang activity in New Zealand and an increase in crime. The latest figures show that since 2015, 1458 of the people deported from Australia had since been convicted of 13,280 offences, including 2243 violent offences (over a fifth of offences are traffic-related, often due to difficulties renewing driver’s licences, while the largest proportion - 3815 - were dishonesty).

Successive Prime Ministers in John Key and Jacinda Ardern advocated to their counterparts across the Tasman to have this policy changed, and in July last year Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said his country would adopt a “common sense approach” to deportations.

An official ministerial direction in March now means deportation decisions have to consider the “strength, nature and duration” of any other ties that the non-citizen has to the Australian community and “considerable weight should be given to the fact that a non-citizen has been ordinarily resident in Australia during and since their formative years, regardless of when their offending commenced and the level of that offending”.

Essentially, this means if a person from New Zealand has been born in Australia to New Zealand parents, or been in Australia since they were a small child, considerable weight has to be given to that fact.

Police data shows 3078 people have arrived in New Zealand since 2015. The peak was in 2017 and 2018, when 471 and 486 people arrived here.

The lowest number was in 2021, which was heavily affected by pandemic-related border closures with zero deportations in six months of that year.

This year is looking to be the lowest on record, with 191 deportations in the year to October.

The data is similar to that held by the Australian Border Force, which shows 3820 New Zealand citizens have been removed from Australia since 2015. The peak was in 2017 and 2018, when, respectively, 595 and 609 people were deported.

Up to October 296 people had been deported, with 2023 on track to record the lowest number aside from years affected by the pandemic.

A Melbourne-based lawyer and spokesman for the Australian Lawyers Alliance, Greg Barns, SC, said the New Zealand police data reflected what he had been seeing and hearing anecdotally.

“[That direction] has led to a more sensible and compassionate approach.”

Barns said there were still deportations of people with strong ties to Australia, but now they generally happened only after crimes of “great magnitude”.

Long-time 501 deportee rights advocate Filipa Payne said it was positive to see a decline, but the rate remained too high.

Payne said she was suspicious of some of the numbers, given high numbers of New Zealanders continued to be in detention centres. She also questioned if there had been a backlog of deportations after the pandemic.

She was also concerned 67 per cent were Māori or Pacific peoples.

“Our whānau are being targeted and exploited by a system that profits from their misery. We need to offer them aroha and support and help them reconnect with their culture and identity. Only then can we hope to reduce the reoffending rates.”

The latest Australian detention figures for August show New Zealanders continued to make up the largest proportion, at 15.8 per cent, 167, of the 1056 people.

This was down from 211 in August last year and 206 the year before that.

The National Party, which is set to lead the next Government, declined to comment.

A spokeswoman from Australia’s Department of Home Affairs said while the new ministerial direction was being followed the department felt it was too early to say if the fall in deportations was a direct result.

The change in approach to 501 deportations comes as New Zealanders living in Australia continue to take up the enhanced access to citizenship.

In April, Australia announced a new direct pathway to citizenship for eligible New Zealand citizens who have lived across the Tasman for at least four years.

It followed decades of advocacy from successive Governments around a policy that treated New Zealanders like “second-class citizens”.

As of mid-October, 100 days after the policy came into effect, more than 30,000 New Zealanders living in Australia had applied.