Australia's deportation policy is risking serious and lasting damage to its relationship with New Zealand, an Australian professor says, and New Zealanders have a right to be angry when Australia deports a 15-year-old, as was revealed earlier this month.
Ian Coyle is an adjunct professor in law and psychology at La Trobe University and told Jesse Mulligan the Migration Act as it has been applied is “vicious”.
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“The Migration Act in Australia is being adopted by the late minister Mr Dutton as a draconian act, Draco in ancient Greece would be proud of it.
“It’s not just a 15-year-old being deported there are all sorts of other problems in this Act that are just absolutely reprehensible.”
The overwhelming group of people who have been deported have committed fairly minor crimes, he says.
And you don’t have to commit any crime at all to be deported, Coyle says.
“If you look at the character provisions under section 501a of the Act you can be deported if you’ve been found not guilty by a court by reason of a mental illness and you have spent 12 months in a mental institution and you’ve come out of there and you are fully recovered.
“You can still be deported and that’s not bizarre, that in my view is simply reprehensible, it’s an appalling abuse of power.”
The people he has worked with who are threatened with deportation are terrified, he says.
“In Australia the mere prospect that this could happen to them after they’ve left court that’s enough to being them on the straight and narrow I can guarantee that with every single one I’ve ever seen.
“I’ve seen a lot of very, very tough bikies turn white at the prospect of being sent back there, with no one.”
He believes most Australians are unaware of what is going on.
“My feeling is the majority of Australians, if they were aware how draconian, how vicious, and it is vicious this Act if it is applied to the extent that it can be applied.
“If they were aware of how vicious this act is they would think this is wrong, it’s over the top.”
In recent reshuffle this week Karen Andrews was appointed new Home Affairs minister, with Dutton moving to defence. Coyle suspects this might make a difference to how the Act is interpreted.
“I think it would be hard to find someone who was as hard-nosed as an ex-Queensland cop which is what minister Dutton is. I think you would be hard pressed to find someone with that approach, which I regard as being viciously unfair.”
